Will Charlotte get snow Tuesday? Here's the scenario

We've been lucky or unlucky -- depending on whether or not you like snow -- that none of the arctic blasts this month have been accompanied by a storm system.

Outside of the mountains, it's been cold and dry. That's about to change, at least for parts of the Carolinas.

Since late last week, those in the weather-watching world have been paying attention to the computer models as they were updated every six hours, trying to determine if the Southeast would get clobbered with a winter storm Tuesday and early Wednesday.

By early in the weekend, it became more obvious that a disturbance coming from the Pacific onto the West Coast would trek across the country around the same time that another arctic cold front pushes into the Southeast. That would create a winter storm.

On Saturday, it looked like the storm would be suppressed south of the Charlotte region by the strong arctic high pressure system over the Great Lakes. Snow was expected in the Carolinas, but only at the coast. On Sunday, that changed a bit. Some (not all) of the computer models began predicting the storm track would be farther north. In other words, the snow was pushed farther inland.

Officially, it still looks like the snow and will remain southeast of Charlotte. A couple inches are likely in places like Macon, Ga., Athens, Ga., Columbia, Florence and Fayetteville. A mix of ice and snow, with possibly enough ice to cause power outages, was expected in Charleston and possibly Myrtle Beach.

But nobody is firmly in or out of the frozen precipitation area yet.

"The systems that would create such an event are not even in place yet," National Weather Service meteorologist Neil Dixon said Sunday evening. "It will be later (Monday) before we have a better idea."

Dixon said one thing is certain about Charlotte and any precipitation.

"If anything falls in Charlotte, it will be snow," he said. "A lot of times, we have marginal temperatures for snow. But not this time. It will be plenty cold enough."

Temperatures will be in the upper teens and lower 20s Tuesday evening and early Wednesday when the storm system makes its approach to the Carolinas.

Either way, this system figures to bring some frozen precipitation to places that don't often see it.

Some of the places that are included in the vast expanse of the winter storm watch?  How about Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, Macon, Savannah and Charleston?  It was 70 degrees in Houston at 6 p.m. Sunday, yet sleet and freezing rain are expected there in a little more than 24 hours. That's what an arctic cold front followed by a storm system will bring you.

By the way, this arctic blast appears to be the last for a while. Temperatures will modify later in the week, and we'll be near 60 degrees by next weekend. Another big storm system is predicted by the computer models for early in the week of Feb. 3, but that storm would bring rain to the Carolinas, as we'll be well above freezing by then.