RICHMOND, Va. -- The sun will rise Saturday at 6:25 a.m. and there is a 100% chance of rain at 6 a.m.
By about 9 a.m. we should start seeing the mix.
And by about 10 a.m., 11 a.m., or noon, we should start to see the transition begin to go over to snow.
But once we get past noon the chance of precip begins to dwindle, as does the temperature.
In fact, we'll spend the second half of the day with temperatures near freezing.
Wind gusts for Saturday across Central Virginia about 30 to 40 miles an hour with the potential for some gusts around 50 near the coast.
If we do see any thunderstorms, that means some higher wind gusts are possible.
The best chance for severe weather is going to be east and southeast of Richmond. We may even get an isolated spin-up tornado. Not a huge chance of that, but with the dynamics in place, we can't rule out maybe an isolated tornado or two mostly east and southeast Richmond. That's mostly from about early to mid to late morning. It's not going to be an all-day type of thing.
As far as snowfall accumulation, the ground is going to be pretty warm, the temperatures will be a bit above freezing, and the March sun angles a little bit higher. It's tough to really accumulate snow this time of year, but we could get a grassy coating across the metro. A little bit farther north and west, a grassy coating and maybe about a 1/2 an inch or 3/4 of an inch.
If you go way to the north northwest there's a potential for an inch, possibly a little bit more in Louisa County, Fluvanna County, and up through Spotsylvania towards Fredericksburg — it'll be about an inch or so of snow or so mainly on the grass.
We could get a few slick spots on the roads by later in the day Saturday, but the best chance to see any snowfall accumulation tomorrow is going to be from Staunton up to I-81 into Northern Virginia where they could see over two or three inches of snow.
