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quick post from the MIA airport…

the NWS put up the Winter Storm Watch early this morning.  they are saying 3-5″.  i think this is a good way to go.  what will happen is that they’ll advertise this general 3-5″ until we can work out the mesoscale precip banding…or should i say, they…since i’ll be basking in 85° bliss (or not).  then, as the favored band area becomes apparent you’ll look for a 6-8″ band with lollipops up to a foot or more.  have fun with this one.  it’s killing me to miss it!

Just a quick note to say bye bye before I leave for Costa Rica.  Things still look on track for a wet weekend with a secondary coastal storm on Sunday night and Monday dumping some impressive snow totals.  This will be one of those times when the farther east you are, the better your chances will be for a thumping…e.g. the axis of heaviest snow would be crazy places like from Florence, SC  to Warsaw, NC to Greenville, NC to Williamston, NC.   It’s way to early to try to pin down details like this, but there will be some locations that get a 10-12″.  As we get closer, the major issues to resolve will be mesoscale details, the most important of which will be where the deformation zone sets up.  That may not mean anything to you now, but just remember how back in 2000 when Raleigh was in the sweet spot of the deformation zone as the storm moved by.  Raleigh was the fulcrum of the deformation precip band and obviously got dumped on.  It’ll be fun to see how this all turns out.  I’ll be watching from a far (and delayed) since i’ll barely have power where we’re going, much less any internet or phone.  Happy snow!  grrrrr

really?  say it ain’t so!  I know that i advertised this as a period of storminess with intermittent cold that might mix for a significant winter weather event, but really…surely it’s not gonna happen this time…while i’m gone!  ugh.  I guess I’m going to have to give up snow for Lent.

Tonight’s 00Z runs are crazy.  Snow, snow, snow for Sunday.  Let’s not jump on that train yet…for now let’s just say it’s on the table.  Again, the Trexler Postulate of Absentee Snowfall states that when Trex leaves the country during the winter, central NC receives a significant snowfall.  Is that what’s coming?

In spite of the blowtorch that begins firing today, but especially tomorrow and Friday, would you believe winter is not dead for us even though vile rumors have circulated with that implication.  In fact, that we will see a weekend storm is a high-confidence bet…that we would see snow from it is, as always, the hard to pin down item.  Four days out, the models continue to argue about the storm track with the American models taking a warm and potentially thunderstormy track, and the European depicting cold and more wintry central NC scenario.  The Euro has been the more consistent solution over the past couple days, so we’ll see how the other models trend over the next couple days.  The Euro solution would start us off as rain and change over to snow soon enough for accumulation on Sunday.

As always, when it this far out, it’s good to outline the possibilities and get excited later.  But considering that I’m leaving for Costa Rica at O’ Dark Thirty on Saturday morning and will be gone for a week, the Trexler Postulate of Absentee Snowfall will be applicable.  That is, when Mike leaves the country in the winter, it snows like Telluride back home!

I don’t want to spend too much time on this at this early juncture, but thought that you all should know about a shift in some of the models regarding this weekend and any precipitation chances.  As I outlined yesterday, there will be a clipper system blasting thru with a reinforcing shot of arctic saturday night into sunday morning.  Previous questions were…could we squeeze some snow out of this system as it passed and could it spawn a storm that might provide more significant snow.

Today bring a new more enticing idea…the 12Z European model (oui, oui!) and the Canadian (eh?), both develop a surface storm along the Gulf States with an associated upper-level closed low.  This would track the storm to off-shore of the Carolinas and bomb out a Nor’easter.  Right now this what the operational runs show, but this solution doesn’t have a lot of support in the ensembles.  Meaning, there’s quite a bit of spread in the various solutions even in the same model given slight varied initial conditions.  It’s an intriguing scenario, because of the potential for a BIG storm, not just a snow shower here or there.  Again, it’s something to be hopeful for (or not depending on your camp), at this point and monitor as we get closer to Sunday.

A quick word about tomorrow’s rain event…note that it’s entirely possible to see  some sleet at the onset of the precip beginning very early tomorrow morning, but any sleet showers or mix would we done with pretty soon.  This definitely a rain event (and hopefully a good amount of it since the ground’s pretty dry)…so don’t get your hopes up when it starts sleeting.

Hope you all enjoyed this morning’s blizzard  I got up to see it snowing at 3 something before crawling back into hibernation.  Where’s the real deal?!?!

Mid-week will be a decent rain maker, as the storm system heads to our north.  Then, our next shot at some snow is another clipper system progged to be here on Sunday.  The last several model runs have pushed it south, little by little.  This may be the type situation where this clipper spawns a coastal storm that rides up the eastern seaboard.  For this to be a big deal for us, though, what we’d need is the low center to pass just to our south and as it rounds the curve of the trough begin to amplify as it makes it way to the coast.  If the low passes to our north, we’d be in the typical situation where a moisture-starved clipper sweeps in with just some rain changing over to snow showers…kind of like last night.

But as i said, some of the models are beginning to trend this system farther south with successive runs and that’s what would be our ticket to ride the bobsled!

When in central NC do we not ever have a borderline event??  It’s always…”will a storm form off the coast?…and if it does, how far off shore?” or “will there be any moisture with a clipper system?”  or “will it be cold enough?”  or “will the cold air come in soon enough for the change-over to snow?”  The life of the meteorologist is a tough and lonely road (cue the blues) in NC.  

Having said all that…tonight’s event will factor in the two questions…”how much moisture?” and “will the cold air come in soon enough for the change-over to snow?” .  So you combine these two and this contracts to…”Is there any moisture available for actual snow once the cold air has arrived and/or locally cooled through thermodynamic processes?”  Additionally, let’s add another question…”How much snow would be lost to melting due to the high ground temps?”

Ah, so many questions…do we have answers?  Well, yes, we do.  If you’re a snow lover, let me outline the best case scenario…the cold air swooshes in quickly, and we set up convective snow showers with moderate snow rates.  This cools the ground quickly and we could get a half inch to an inch, max.  But the roads would be way too warm for anything to stick outside of a heavy burst of snow, and even then would melt quickly.

Here’s the most likely way it plays out.  We have some rain this evening and then a change-over to snow by midnight to 1am.  We see some snow showers and a little accumulation…just a dusting.  I’ll see how it develops this evening.  

And as for next week’s storm.  Looks like it will be a big one…but it looks like it’s going way far north.  The good news for us is that this looks to be a good soaking rain, which we haven’t seen for weeks.

Of course, I was disappointed with the outcome of last week’s non-event, as were many.  And I’ll be the first to say that I missed it, no doubt.  Not too far away we did see some decent snow totals.  But just like NC State athletics…”there’s always next year!”…or in this case…next week.

True to the advertising, it still looks like the beautiful spring-like weather of this week will be replaced next week with a return to more seasonal temps.  Then mid to late week, it looks like we’ll have a major storm to content with in the East.  The question is how far south will the wintry precip extend.  Looks like this will be the first storm during an extended period when the storm track is suppressed southward, which would favor better chances for us to see a memorable winter event thru the beginning of March.

enjoy it…weather it snows or not!

Perhaps we should go back to that dusting idea.  But, wasn’t it fun to play the inch game?  Clearly, the state of meteorology is not as advanced as it should be.  Perhaps we can get some of that stimulus package for funding!

Not much to update now.  I will say that the axis of heaviest snow may be posed to set up over Raleigh.  I still like my 4″ idea for Raleigh, and I’ll monitor how the banding sets up overnight to see how things track for the potential for more.  (Note: the NWS has just updated their official forecast so that Raleigh has increased from 1-3″ to 2-4″)  Again, I think there will be a narrow band of 6 to 8+” somewhere.  Trying to figure out where is the trick.  I’ll update overnight if anyone is up to read!