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I’m reminded of the old joke that talks about the “new” native american tribe chief who is inexperienced in “the ways of reading the sky.”  So when his people asked him about what the upcoming cold winter would be like, being put on the spot, he quickly said, “Cold…Go gather firewood!”  But being a practical man he decided to call the National Weather Service to see what they had to say.   They said, “Oh, it looks pretty cold.”  So, the chief went back to his people and told them that he expected the winter to be quite cold, indeed, and that they should work harder to gather more firewood.  A week later the chief called the NWS again to see if there was any change in the forecast.  They said, no…in fact, it’s even looking colder.  Hearing this, the chief told his people that they should get every scrap of wood they could find before the wintry weather arrived.  Then, just at the start of winter the chief called the NWS one last time for final update.  He asked, “are you certain it’s going to be very cold this winter?”  ”oh, absolutely”, the meteorologist answered, “very cold!”  The chief then asked him how he could be so sure.  The meteorologist said, “Well, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but the Indians have been gathering firewood like crazy!!”

hmm…I was reminded of this joke today as my son and I went to Whole Foods to pick up some lunch off the hot bar.  After circling the parking lot for, no joke, 15 minutes…we finally beat out two Priuses and Smartcar for a parking place on the other side of forever.  It was a madhouse inside!  The hysteria over snow potential in the south is amazing.  The funny thing is that in Whole Foods with everyone abuzz about the snow and snatching up the must haves…organic beer, soy milk, gluten-free baked goods, and kumquats …i found myself snatching right along with them even though i just wanted some lunch!

Now about that snow…The good news is that our chances are only increasing for a significant snow.  The bad news is that there are several complications that make predicting snow totals really tricky.  Basically, this is one of those storms where the highest snowfall amounts will be in the east, where the most moisture is in association with the low along the coast.  However, the coldest air will be racing in from the west.  This sets up the compromise between all snow in the west, but with less overall moisture, and rain to start with a changeover to snow in the east with lots more moisture.  Obviously, the hard part is predicting how long a given location is rain vs. snow and what the QPF (quantitative precip forecast) gradient looks like.  There are some models out there going crazy on the QPF, which I’d love to buy in to, but can’t.  While I believe that potential exists because of some strong upper-level dynamics in the subtropical jet, i don’t believe it’s likely to get the storm crankin’ that much.  So, the more reasonable solution is something like .4-.6 liquid equivalent for Raleigh.  So, now the question becomes…how much rain at the beginning before the changeover?  Well, it looks like the cold air is coming fairly quickly and i’d expect no more than a tenth to be lost to evaporative cooling and pre-freezing temps.  Some of the models suggest that it may be all snow for Raleigh.  I’m not sure I buy that, though.  With the tenth lost that gives us .3-.5 liquid equivalent or 3-5″ of the white stuff.  That’s it for now…i’ll update later tonight probably between 11 and 12 after i have a chance to digest the new model runs.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Snow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.