Less than 24 hours out and I feel helpless as to making a meaningful, accurate forecast. As I’ve o-whined before, everyone wants forecast for their backyard. So, a case like this is nearly impossible to pinpoint with our current understanding of the science. As mentioned here over the past couple posts, the precipitation rates will determine the depth of snow on Joe Snow’s deck. The phenomenon is exacerbated by temperatures hovering just above to at freezing. You understand, right? The faster/harder it snows the more heat extracted from the ground. So if you can dump snow at the rate of a half inch or more an hour then you can begin to overcome the warm ground temps with the thermodynamic cooling of melting snow.
What does this mean (for your backyard)? Most locations begin as rain, then mix with snow, and changeover to all snow by 7-10pm. At this point, it’s those locations under the deformation band (think sweet spot) that accumulate 3, 4, 5, up to 6″, but again only on grass, decks, cars and the like. The roads will have a really hard time cooling to freezing with all of the the latent heat they’ve retained over the past several days of warms daytime temps and plentiful sun. I expect a general swath of 1-2″ over much of the area, but figuring out where the bands and enhanced accumulation setup will end up being a nowcast that we can address tomorrow evening. (Although conventional wisdom say this would line up near I-95).
Bottom line is that most people are likely to see some light accumulating snow to an inch or two, but not on the roads. If you end up under one of the bands expect heavier accumulations. Travel should be fine unless something goes crazy and it snows like a…<insert your favorite colorful euphemism here>
Began snowing at 11:20AM in China Grove!! It’s big flakes, snowing hard, and now laying on our deck. Beginning to lay in the yard….really beautiful! I’ll keep you posted!