Weathertrex.com

When I said last night, let’s wait and see if those short term American models swing back… Well, they have.

Since we’ve been inside the short-term modeling window, the RGEM (Canada’s mesoscale model) has been steady and consistent in depicting a general warm advection-driven overrunning event that is more widespread in coverage with lower spike totals.

I could go back and forth with the details of the model vacillations, but I’ll spare you the ennui and cut to the chase for a couple of points of emphasis:

1. All the rain that fell today is in the process of freezing in place. This puts a layer of ice in place as the arctic airmass continues to move into NC.
2. The graupel/sleet/snow that is falling tonight won’t be a lot to see, but will add a small layer of frozen ‘stuff’ to contend with.
3. There will be a lull during the day tomorrow, even as temperatures struggle to reach freezing. The real round of snow looks to reach Wake Co. in the 5-7pm range with earlier times as you go east.
4. The models have come back home to solutions that still favor an axis of heaviest snows similar to last night’s post. The change may be to lower northeast NC accumulations down from the 10″ range to more like 8″ tops. Again, the thinking shifts now to a more general swath of light to moderate snow for wider areal coverage of eastern NC (with significant sleet and freezing rain as you go towards southeast NC… ice storm potential).
5. Everybody wants a total for their backyard. The best guess for Wake Co. at this point is 3-4″
6. Saturday clears up, but it will be cold; perhaps only getting above freezing for an hour or so. There will be some melting; not a lot. The most efficient melting will be in areas that receive sun, of course. After sundown, things get treacherous quickly, and will stay that way until we go above freezing around noon on Sunday.

This is a tough one to nail down. In the meantime, enjoy the waffling with some great maple syrup!

Updates tomorrow.