CAPE

Mount Holly's (new) quick take on late week.. they did say to stay tuned lol. A cold front associated with the low will cross the area, ending the warmer temperatures and bringing a sudden return to Winter. Rains will likely change to snow and some accumulations are possible later Thu night and into Friday. Still a week away, so exact details will have to wait until we get closer, but this could affect travel during the upcoming holiday.

Mostly cloudy today with a high of 34. This what a mid December day should feel like. 32 now.

Some snow TV I guess. Hard to know with the 6 hour panels and the WB wonkiness with surface/snowfall maps. Abrupt change in temps pre-post front too.

Cambridge lol.

lol it gets bigger just after that. I was trying to capture the Xmas frontal deal.

Not bad for late next week. eta- some of that falls early in the week for the western highlands.

Very similar to the 0z Euro. We got time for correction.

Of course. Everyone should. You know if I am posting anything from a LR op run its just for fun, lol.

And then this.. Dw it will trend colder with that mega block...and be a great snowstorm for NC.

The anafrontal Xmas miracle is happening.. Remember, I called the white Xmas a couple weeks ago. @WxUSAF knows.

I am so grateful someone posted a snow map for an event 6 days away.

Actually had a flash freeze here yesterday morning. Cold came in quick as the last bit of rain was falling.

It just wants to rain here...a fart it all it takes.

The jet streak position is favorable(LF quad) and there is some moisture. Surface temps and timing probably the biggest issues for getting a skiff of snow..

Shortwave is a tad better on the 12z GFS.

Yeah its embarrassing. I don't understand why they had to blow up the whole look/functionality just because Flash support is done. Use another runtime app/plugin but keep the same general interface and features.

Yeah if the AO cooperates we should be ok with cold that's 'good enough' as we move forward. Interestingly, the extended GEFS has suggested the WPO/EPO go negative from time to time, but then it backs off. When it has had that look though, the NA is also pretty good, and the overall h5 pattern looks remarkably favorable. lol probably why it keeps losing it- very unlikely to verify unless the Nina craps out.

Mount Holly: nothing to see here, but stay tuned, just in case! The next surface low will be crossing east, with the center of the low likely remaining near the US/Canadian border. This is likely to result in a cold front approaching our region late next week. Another low may develop along the cold front, but even so, it appears that most of the precipitation with this event will come ahead of the front, solidly in the warm sector. Thus, it appears if we see any precipitation associated with this system, it will be mostly rain on Thursday. However, stay tuned to the latest forecast as at least one model shows QPF behind the strong cold front, which would be changing to snow.

NWS radar has always been my go-to, probably out of convenience. The new radar is just a horrific combo of ugly and poor functionality. Any suggestions on the best (free) radar site?

Yup. And it is pretty rare to not have p-type issues in these bigger, high qpf storms.

Yeah I get it. I still think people get biased when they see 20" over their yards run after run, when in reality it is actually more like 10 verbatim, and then when they actually get 7..well you know.

I don't recall any snow amounts that high. The event was in and out in under 2 hours. It started with marginal temps, 33-34. Most of the snow here fell at 32 degrees, with massive aggregates. It piled up fast despite the temps. Yes the cold behind the front was impressive.

lol sorry. Hard to know when it comes to 'objectively' assessing model performance. I will say I think some folks here would be better served to never look at the ridiculous WB snow/ p-type maps and do some actual analysis of the data. I literally never look at them when I am analyzing a model run. Unfortunately I get to see them here ten times over.

I recall it being pretty well forecast at least a couple days leading up to it. It was convective in nature but fairly widespread. Totals ranged from 1 to maybe as high as 4". I maximized here pretty good with over 3. It all fell in an hour or so, and the end had a mini whiteout as the actual arctic cold came in.

I watched the globals pretty closely from the perspective of my yard, and the Euro was showing next to nothing here due to the warm temp profile, while the CMC still had significant snow, and the GFS was somewhere in between depending on the run. I am not into grading model performance, but among the globals none of them were very good 4-5 days out(surprise). The EURO(and the NAM) seemed to do better with depicting the extent of warm air intrusion inside 3 days.