GunBlade

I had hoped to take photos of an ISS moon transit on the 21st. The outlook of snow made that not happening feel better. So I’ll be really annoyed if we don’t get snow either.

That’s not eyewalls map, another met made it. Signature in bottom right. That’s the most realistic solution. And even if the bigger totals of earlier runs come close to verifying, putting places like CLT in the 1-2” covers all a met needs to. If they get 4” great! If Mets say 4” and CLT gets 1” it’s the biggest bust in the 21st century….

Every industry requires a consumer base and most companies rely on vendors to advance their technology. It’s too expensive to implement and build internally. We are talking about maybe a dozen models here and that’s it. It’s not worth it financially for a third party to develop and staff individuals for an industry that won’t grow any larger tomorrow than it is today. There’s no money in it for private companies. So then you have to rely on the government to pay. By the time governments approve funding (local or national) it’s always too little too late. The infrastructure alone for these models is massive and can’t keep up with the changing landscape of technology and is many times ancient. I’ve seen the systems a lot of this data is on, they’re old and many times past end of life. Due to the criticality of these systems, money spent on up time/availability is far more important than AI and so on and they can’t fund that properly. At the end of the day most people in the country could care less about how accurate these models are and how far out they’re accurate. And I highly doubt many would agree they should pay more money so they can be advanced even further. From a technology perspective it’s unfortunate as I agree there could likely be major advances in accuracy. But at the same time that’s what makes the people like Matthew East and Brad P and so on special. They know the climo where they live and can use human intellect paired with these models to predict much more accurately than any model does or could.

I was thinking the same thing earlier. Transient slow moving front that popped a low off the coast with good ratios and ground temps if I remember correctly. Our other hope in these parts is a low bombing off the coast but that brings convection issues from the gulf and tight gradients as well. Always threading the needle around here.

Yea GFS is looking more like the others in the upper levels but the southern wave is still left out to dry, just not as bad as the 18z run. 18z GFS popped a second low off the coast of Florida because of the leftover southern wave. At least this run there’s more interaction between the waves. In the end, it’s another trend to the upper levels we are seeing in other models which is great to start to see.

The NAM moved toward the 18z RGEM solution so good to see the 00z RGEM the same. 18z RGEM was the first I saw with the upper levels like we’ve seen the last few runs. And while the Euro was drier it was still similar earlier in the run to the RGEM and now NAM. RGEM is a little faster with the northern wave dropping down than the NAM so the low moves out sooner. If we can get some more interaction with the southern wave things would likely be even better.

Let’s see where the next few NAM frames go. Short waves looking more like the RGEM and Euro to this point which could be an improvement over the last run where the southern stream ejected the northern stream.

The RGEM looks almost like it has a second smaller northern shortwave the southern energy interacts with which then also phases in the main northern stream later on, the same one the NAM let eject out.

That's because you don't live in Union County anymore! We are now in the heavy snow blob that was probably drawn blindfolded since nobody knows what is going on.

Yea at hour 63 NAM looked like it wanted to phase and dig more but then fizzled out and the southern wave just hung back in Texas.

To me it’s not the warm nose of storms has been worse. For central NC like CLT, we’ve always needed a low to track near Jacksonville and turn up the coast for good snow. That plays in to climo for us and limits/eliminates the WAA. We haven’t been able to get a pattern to stick in the winter for those storms. Moisture overriding cold almost never works out for CLT. If it does, it’s short lived and/or ends as sleet or freezing rain. It’s amazing to me that central NC got as much sleet this past storm with the low passing to the west.

Down to 30/25 with wind gusts consistently in the upper 20’s to low 30’s. Still lots of sleet mixed in with snow. I’m basically at the Mecklenburg/Union county border.

Lots of sleet mixing in now in Matthews NC. Currently 31/23 with a 27 wet bulb. Elevated surfaces already have a coating of sleet. It’s gonna get nasty once the ZR hits later this morning.

Latest HRRR is nowhere close to current radar and ground reports. Much larger precip shield and lots of snow in places showing as a mix.

Snowing in Matthews NC as well.

850’s still doing a little better than forecasted for this time.

Temps and DP steadily falling in Matthews, NC. Currently 36/27.

FWIW current 850 temps are colder than NAM showed for 03z

Depends on when and where you’re at.

I don’t take severe weather lightly, especially with two young kids. But we just got this email from our sons daycare. Really?!?!? Category 4 storm?!?!? Due to the category 4 storm moving through our area mid-day tomorrow and in considering the safety of all staff and families as a result we will operate on a half day schedule of 7:30am-12:00pm tomorrow, Thursday, March 18, 2021. In case of loss of power or damage to our building or facilities we will communicate any further plans to close beyond tomorrow no later than 7am Friday morning.

I wish I had pictures. I was right by the 16 in Union county. Thinking back to then and the decade leading up to it is depressing. We usually had one decent snow it seemed like. Had cold spells long enough to freeze the small lake in our neighborhood to walk on. Now I have kids and can’t get a good enough snow to take them sledding one day.... It’s got to get better eventually right? LOL that’s what I tell myself every year at least.

Maybe Mother Nature will have mercy on us and repeat 04 to hold everyone off for another 16 years before it happens again.

32/32 in Matthews. Temp and dew point have been the same and falling together since 3 am or so. Will be interesting to see if it falls another degree or two and holds. This is from the NOAA station in Matthews so it’s strange to see other guidance like SPC that shows the freezing line much further north currently.

Sunset has nothing to do with the dew points. They will lower sun or not by cold dry air from the NE. Temps and dew points will lower cloud cover or not as well. Use the link below and choose the observations tab to see current temp and dew point. That dry air to the NE is what will continue to be blown in and just how that plays out determines who gets more ice and who gets less. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/mesoanalysis/new/viewsector.php?sector=17# What you will see tomorrow is that even though precip moves in the dew point will barely move because dry air is being pumped in. Even if you are 44/25 or whatever now that will change a lot.