chris21

So... I just made it to Canaan valley... quite an entrance... we rented a Chevy traverse and had a beautiful snowy Christmas drive. However, no fewer than three minutes before arriving at our cabin our dog had explosive diarrhea and projectile vomited all over my gf and the car! We’ve since recovered but... 2020 I guess (the dog is doing fine now, gf is a bit slower to recover but she’s coming along). It is 6 degrees and there seems like 8 or 9 inches of snow with plenty of new powder. It’s still coming down pretty good, tiny flakes.

Good point there. I’m in DC and we got up to 35. The CAD holding on until a frontal passage is a much more common way to get a “flash freeze” then this upcoming situation. Have seen a few flash freezes after 60 degree days when I lived near snowshoe but very few in dc.

There was a flash freeze with the last storm.

I doubt the start time of rain will have much impact on the change to snow. We want the low to develop further east on the front or luck out from the upper level energy tomorrow.

The November 1995 cold front is the one that stands out the most for me in Bethesda. I remember high winds, thunder and a dramatic temp drop with 1.5 inches of paste. It was early November (the 8th maybe), I actually lost power for the night.

I’ve thrown some shade... so better make my forecast. Given the wind direction and the depth of the cold, I’m forecasting 8-12 for Snowshoe and Canaan through Saturday. I think upslope will continue into Saturday.

Dave Lesher is a great resource as is “the fearless forecaster” who posts on white grass’ website regularly. When I lived in Pocahontas for a few years the zone forecasts were rough but I feel like Charleston and Sterling had more of a focus on the mountain zones.

Do you find NWS Pitt has issues forecasting for Canaan valley? The current forecast has no precipitation for Friday (almost every time I’ve visited Canaan in the winter, NWS Pitt has underdone the amounts). Charleston seems to do a better job with Snowshoe.

I’m coming in on Xmas day and I have 4 wheel drive (used to live in Pocahontas so am very comfortable driving in the snow). My question is... will Tucker county be plowing on Xmas day?

South winds warm all elevations quickly... In a northwest flow regime, the high elevations will be colder and snowier than surrounding areas, but there isn’t much difference between the high elevations and valley prior to a strong cold front... everyone warms up. As soon as the winds shift the higher elevations will very quickly transition to snow.

That’s a good yikes.

Heading there Xmas

I was pointing out the same thing as Leesburg.

He actually said it’s the best look he’s seen overall since then. He references both 2009-2010 and the blizzard of 96 in the same sentence. He didn’t add any qualifiers.

There are a lot of people jumping to conclusions re: H5 looks that I don’t think are necessarily correct. If you read the extensive research PSU has some on the subject, you will find that more often than not... the pattern does not need to be perfect to get snow. In fact, most of our decent snow events do not have all of the following (+pna, -EPO, -NAO, -AO). The H5 looks being thrown out the GFS and the Euro in the extended are very workable, and with a few minor adjustments could really lead to a special period. I’d highly recommend everyone read PSUs research on the subject.

The ensemble mean is quite high though.

Early March 2014 adjusted south at the last minute right?

Does anyone remember WXMachine? And if so... how weird was that?

Sleet/rain in NW DC. Temp fell from 34 to 32 in the past hour.

I’ll stay up for wind blown .7 any day

We just crawled to 33.1 in NW DC. CAD almost always overperforms away from the river.

PSU has the best location for snow in MD west of the Allegheny Front. He gets at least 1.5 times as much as Cumberland.

Better than the 32.1 I have in DC with rain.

Couldn’t be happier to have pulled the trigger on reservations to Canaan the 25-28th. Looked like it might be a torch when I made them.

31/29. Freezing rain and sleet continue in NW.