George BM

The BEST time ... It should be back shortly. ETA: Around 12:00pm cst according to them via twitter.

Flurries started 5 minutes ago in Herndon, VA.

IYBY?! Are any pigs flying yet? In all seriousness congrats. Currently 40/23 at IAD at 10:57am est on Tuesday, January 7th, 2020.

Good point. Meanwhile 31/22 at IAD as of 8:27am est on Tuesday January 7th (not 8th!), 2020.

What is the estimated diameter of the flakes IYBY you'd say?

Let me see... I'd be very happy with a quick hitting 20" storm with extreme snowfall rates with lightning/thunder. I'd also be very happy to have 10 snow squalls that quickly drop 2" each within a half-hour with lightning/thunder and strong gusty winds. Even better would be a Quebec polar vortex/ strongly +PNA pattern bringing 4 particularly intense snow squalls that each drop 5" in a very short amount of time... with lightning/thunder and severe wind gusts.

Over 3"/hr liquid equivalent rates meaning snowfall rates of as much as 30"+/hr?! Me thinks this will have RDMs glacier experience beat bigly! I'm so far in that I'm actually now trapped inside and don't even know whether I can get back out. It's strange and dark in here with faint clouds of what look like memories or hypothetical fantasies of Armaggeddon-like storms crushing my neighborhood? Should I call 911? Will they even be able to reach me here? I've heard of a strange phenomenon that can sometimes occur when snowfall rates get very heavy. People say that the sky will flash (kind of like a camera flash) with either the color white, pink or sometimes even blue. They will then hear a crashing noise usually a couple seconds later... but in some cases within that second and loud. I hear of this happening quite a bit with lake-effect snow squalls from the Great Lakes. I've never experienced this phenomenon in person but it certainly sounds cool and unique. What exactly do you call this phenomenon and do we at least have the slightest chance ( at least a 1 in 100 chance) of seeing this phenomenon occur somewhere within this region if we can get strong enough lift tomorrow?

Funny... I had a similar conversation with my friend last night about Tuesday.

Lots of talk about the rainfall rates from this event... where a watched the rain-curtain miss me to my east by about a mile or so. How did the rainfall rates compare with the rates you see during normal summer thunderstorms? What was the visibility like during the heaviest part of the storm?

Another year is over and I'm Curious George. What weather event stood out for you personally in the past year? For me it is a little bit harder this year... but I'll go with a thunderstorm that hit my house on August 20th. There was torrential rain, 40+ mph wind gusts and nickel to perhaps quarter sized hail. The storm lasted a relatively long time for me (~20 minutes). A few leaves were down from the hail and a tree fell on a light-pole snapping it in half about half a mile down the street from my house. Yeah not very exciting IMBY this year... The January snowstorm was also okay though... As was the late February wind event.

How in the flippity flop-a-dippery dop did you miss out on PDII and all the other warning-level snows that happened that winter?! Did you get fringed to the underworld or something?

Happy New Decade WxWeenies.

2020ing.

Did either you or @losetoa6 experience any thunder snow from the 92 bomb?

@psuhoffman I don't have anything to add but thank you so much for the time and effort put into this!

What's the site that you get data to customize time periods of these plots from? May I have a link to it please? - TIA

You know I always have wondered what the most anomalous weather event in the last say 50,000 or 100,000 years was in the region, the US, and in the world. Was there a 2+ foot blizzard in Miami... in May? A 200 mph category 5 hurricane... striking Newfoundland? Has it snowed... at sea-level in Jamaica? I wish there was an easy way to figure these things out.

Three meters of snow in 2 days or 18"+/hr snowfall rates from a thundersnow squall would do.

Merry Christmas to you all and Happy Hanukkah to you Jewish posters! Be Merry! Enjoy the vultures tearing up presents and flying around the house at F-18 speeds! Be Bright! Listen to your oldest relatives crazy (and probably exaggerated stories) of all of the extreme weather events that they've been through... like tornadoes that gobbled them up from Kansas and spit them out into a strange colorful wonderland! Get Drunk! But not too drunk... eh what the hey! From this weenie to all you weenies. Have a wonderful holiday season.

IAD got down to 23F this morning with heavy frost. Trace accumulations everywhere. I'm counting it. Merry White Christmas fellow Wxweenies!

My friends my friends! Heads-up my friends! Area Forecast Discussion NWS GeorgeBM Headquarters 1:57PM EST Tuesday, December 24, 2019 A Potentially Life-Threatening Winter Storm will impact the region this afternoon into tonight Heavy rain and thunderstorms will move into the region this afternoon. These storms may contain severe hail. The most intense storms may have strong enough downdrafts to penetrate the low-level stable layer and bring some strong wind gusts to the surface. Precip will then change over to very heavy snow from west to east through the late afternoon/early evening hours as temps drop from the lower 50sF to near freezing. Snowfall rates may exceed 6 inches per hour and with the surface low bombing out over the central Chesapeake Bay wind gusts of around 70 to 75+ mph across the region will lead to whiteout conditions through the evening. The dangerous winds combined with the heavy wet snow will lead to widespread power outages and widespread tree damage. Blizzard Warnings have been hoisted for the entire forecast area. Areas from Northern VA, the WV Panhandle, through DC and much of Maryland and into North/Central Delaware will see snow totals of 30”-45”+ with snow-drifts that may exceed 20 feet. The snow will taper-off from west to east across the region between 1z and 5z before skies start clearing overnight with Wind Advisory-level winds continuing and temps slowly dropping into the upper 20sF. This is a potentially life-threatening storm that should not be taken too lightly. You should be prepared to be without power for an extended period of time. Near term... GBM

Other WxWeenies... Happy Ten-Year Anniversary of (probably) the best December snowstorm of your lives (in this region, at least).

@mappy Happy Ten-Year Anniversary of (what's probably (I'm not you, of course)) the best December day of your life!

How in the boogie woogies am I only hearing about this event now? This seemed like it was a good bit more epic than the already cool February 14, 2015 snow squall. Funny how this event is not brought up more frequently whenever we reminisce about past snow squalls. A bigly congrats on all of you snow weenies that were alive to witness this magical event in this region in person.

That's @stormtracker. @Bob Chill has the bunny-strangling issue.