baltosquid

My strategy has been wedge the shovel under it to break off a chunk and carry it away by hand… thick gloves are worth their weight in gold. Not a lot of places to pile this stuff though!

Clouds associated with this band of flurries are rolling in. Picking up a little. Gorgeous out. And dangerous!

Pixie dust light snow in canton

Ugh why must we be in the bullseye so far out? Such a tease!

I can believe it. So much sleet. ~7 inches of snow up this way before changeover and then the constant heavy sleet… 4 inches of it doesn’t seem unreasonable depending on their banding. Especially with proper measurements, unlike my deck lol. There is so much sleet on the ground it is nuts.

It’s actually not so bad! We are near 30 and the wind is calm. Only took ~5 minutes to clear my city ordinance 2 foot path. I was way more bundled earlier when it was blowing snow in the low teens, fear not!

Baltimore also just got way more intense with the sleet. I really hope we can avoid too much freezing rain/drizzle. It would be extremely dangerous on top of all of this.

I did my first sleet shovel. This stuff is no joke. So strange compared to snow. I’ll repeat the granulated sugar comparison but the grains are bigger. Tough to shovel as it is dense and hard to pile up somewhere convenient - it just slides down the pile and spreads out. Easily 2+ inches of it so far. https://streamable.com/tqwk2t

My deck was a low measurement spot when it was snowing due to occlusion of possible accumulating snow and is now way way way over with the sleet - I am between two rooftop decks with a non rooftop one so their sleet and my roof’s sleet just funnels down to mine as it bounces around and finds a low point. There are places pushing 10 inches deep lol. If I had to describe walking on this, it’s like a layer of granulated sugar over everything

Yeah I was wondering if that was why I still see pixie dust floating down alongside the straighter falling sleet, cool!

Glad I shoveled right before the sleet really started. Ice grains piling up fast, never seen anything like it. I still am team snow all the way but maybe I’m team “sleet is not totally awful” as well. Just a unique storm. I’ll probably just be able to sweep off the sleet where needed later on. Or maybe I should let it fall so the ice isn’t straight on the surface if we get freezing rain? Not sure. But will probably err on more shoveling than less.

Basically all sleet now, only the occasional lonely flake floats through. But the sleet is real tiny and just bouncing off the snow for the most part. I’m sure it will start to compact more aggressively later.

Snow has not fully given up in Canton but it is pinging louder and louder. Mix of sleet and tiny flakes. Wonder if this is sub warm nose snow growth or just rimed flakes. I’m at about 6.75 on the deck. Someone somewhere around here could probably measure 7 legitimately.

Actually mostly small dusty snow now.

Yeah down in the city the pinging quieted down, got a mix going on now. Light flakes and light sleet, latter increasing. Not super heavy. See stuff bouncing.

Canton

6.5 on the deck. Think with a low ratio snow sleet fight can get to 7 before a full change.

Still mostly snow. Heaviest of the day but very light pinging beginning. Gonna be a fight

Snowflakes falling less sideways now as they get heavier (as in weight) and bigger. It is also heavier rate wise.

If we make it to 10am, HRRR did a good job for Baltimore with this one. Even a flip at 9 or so, its totals will be damn good. A little too aggressive with the cold sometimes but really locked in last night and honed in on 6-8 inches with its internal ratio for this area with heavy snow at times. I think it may have failed further south though - seems like the NAM had a good idea south where the rates seemed to struggle but was OTL on the QPF further north. In short I think NAM was deadly early on and was right about the mix line racing north but it missed some of the qpf and fighting back later

Just measured a hair under 6” on the deck table, which certainly is too close to the house (back deck, not rooftop) to get ideal accumulation. Given that, and the snow we still have left, I think it’s safe to say… the drought is over. Can we do 7?? Probably not, but… let’s see.

FWIW (little) the HRRR has the snow fighting back more in the latest run. Looking at the radar it seems easily on the overly optimistic side but kinda tracks in a qualitative way if people are indeed seeing switches back to snow. Hopefully people can sneak in a little more off the back of the type fight.

Double digit snow drought?

Yeah I raised an eyebrow at that. My measure is not very scientific but snow was easily past the knuckle of my index finger at 7-7:15am lol.

Somewhere between 4 and 5 inches in Baltimore based on the very scientific technique and shoving my hand index finger first into the snow while walking the dog and measuring up to the spot it sunk to when I got home. Probably 4.25ish. Very beautiful walk though! Snow got heavier as it went on. May have been one of the first people to put footprints in Patterson park. As long as we get a band of heavy stuff before the changeover I think we are good for 6…