NorthHillsWx

2018 all over again. Wake county was 8-10 inched on north end and nothing on south end

That was ugly. My eyes are bleeding

Long way to go. Basically 4 days out

Euro jumped super north with thermals. Kinda the Virginia storm theory

That’s mostly ice in NC.

DC freakout commencing after that gfs run

GFS drops a foot on Larry in Savannah lol

I’ve been on the side of a I-85 and north snowstorm this whole time. I am cautiously optimistic given the strength of HP that ZR will be south and east of here. I believe triangles best outcome here is a heavy 6-8” front end followed by prolonged sleet. That would make everyone here happy. ICON, CMC are the worst case, 2002-like but colder. Just can wrap my head around being in lower 20s with ZR I’d have to think the IP area is larger than modeled.

ICON is worst case for this storm in central NC. Very brief snow then straight to crippling ice. Hopefully that’s sleet but idk that track looks like an ice storm to me

Fact that is EPS inside 4 days and not some random 300 hour GFS run is absurd

This is literally the type of storm the NAM was built for. NAM will be the most watched model starting tomorrow night

@olafminesaw brings up a good point- this storm likely features the WAA “thump”. This is where heroes are made in the mix areas as that front end over performing or switching to mix too fast can make or break a storm. That is 100% something to watch for most areas. 2018 featured one of the heaviest front end thumps I can remember in Raleigh. We got 7-8” in like 6 hours before it switched to rain. In this case there will not be a switch to plain rain, but the thump might be just as important for storm total snowfall.

^^^^^ THIS

This has a lot of similarities to that storm. From a footprint perspective I really think this ends up similarly. Surface is much much colder this time and QPF might be higher. But overall that is an analog to what is developing this weekend

In this case, given the impressive blocking, there is a limit to how far north the system gets. However, mid levels are a different story with strong WAA driven by how strong the low becomes. That’s why you’re seeing surface temps remaining steady or even falling while mid levels keep ticking warmer. As long as the HP is close to what is modeled, plain rain will be an afterthought for most on the board. This is an anomalous cold setup at the surface and the battle looks to be in The mid levels

If anyone in the south gets 2” of frozen/freezing QPF those words are justifiable

It must’ve been that. I thought it was more than that but it was a fun long duration storm.

There was a storm in Raleigh in the 2000’s (can’t remember exactly when) but we had several inches of sleet. We were supposed to go on a family trip and I remember driving to RDU and watching the temp tick down to the mid 20s on the drive only to get there and find the flight was cancelled and drive home in it. Think we mixed with ZR but it was a long duration storm at least a couple days and stayed cold despite it being sleet instead of snow. Some of the best road sledding I remember

These are the trends we want

I was there. I lived in Alexandria at the time. There were 4’ “drifts” by sloped roofs where it had bounced off and accumulated below. That was a glacier until March. Also- that storm was progged to be ZR and it ended up 99% sleet. Very very fond memories of that event up there, gave me a deep appreciation for a heavy sleet storm

Agreed. This is the rare event where, with 2+” of QPF possible some areas could mix for over half the storm and still end up with a foot of frozen. This isn’t wasting half our 0.30” in mix like we’ve become accustomed to…

I hope people realize how rare/epic 4-6” of sleet would be

It is hard to take those ZR maps seriously. I haven’t checked euro soundings but most of that ZR area is solidly IP and really not even close on GFS. There is an opportunity here given high QPF for areas to get greater than 6” of snow and 2-4” of IP which would be insane for longevity of the snowpack

Over a foot of snow with over 1/2” of freezing rain over a giant area would redefine the word “crippling” for years to come

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