IronTy

I have much experience backpacking in Dolly Sods over Christmas as it was an annual thing for my wife and I for quite a few years. You will likely have the entire place to yourself this time of year. You have to park at the Laneville parking lot unless you have a 4wd vehicle with snow chains (assuming there is snow which there likely is!). The state does not maintain the primary road that leads up to the sods themselves during winter so it won't be plowed. But Laneville is easily accessible. The issue there is that Laneville is at the lower end of the Red River so you have to hike all the way up the red river falls trail to get onto the sods proper. With a foot of snow on the ground this is likely more than you can do easily in one day with the short daylight we have now. However red river falls trail is very scenic with some river crossings (probably iced over now) and has tons of gorgeous rhododendron as you gain in elevation. We would generally start from Laneville and snowshoe backpack up to the top of red river falls trail and then camp wherever we could find a flat spot for the tent before dark (gets dark early in the mountains). Then the second day we would snowshoe up on the sods and camp up there the second and third nights. Then come back down the fourth day. It's really epic winter camping but not to be taken lightly when there's significant snow - expect it to be very cold and very windy.

I'll be labelled a deb downer but I'm getting the same feelings I had a couple years ago when we were promised the epic February period. Luckily it's only Jan, so even if it sucks we still at least have February for something. But I'm wary of any map forecasting AN precip in our region. We haven't had that all year outside of some isolated thunderstorms which don't count in January, so I'm side-eyeing that map.

I keep refreshing hoping for that 500mb ripple showing up in the four corners region to develop but so far, nothing.

You've convinced me to open a twitter account so I can make forecasting calls.

At hour 0, no change from the 12Z at 500mb.

I'm hoping for a dusting so I can't get to work tomorrow since I'm supposed to go onsite.

That Twitter met knows his stuff. He predicts that mid-late January has the best chance for wintry weather. (Checks earth annual orbital procession)...bold call.

I'm here to bring back some hope to the forum: Checked out WB and JB just drew a comparison to the latest CFS run and 1996. We're back in.

I mean, we haven't had a southern moisture storm in years now. It's sort of dropped off our radar since it's the middle of winter but the drought marches onward. I'm not sure why I'd expect us to magically start getting noreasters all of a sudden without a seismic pattern shift. Yeah there's always the fluke chance (per the GFS), but until the base state changes I think they're just fantasy storms.

Well today has been crap. Maybe we can get Eric Webb to start honking about the SER so things can flip back to a big dog look.

Paging @WEATHER53

Even JB is predicting a warmup by D10. Could be that the natural gas futures bottom is in.

Yeah he called it discontinuous retrogression. I have no idea what that involves.

I'm not going to get my hopes up and believe in a Miller-anything until it shows up on the HRRR.

Saw that just now. On one hand I'm glad I won't be here but on the other hand I would like to see some snow whipped around at 65mph.

What a clown.

And just like that - a strong wind and we're up to 50F. No more ice. In fact I've opened the windows tonight to cool the cabin off and get some humidity in here.

We were going to drive to do a hike on Meadow n mountain trail as the trailhead is less than a mile from our property but quickly realized we were not going to make it down even the gravel drive without sliding out. So we changed plans and just did a loop on the property. Lots of frozen mist and rime ice sort of stuff all over everything. Doesn't really come across on the cell phone camera. Everything was very lush and green even if frozen.

28F with light rain here. It's gonna be solid sheets of ice everywhere in no time.

JB was honking about this earlier on a WB post. Hopefully it comes to fruition.

I was watching today's JB Atmospheric avenger video and he clued me in on the WPC's historical map site so I'm going back through all the storms that year and looking at surface features. Those big storms all just appeared over the Texas Gulf Coast, tracked over the LA coast and up the seaboard. Seems like a life age since we've seen one of those.

Good for you! We leave on Sunday to head back SE so we will miss out on next week's snow. Will be back again in late January so hopefully we can get a chance to snowshoe then. There are maybe about 25 acres on the northern slope of the property that was decimated during that bad ice storm and is now almost a monoculture of regenerating sweet birch. Our plan is to donate the entire property to the Nature Conservancy when we pass so I am working to negotiate with them as part of the deal to have them cut those down and replace them all with red spruce to help establish a viable population in this area. Luckily most all the large Hemlocks at lower elevation were spared the axe and the ice so they are doing well. No signs of Adelgids, hopefully the cold is a contributing factor.

I hope so! Technically our property is just inside the western most vertex of the warning which is probably why I keep getting phone alerts. Hopefully it's more sleet/rain here. You can still see damage from a severe ice storm during the 1990s up on the higher elevations here.

Looks like an Ice Storm Warning was just issued here. Still saying 0.25" up to 0.4" of ice in spots. Gross.