SnowenOutThere

Oops! Always good to have a second set of eyes. Thank you!

It wasn't the nina. It took cosmically bad luck to ruin this setup. A stronger NS would've been fine if it wasn't for the Baja low becoming a neg tilt monster that trended north, I mean it was such an insane set of circumstances it cannot be blamed on Nina. Instead I think the only explanation is that we've been cursed by a witch or some sort of supernatural being.

Oh completely. I mentioned it a couple days ago but with a triple phase happening out west it is such an incredible feat that its not a cutter that is even screwing over Chicago and running a 70 degree warm sector across our region. So, it could always have been worse. Our setup we saw on Tuesday has trended worse in every possible way (ofc not for the suppression fear). We lost the PV to the east, had a weaker 50/50 low, lost confluence to a different wave setup in the northeast, had a stronger SW Baja vort, had a second NS vort max appear and phase fully, had the initial NS vort max amplify and move further west. Every. Single. Thing. Went. Wrong. For 3 days of model runs! So, in a way look to this as the best possible outcome considering our new synoptic setup.

Finally made my snowfall slides for my Instagram post. Might as well share them here!

RRFS has had a horrific trend for central VA since its 0z runs, really concerned I may fully bust this storm.

Look at where I live. Though, it also is lower for NOVA just as a value of having so little precip compared to everything else.

Its precip total for me is under half of the other models so I think I'm tossing it due to its bias of overdoing upslope and down slopping features

Nam even busts on sleet

Just going to put a massive disclaimer on the slide before I show my forecast map to cover my ass.

Speak for up north. Charlottesville gets almost under an inch of snow. Seriously, how do I make a forecast with the extremes being 7 inches of all snow and another 3 of sleet or 1 inch of snow!

It must be as weatherbell shows both sleet and snow accumulating for me during the mid-late morning.

Wait does anyone know why on the past runs the HRRR continues to accumulate snow past the mixing line moving north? Does it see it as a snow/sleet mix or as the ratio for sleet? I don't think any other model includes sleet calculations with their snowfall output so that seems weird.

Looks to be maybe an hour or so faster moving the mix line north so far, though its also wetter.

Anyone see the 6z HRRR? I think it is by far its best run yet for us and now the best model output of everything I've seen recently. Will see if its 12z comes back to reality.

So we can probably discount the NAMs? I know they handle warm air aloft better than the other models and I would assume that is due to a better ability to know the wind field aloft so why in this case would we trust a global over them?

Got my d850 ready. Will clear my memory cards and charge my spare batteries today.

Yep, that’s what I’ve been watching for the past two days to know if a model will be north or south. That said, doesn’t really help us pick out what is more likely!

Seems like multiple studies disagree with each other. One I read/skimmed said that if we have a freezing layer of 3000+ feet below the elevated warm layer it’ll refreeze to sleet regardless. Just such an extreme setup to where it all breaks down.

Im thinking about my own forecast for Sunday and man im just hoping the NAM caves because otherwise I don’t know how I even make one. I say oh yeah could have an inch or 10 inches of snow and sleet depending on which model handles the warm nose.

Curious how bad do you think Icing will be on that map? In particular near Cvill as I’ve decided if over .4 is likely I’m driving to nova to avoid power outages

NAM gives me under 2 inches of snow lmao. I love that the other guidance is holding but as we get further into the NAM's useful range we gotta see it start caving.

I'll be the poster up next after you (if I don't go back to NOVA). My guess is 5-9" of snow 1-3" sleet and 0-.3" freezing rain. Considering driving back up but man I have no idea when the roads will be decent besides I think my home up there has a forecast of 7-11" snow 1-2" sleet and maybe a bit of freezing rain which isn't a huge difference.

Cool to see how it exactly follows the thermal gradient.

I'm more partial to the GSL MPAS-G which is still finishing its 12z run

@bncho @Maestrobjwa @baltosquid @flanvil Hi guys! I made a video going over some basic atmospheric principles from Atmospheric thickness/geopotential height to divergence/convergence aloft based on super/sub geostrophic wind balance. Hopefully it can help out some people trying to learn more about this storm/atmospheric setups! I do apologize as I haven't done anything like this before so its a bit rough but hopefully helpful regardless. Let me know if anyone wants a video applying these topics to a real world example.