Bob Chill

Still sleet down here. 3k nam says mostly sleet with a zr finale during the final slug later this afternoon in my hood. Hrrr is heavier with the zr. My guess is the dmv will be mostly or entirely sleet. I'm still at 19 degrees.

Feb 07 was a top 3 analog from 5 days out to game time. There were some decent snow events in the analog mix too so a simple analog blend nailed the outcome pretty good.

Same down this way. Sleet "dust" has blown through our screened porch and it looks like somebody dumped a bag of flour on the floor. Not sure how the big slug of precip is going to break in a few hours. Hoping it's a sandstorm and not zr. So far there are no icicles on anything (which is a big relief)

Still 100% sleet down here. Comes in waves. Lulls have tiny sleet that are more like snow than sleet pellets. Holding at 18 degrees. Prob in the 3.5" range of total snow and sleet. Grass is covered so I'll pretend it's a foot deep. One thing for sure, all of us are going to have snow-covered ground for a long time. Deep winter

Not too jazzed on next weekend rn. Ridge axis to the west is prob too close and the setup requires near perfection with timing as the window to crawl the coast is super tight. Time will tell. Beyond that is looking more ripe. Western ridge axis retros and a strong west based NAO block would force NS shortwaves south of us and far enough west for some amplification. Split flow potential as well. I REALLY like this look.... Eta: all 3 global ens are lock step. Confidence booster...

I'm 60 miles north of that line

75% sleet. 1-2 hours early. Unfortunately this doesn't surprise me. Sleet lines always hit all the green lights. So 1.5" of clean snow is my tally. More inline with the NAMs than globals down here. Hopefully the zr doesn't beat on me too much lol. For now I'll be in 2-3:1 ratios building a glacier

1.5" with continued light to brief bursts of mod snow. Temp steady at 14 degrees. CC radar showing some sleet dancing around to my south but no major line yet.

3k nam said I would have nothing by 9pm and I'm just shy of an inch. Also shows my temp @ 19 and I'm still 14. 3k could have the sleet timing correct but it missed an inch of snow already. Currently light snow with little bursts of mod.

No prob. I figured I was mostly cooked in the big snow dept 3 days ago but I also assumed I would get 3" of snow no matter what. Today's models and upstream obs in TN mostly verifying made me change my mind that 3" of clean snow would be the high bar. Temps have been breaking colder. My high was 21 (forecast 25) and I'm already down to 14 with a forecast low of 17. I'm sitting at a half inch of snow right now and the sleet line is where models had it so I expect the flip to be on time around 12-1am. I skeptical I hit 3" before the sleet moves in but I have a few hours to go.

If the current conditions persist I can make up some ground quick. High ratio stuff falling right now and I lost another degree and down to 15. I'm honestly surprised with both. I figured my yard would underperform in both categories. Snow growth at the beginning was terrible. I think salt has a higher ratio lol.

Other than the NAMs, most guidance has me in the 2-4" zone before the flip. Pretty uniform agreement I flip around midnight/1am. Right now I'm under a lucky band of mod snow. I need to maximize the window I have to hit the high end of pure snow totals. Sleet line will mean business once it starts moving north.

Colorado dendrites now. Sleet line in NC. Temp down to 16. Legit winter night down here in the southern MA.

Light snow starting to accumulate now. It's a sand like quality and not puffy flakes. I don't have high expectations but maybe things will rip for a few hours with normal dendrites

Just a couple hours but snow has super light/off and on until just now. It's starting to stick but it's more like sand than snow. The DMV will likely have much better snow growth conditions than my yard.

Very light snow and 19. Mountain tops starting to obscure. Slow ramp up

My city days are over until I leave this earth Seeing decent returns streaming into Roanoke. If those actually start accumulating then start time is ahead of schedule down here. Right now it's just light flurries to the east of that.

Metal ruler and this technique works best

19 degrees and first flakes! Extremely light and you have to concentrate to see them but considering how quick I'll probably flip to sleet, every single flake counts lol. NWS forecast for onset of accum precip is 7pm but anything that falls will stick so hopefully I can get some bonus snow

Gefs is building a decent sized camp of near the coast lows. Upper air pattern looks to favor a too far offshore track but this was a pretty good run all things considered. As we just relearned for the millionth time lol.... winter wx tracking is never clear cut and simple even inside of 96 hours. Lead time is double that rn

UTC time takes some getting used to but memorize these #s. Daylight savings moves them forward one hour but during winter it looks like this: 0z = 7pm 6z = 1am 12z = 7am 18z = 1pm

Feb 2015 had a west track with a Bermuda high and was all snow lol. 7" in my yard iirc lol. But other than that freakshow, mix lines slow down or stop for nobody when they are in the forecast area

It's not that binary. Without blocking a nino will be stuffed with cut and rain events. Ninos are generally much less active so storms are far apart. Miss a few good chances and things don't look good in the end. Ninos aren't created equal. East based are not our friends nor are strong ninos. There's a sweet spot with west based/modiki mod ninos but they come along like 3 times in a person's life. Ninos often run warmish and considering how warm has been working against us, I'm not sold that ninos in the future will be as kind as the past . Time will tell there. The highest probability of snow in the MA is most correlated to the AO and that often works in any enso phase. The AO runs in some sort of longer term cycle that is hard to predict but easy to identify. We just came out of a long term +AO cycle. Seems like the cycle flips in 13 year cycles but thats just an oversimplified #. IMHO, last year and this year indicate that the AO cycle has probably flipped. For that reason alone, I'm pretty optimistic about MA snow chances over the balance of the next decade no matter what enso does. There will certainly be duds but overall I think there will be a string of memorable storms heading our way.

Smith Mtn Lake/Penhook

Decent virga on radar down this way keeping me entertained for now lol Forecast start time pushed out to 7-8pm so we'll see how that breaks later. Some areas of TN are overperforming in the snow dept so that's a glimmer of hope but I'm not feeling optimistic about 4" of clean snow anymore. Time will tell. Ice amounts have bumped up in my area as well. I'll keep posting until I lose power and internet lol.