Powerball

It was Mike Seidel who came to town then...

It never rains in Southern California either...

I double checked IEM to be certain, and 1/12/24 was *NOT* a warning. 3/3/23 was the one that had a late upgrade to a Warning, and DTX came pretty darn close to pulling the trigger on a Blizzard Warning before mixing occurred (it was *THAT* close to being a biggie).

Cool! And will do!

There's going to be hard limit on the NW extent of this storm, given the overall flat/progressive pattern aloft. That said, the impressive baroclinic zone in place will support some nice frontogenesis banding in the cold sector. Feb. 2007 and Dec. 2000 might be good analogs...

lol beavis...

The models verbatim don't look all that promising right now, but with the impressive baroclinic zone that's appearing to set up, conditions would be ripe for a major winter storm in this subforum (and no, I'm not talking about the ice storm thread) at some point in the next couple of weeks with just a bit of buckling in the upper level pattern. Meanwhile, I'm loving the 80s and near-record highs we're going to have all week!

With exception to London, ON.

Officially at the airport, the total was 8" That said, those 1895 records are apparently questionable at best per a tweet from the NWS New Orleans. Only thing we know for certain is this was their largest snowstorm in over 125 years (a lifetime). https://x.com/NWSNewOrleans/status/1881916506923213249?t=-9yQBzSyzobIFFrpxrquzw&s=19

One thing I'm very skeptical about though are the QPF numbers that have been confirmed so far (NOLA airport supposedly only measured 0.24"). That said, an average snow ratio of ~12:1 does seem about right judging from the nature of the snow, which is still impressive for a daytime snowfall at that latitude... https://x.com/NWSNewOrleans/status/1881921441308021174?t=83B6o8UBiKdzgjS-XAwLew&s=19

Pretty sure there's quite a bit of slant sticking going on (as well as people measuring drifts), but even accounting for that, it's still quite exceptional for that latitude.

https://x.com/NWSNewOrleans/status/1881888699698561085?t=8ZtLrF-7uVxyN8XkDSAe_A&s=19

A company from Indiana actually will make (at least) a good $168K from this... https://www.wwltv.com/article/weather/weather-impact/new-orleans-hires-snow-plows-from-indiana-company-new-orleans-snow/289-f308c479-6a99-4338-bb9e-d1e0e76d90db

Believe it or not, there are still parts of N. Texas with trace snow amounts on the ground from the last storm. Part of it was because of glacier effect. Had so much sleet mixing in with the snow, and then a ton of rain got absorbed into the snowpack (with temps around 33*F - 34*F) before the inevitable flash freeze.

And to the point you're making about nuances, ASOS for example can't tell whether a thunderstorm that's not yet showing up on radar, or producing precipitation, will have imminent impacts on the airport directly or its airspace. I'm also willing to bet the average ATC doesn't care enough (or know) about the finer details of convective development to confidently make that determination. They certainly didn't with that Southern Airways flight in 1977.

Mobile should break its all-time record of 6" (also from the same 1895 storm that is NOLA's biggest) shortly... https://x.com/NWSMobile/status/1881799913878835288?t=_ELP-DCULleDFK9QPb3Rlg&s=19

https://x.com/DylanFedericoWX/status/1881793364091375653?t=VbbHl7o7yx5V0JCoGbYouA&s=19

NOLA officially broke its daily snowfall record of 4", so far... EDIT: That was as of 12pm CT.

Well damn...

Their largest snowstorm ever was back in 1895 (~8"), but this one in all likelihood will be the biggest in over 125 years.

Some lightning is showing up between Lake Charles and Lafayette

But this seems to be a WFO-specific arrangement as discussed above. While the NWS apparently can no longer require that FAA contractors do this, many of them seemingly continue to do so. And my understanding is takong over any weather observation duties was thrust upon the FAA (it wasn't their choice in the first place). All of that said, it would just be nice if we had consistency with the standards/procedures everywhere.

BTW, pretty impressive-looking weenie band setting up shop along I-10 from Houston to NOLA

DFW's total for its storm was 2.6", so it'll be interesting to see if Houston and/or New Orleans can beat that. DFW, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Memphis and Nashville all seeing 2"+ snowfalls in 2025 was definitely not on my bingo card. In all, certainly not a winter to complain about for weenies in this region, where snow/cold are at a premium...

I decided to dig down the rabbit hole a bit, and the chasm that exist between NWS and the FAA is kind of wild. Currently, the FAA has full-time meteorologists based at 21 "Air Route Traffic Control Centers," in addition to a huge team of contracted weather observers at first order airports across the country. This wasn't even a universal thing until a terrible incident in the early 1980s in which an airplane nearly crashed due to damage from an unexpected t'storm. In essence, the FAA doesn't believe weather observing is a core tenant of its responsibilities (which, in all fairness, it wasn't prior to the early 1980s), so they treat it like a red-headed stepchild. The FAA and NWS will publicly call it a "partnership" to save face, but it's a really lopsided relationship with the FAA being the hostile party, as they have been increasingly uncooperative with the NWS who just wants to ensure they're getting quality observations. In fact, back in 2013 as part of the sequestration (as I'm sure some remember), not only did the FAA bar the NWS from training/monitoring their weather observers or even forcing the contractors to take outside observations, but the FAA was pretty damn close to eliminating dedicated weather observer positions for 1st order sites entirely (fortunately, this was stopped in the 11th hour). The "duties", had that happened, would have been picked up as an after thought by the air traffic controllers who generally have no formal education/certifications in meteorology. To this day, the FAA continues to push for phasing out / eliminating contract weather observers and even their full-time meteorologists, although this still has yet to come to fruition. To them (the FAA), these positions are seen as low-hanging fruit for reducing expenses given its own budget constraints. As has been made apparent, the NWS over time has become disillusioned/frustrated about this arrangement, for all the good reasons mentioned above. That why for some of the more detail-oriented observations that don't require dedicated headcount (such as snow measuring), many branches have opted to pay a stipend to civilians who they train and who use proper equipment (which the FAA doesn't necessarily do).