Powerball

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).

Gravity wave.

It baffles me that the NWS and FAA, after all these years, has failed to harmonize their procedures for snow measurements and the responsibility remains so inconsistent between WFOs / reporting sites.

From your perspective, which loss hurt the worst? Last year's NFCCG or last night's Divisional game?

It did finally pick up towards the end.

Lions at least had a good excuse for choking hard though. Their entire defensive line was being held up by glue & popsicle sticks with all the injuries. It's amazing they made it as far as they did.

Final snow totals from last storm...

06z HRRR and 03z RAP are bangers for DFW (especially the Northern Suburbs, as thermals/precip type is more borderline for Dallas/Tarrant Counties) and very similar to the EURO. And there's still a ton of precip to go beyond the end of these runs too...

Meanwhile, at first glance, 18z NAM is looking notably cooler...

FWD is now only calling for 1-3" in the Metroplex with mixed precipitation, in their update that just came out...

Still concerned that even the bullish GGEM/EURO are predominately a sleet fest (and the snow maps aren't accounting for that). No redeeming qualities what so ever for that outcome either.

It was a no-win situation for them. NWS, as standard practice, has to issue a Watch when we're no less than 48 hours away from the start of an event. This is to ensure sufficient notice is given to the general public to allow for storm preparation. The guidance, as of last night at least, was still somewhat supportive of potential for warning criteria snowfall to being met (and in fairness, it's a low bar at 3"). My bigger bone to pick though is how the model verification will seemingly be so poor within 3-4 days.

Not just no snow, but no precipitation what so ever (which I'd be good with over a cold rain or ice).

Just put me out of my misery now....

Will be a pretty monumental fail for the EURO if it ends up wrong and caving to these other models. "Grandma not mad. Grandma just hurt."

Over 15" for the Northern and Western suburbs... And a crippling Ice Storm just south of the Metroplex...

A little bit of both. But in all seriouaness, I'm always down for a Big Dog, and this one has above-average potential (similar to Feb. 2010 for Dallas).

Still far from a lock (especially with today's model trends), but...

A cold rain would be the lesser evil over Ice, although they're both disgusting.

Drier *AND* warmer. Real nasty work... But the ICON is a fairly terrible model, even worse than the NAM.

18z NAM shifted NW, lookimg a lot like the 12z GFS and last night's EURO. Also, update from FWD...

Frankie has spoken! https://x.com/frankiemacd/status/1876364861032341522?t=sK9mv32YXQL2TqaV_0vAfw&s=19

The bigget threat, power outage-wise, will be poles and limbs weighed down from the plastering of snow if it ends up having a high water content.

Bear in mind, that is the mean of 50 different alternative outputs from the ECMWF model (not just the OP or operational model). A few duds mixed in there, but also numerous 10"+ big dogs too. The fact that it has been consistently showing a 6-8" mean for Dallas is pretty exceptional, especially given EURO Ensembles have a reputation of being more reliable than the Emsembles for the other models.

12z EURO Ensemble Mean...