jpbart

3 hours ago, UnionCountyNCWX said:

Nah, we need to dry out, forget the wet lol

Personally, I find that dry too easily turns to drought, then to seriously bad drought and temps over a 100 with a water bill to match.   Let it rain baby, let it rain.

Well it appears that the blocking we need for winter to get snow may arrive in March to get cold rain.  So let's hope for 3 years no snow and get into the record books.  I mean what the hell, might as well get something out of this misery. 

The perfect set up for the March killing frost.  Ah life in the south.

My hopes have turned to a mild damp spring that lasts until May~ish with out the killing frosts of March.  Peach crops took a pounding last year, let's hope things play out better this time around.

After all of the back and forth between hype over models vs despair when they change the other way.   I just want this winter to end for better or worse.   Next up early spring and anxiety over killing late frosts.

9 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Wintry precip way down in my area on 2/18 on 12Z GFS! These sharp changes from run to run show the level of uncertainty.

 Not all of this is snow as some is other wintry:

Living smack dab in the middle of SC.  I am curious about how the gap between potential snow fall locations.   This kind of snow event is especially frustrating to those of us in the middle of the gap.  Anybody care to enlighten us forever snowless folks?

At the end of February if we haven't had any snow (likely) then I hope we stay just above freezing at night with cool afternoons until May.  As much as I miss snow I despise the early warm ups that transition to a hard freeze and a destruction of everything in bloom.

I have resigned myself that snow fall will be an exceedingly rare event and anything I get will be a major unexpected surprise.  Sort of like finding a $20 in an old coat you haven't worn in a long time.  The constant back and forth between "we still have hope" and the "it's over" camps has become tiring.  I now assume no snow is the new normal, drink a glass of whiskey and just enjoy the cool weather.

Personally I have given up, getting snow in these parts is damn rare and appears to be less likely every year.  Especially around the Columbia, SC area for crying out loud.  I just decided getting frustrated and angry over failed storms was silly and not good for my blood pressure.  I keep an eye on things for fun and to know when I have to go buy milk and bread in larger quantities than usual.  I still hope for that one storm to arrive and hell the Detroit LIons won a playoff game.  anything can happen.

13 hours ago, buckeyefan1 said:

I'm just as frustrated as you all and I keep reminding myself that the December warmth was advertised well in advance and to be patient. I know. It's freaking hard to do after the disaster of last winter.    

 

Better times are coming. They always do.     Hopefully it's sooner rather than later  

After a season when it snowed at the coast and in the mountains, and everywhere but in Columbia, SC.  I have learned to relax and just enjoy the show.  Do not get my hopes up too much, and do not get too frustrated when it all goes bust.  Years of being a Phillies fan has prepared me for this, it's all ok.  Just relax, have a glass of bourbon and see what mother nature is up to.  

A fun scenario to think about on one of the hottest days of the year.  If would be fun if we got the central SC heavy snow (4+") unicorn event.  Still after so much disappointment I remain quite skeptical.  I am also buying a lottery ticket because you just need it to happen once to declare victory in these parts.

Curious about the possible Super El Nino and what it might mean for our area in the S. East.   Anybody want to chime in on their thoughts?  I figured the number of hurricanes should be reduced, but we might get a few big ones because the ocean is pretty warm and getting warmer.  Drought most likely outcome from this?  Heavy rain?  Mass hysteria?  How would this differ from a regular El Nino?

1 hour ago, jtmitch1 said:

Does anyone have any updates on tomorrow's severe chances?  I have a baseball tournament in Wake Forrest.

3 hours ago, GaWx said:

 The last few days of modeling has suggested to me fwiw no signs of unusual cold the next two weeks at least. Instead, it is suggesting to me more typical ups and downs with the % of time AN probably a bit higher than the % of time BN, especially down here. I'd prefer more BN overall but that's not what I'm seeing. AN is ok with me if the dewpoints are low enough...say mid 50s or lower.  I mean a high of, say, 85 with a dewpoint of 52 along with a nice breeze and sunshine (like we had here for a couple of days a few days ago) feels good to me, especially if I'm in shorts.

Now that GaWx is saying this, winter really is all over.  Here's to the hope for a relatively normal not broiling spring.

At this point I have moved off of cold weather wishing to hoping it doesn't get too hot before the end of May.  Avoiding frosts and freezes are a good thing now that everything is starting to bloom and I want to see how long I can get by before I have to set my summer run of A/C being on 24/7.  If I can avoid that until the near end of May, it's a win.  Living in the Columbia SC, hot zone, summer heat looms large just over the horizon.

1 hour ago, purduewx80 said:

Although it's definitely going to be difficult to get snow or ice without a threat-the-needle situation or elevation on your side, I think one of the higher confidence impacts in the SSW- and MJO-forced cool down is going to be to agriculture in the South.

Personally, I have strawberries and blueberries blooming currently, the asparagus is up and all the cool-season veggies are thriving. It'll be easy for me to cover but not so simple for all the commercial farms to mitigate a potential hard freeze.

The GEPS ensembles are showing the reasonable worst-case scenario with widespread 20s to the coast and some teens to the Piedmont. The 10th percentile is the number on the left, so the extreme outliers are even colder. EPS is not quite as cold as the Canadian. Obviously, there's a lot of spread, but that whole period is increasingly ripe for at least a couple of anomalously cold days/nights.

It was not until I was growing banana plants that I realized how often a cold shot hard freeze happens after a warm spell.  Things start blooming, pollen is in the air, people worry about summer heat and wham!  Hard freeze. From my experience this is the most likely outcome, especially here around Columbia SC.  Actual snow would be an epic surprise.  Looks like the peach crop could be in trouble. 

3 hours ago, GaWx said:

 After a mild period through 3/5 (warmer than the prior run), today's Euro weeklies *fwiw* are significantly colder than the prior run thanks to a stronger and persistent -NAO throughout March. The highlight is in mid-March, when nearly the entire US is BN (3/13-19)(see image below). That is the coldest map for any March week of any Weeklies run to date. I understand if folks doubt this based on this winter so far. Some may laugh at this, which would be understandable. But the major SSW we just had along with, believe it or not, another reversal of the 60N winds at the 10 mb level now being forecasted for about one week from now along with the progged solid -NAO throughout March tell me that a legit cold period is believable. Would that be cold enough for wintry precip in parts of the SE if it were to occur? Who knows but mid March is often still early enough for a state like NC at the least:

March cold snap & frost just it time to hammer everything that will bloom when we hit 80 deg. this week.  Been there and complained about that before.  Ah, life in the south, no snow but inconvenient early spring frosts abound. 

48 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 The main hope I have for a cold last week of Feb into early March largely hinges on the degree of strat Arctic warming and disruption of the SPV at midmonth. GEFS runs since 12Z yesterday have continued to show significant warming along with a southward displacement of the SPV to N Scandinavia at midmonth. This is the kind of strat chaos that can shake up the pattern enough based on past cases to lead to a couple of week+ colder pattern in the SE that would start within 10-14 days of the "onset" of a SSW. With that kind of timing, any SSW generated cold could make it to the SE as early as during the last week of Feb. The MJO would likely be in a more favorable position at late month into early March to help out.

 Meanwhile, model consensus is still suggesting a short moderate cold snap ~2/11. The 12Z Euro *fwiw* even gives parts of NC several inches of snow then.

I am expecting a solid March cold blast to arrive just in time to hard freeze all of the early blooms due to unseasonably mild wet weather.

Any of the other models showing this?  I am always skeptical of a single model showing something solo.

Schools in the Columbia area dismissing early tomorrow.  I had scheduled a test, oh well.

3 hours ago, NorthHillsWx said:

Spring has sprung in my neck of the woods. Trees are budding out. Daffodils are in full bloom. I see no frosts/freezes in the near future. Should set us up perfectly for damaging freezes in April…

Amen!  Late spring freezes are now a yearly occurrence.

20 hours ago, nwohweather said:

Yeah it's safe to say as this planet warms places like Louisville, Knoxville & Cincinnati have peak weather. Down here it's more of a game of who can run their AC the least

Amen to the A/C marathon, 6 to 7 months a year here in the middle of SC.  Personally I think we are heading toward a North FL weather regime with slightly more frequent cold shots to cause killing frosts.   Not falling into climate despair is a full time job for me here.  Hey, at least I do not have to worry about sea level rise, look to the positives!

March is here and spring around the corner.  This is the time of year around here were everything buds out and start growing anew.  Then gets hammered by that last late hard frost.  Curses abound across the land and then it get actually hot.  Life in SC.

No offense but I feel we expect too much out of these winters.  The trend is against snowy winters overall and we need to adjust to that reality.  I had a good winter with actual snow on the ground, twice, for one day.  Hey I will take it and be glad.

I am also looking forward to spring, and if I can get to May without turning on my A/C for more than a day.  I will call that a win as well.

Can somebody call the NWS-CAE office in Columbia.  They haven't put out a forecast since 3:38am and I am worries they are a victims of foul play.  (The butler did it in study with the lead pipe.)

12 hours ago, Brick Tamland said:

I'm not sure if it's just harder to get a pattern that historically produces snow here in the past, if those patterns just don't produce snow like they used to, or the historically great patterns show up on the medium to long range on the models but then change and never happen down the road. Maybe it's all three. Former local met Greg Fishel said the air off the ocean makes it harder for my area to get snow compared to further west in NC. I wonder if the warming of the oceans is making that more and more of a factor in limiting snow here.

You are right that your average is starting to change.  Our climate zone has changed here in the midlands of SC.  We shifted from a 7b to an 8a.  Not a huge change but since the change is based on 30 year averages, I suspect we are closer to 8b.  So in general it is just a bit more difficult to get snow in the south east.  

https://e360.yale.edu/features/redrawing-the-map-how-the-worlds-climate-zones-are-shifting