burrel2

Setup for Saturday night looks pretty good to me. Especially for the mountains. Just need the trough to dig a little more. Temps above the surface look good. Boundary layer may be problematic but there is still room for that to trend better. 

3.5 inches for the southern escarpment and not even an advisory from nws_gsp. Shameful.

2-3 inches on the ground already in the southern mountains and no advisories issued. Hmmm

I drove to the top of six mile mountain. 1600ft. About a half inch on the ground.

RRipping half dollars here now all snow .

No advisories out for the mountains from nws? Woof, missed this one.

This is such a tease. Why can’t we just score a big one? It’s ripping big flakes here mixed with slop. 

A few flakes making to the ground here now. temp at 37/32. Looks like a little wedge has set up and outperformed modeled temps this morning. I'd be really excited right now if I lived above 2000ft on the NC/SC border. 

Half melted slop hitting my windshield here now. Looks like it's about to really pick up in intensity on radar. Maybe it'll get heavy enough to get a decent burst of flakes down to the ground for an hour or so.

Southern mountains around the NC/SC border look like they're going to get hammered this morning. 

180hr icon appears to be setting up for a phasing trough that produces a gulf monster with hp locked in over New England. Cold air is marginal though. 

Places like Savannah and Charleston were pretty close to a major snow event Tuesday night.  Plenty of cold air; storm gets cranking about 300 miles too far east though.

looks like a chance we could get some ice Friday morning.  dew points are fairly low as precip breaks out. Warm nose is only 2/3C and caps out around 850mb.  Something to watch.

Pattern has looked and continues to look horrible. Things have to change sometime, right?

it appears the energy configuration as it crosses the rocky mountains is a complete crapshoot. None of the models agree with one another in that regard.  I think we need the energy to come out in such a way that it involves a middle piece phasing in with a northern piece and deepening/closing off as it drops southeast from Missouri to South Carolina. That's the only way the core of the upper low/trough will be cold enough to support snow.  We also need to energy to zip on through the great plains and get here quick to capitalize on the decent boundary layer temps we have from the residual high pressure left behind from that front that moves through tomorrow. (ideally we need the meat of the precip to arrive late friday night/early saturday morning).  

What we don't want is a coherent southern piece of energy to come out and phase in with a middle piece that leads the wave sharpening in to a strong closed low towards the gulf states/florida with not nearly enough cold air to produce anything but rain.  Also it appears the models focusing in on the southern piece are slower in general with the track of the trough/low and thus allow temps to warm even more. The ukmet is the slowest of all b/c it just has the southern piece diving south/occluding  and spinning around over  Southern Texas Sunday morning... (seems to be the extreme outlier at the moment).

FWIW, honestly the best "agreement" right now is between the cmc/gfs/icon as they all have somewhat similar evolution of the various pieces.  Euro/jma are similar to each with a slower/further south cut off low.  The Ukmet is all alone with the due south moving, then stationary closed low over texas.

CMC hammers central NC. All the models seem to be trending better with high placement on Saturday morning.  I haven't thrown in the towel yet.

Euro and GFS don't look that far apart to me.  They're both really far south with a bombing upper level low.  If we can keep that feature but trend it more to the north and deeper it could get interesting. IMO, the likelihood of it occluding that far south is doubtful.  More likely it either follows an evolution like the CMC, or closes off further north bringing NC/VA in to the game for heavy snow.

gfs did horrible with scouring today's wedge.  Here is it's 72hr forecast versus reality. 

84hr NAM appears to be setting up a crippling ice storm. 

Way to early to throw in the towel on next week. Models are trending quicker with the 2nd wave for a potential Friday event. Icon looks like a lot of ice for nc on the 12z run that just spit out. 

Typically how it plays out in my backyard. 

Looks like it should be ripping silver dollars just west of Rock Hill. Any ground reports?

1 minute ago, PackGrad05 said:

I haven't had a chance to look at a lot of the details.  What's the issue for Raleigh?  Cold air or storm track too close to coast?  or both?

Biggest issue there might be time of day.  Hard to get snow to the ground at this lattitude in early April at 1pm. Also, the cold air aloft has had more time to modify by then as well.  The best timing for snow appears to be set up in upstate SC.  Definitely worth watching for Charlotte and points north and east though.

I've got a feeling this storm is going to surprise someone. Setup is absolutely perfect.  Thermals look great for upstate SC. Just need the blossoming precip shield to be a tick farther north than some models show.  As it stands now, it looks like Mack's house over towards Charlotte could jackpot with 3 or 4 hours of moderate to heavy snow tomorrow morning. I wouldn't be surprised if a band in this area picks up a quick 3 or 4 inches, imo.

1 hour ago, Iceagewhereartthou said:

We know better; not even a Lloyd Christmas chance here. 

It's happening!  We'll get some sprinkles while Mack picks up 3 or 4 inches tomorrow morning. Take it to the bank!