SnowNiner

Got about 3 inches on waterrock knob. Looks like radar is done, got a bit dry slotted back of the low. A bit disappointing but nice to see snow on my trip.

Visiting up in Jackson County for this storm, 5200 feet near waterrock knob. Not familiar with the mountain patterns up here. Worried a bit on the speed of the system, as it's out of here early tomorrow morning. With the need to drop the Temps, cool the ground, no real nw flow event to speak of, I don't see how my back yard gets much higher than 4-5 inches. Don't see very high amounts up here other than the border peaks but could be wrong I guess.

That's my long range fly in the ointment fear; -PNA. Cold enters the CONUS but is stuck in a western trough.

Coming right up!

Huge red flag here. Last rug pull had all but the UKMET on board for the cold. We know what happened.

Agreed. I've come to appreciate the "positive snow depth change" map on the NAM 3K to give me a more realistic understanding of actual accumulations. Looking at the numbers this morning a quick dusting to half and inch seems likely for most. That's better than it was last night. I've never been a fan of an event that can't get to freezing or below at the surface.

The GEFS has been following the op imo. EPS took a step to it today too I think. Disappointed with the trends today. Im not one who believes that trends reverse or once the storm is lost it'll come back. But we'll see.

The less SE ridging the better for me, but I'm assuming you're hoping a bit of one amps up the storm a touch for more precip? It just seems like we started down a path today we didn't want to go down. Canadian is really the only one left with the PV in a great spot. Hopefully overnight corrects.

Agreed. Its significantly warmer.

It seems right now the good cold doesn't quite get to our back yard until the end of next week, perhaps Friday. My worry is that anything before that time would end up being pretty marginal temp wise, like we've seen pretty much all January.

At this point, I'd say keep it right there. Love seeing the UKMET suppressed. If EURO keeps it the same, that'll be great. We all know it's going to tick NW the last 2 days. If we're in bullseye right now we'll end up like the 12Z GFS. Not feeling great about this one, but might as well track.

Yeah, exactly. That's why I think eastern NC may be in a better spot for this one. When the low bombs off the coast the colder air has time to move in and they get snow. For us in the western/central NC the storm is going to take too long to cool off and switch over. My hope is it slows down. With marginal temps, I don't trust clown maps at all. What does it take to start off as frozen and stay frozen? Last February was horrible in itself as it snowed for hours and hours, but due to warm surface temps, no accumulation. Surface and boundary temps are huge for me.

Yeah, agree the pacific pattern has really put a kabosh on our winter so far. The lack of truly cold air has made it really hard to trust even very good H5 setups. I've found myself up and down on this one as well. Generally I think the middle ground of the UKMET is the way to go. Can't tell how cold it is, but based on the low location it's probably mostly a VA storm but i could be wrong. I just can't get into these storms being so marginal.

850s we seem to be able to work with. It's the boundary layers and the surface that we're still struggling to get cold. The ridging off the east coast is not our friend IMO.

Looks like it's similar to this weeks storm, not enough cold air.

Lol, I was looking real hard for it and I couldn't find it...until I looked near Canada! Yeah that's not ideal, it's one of my ticks. I'm not a rates will overcome kind of guy. But it's likely similar if not better than what were dealing with this week. Let's get a storm to pop and we'll see what happens.

Am I reading that right though, the surface freezing line is in New York?

Does that mean grit you don't think it's likely that the northern energy kills the wave, based on the ensembles? That seems to be what's suppressing everything. Hard to fathom we'd lose any storm by suppression.

That's what I've been waiting for! Remove the Atlantic ridging and replace it with lower heights. Open the door for the cold to move freely into the south east. Toward that later period I hope we score.

One of these days we're going to get the nice pretty 32 surface line in to South Carolina.

Great to see the block doing work and putting storms where we would need them to be. Just a bit hard to get excited about these storms though with surface temps so marginal. GEFS temps are warm through the whole run. Waiting hopefully and patiently for something to change that will inject cold air into the system.

Well now. That's absurdly superb as shown. I would probably have a tough time drawing it up any better. Ridging over the pole, aluetian low, +pna over the west, lower heights off the east coast. Deep eastern trough with a baffin bay true block. That would do quite nicely. Hope it shows up.

Thanks Grit, great information. Always seems to come down to the mjo doesn't it? So to sum up, the same +EAMT element that's feeding the weakening vortex (good), and the Atlantic blocking (good) is the same process that's causing the AK low (very, very bad). That's just not fair right there. lol. Any positive signs that the convection will indeed move out of the Maritimes? Or are we just hoping the SSW will mix things up? The last few winters it seemed like it wanted to hang out there for a long, long time.

Thanks Grit. I sure hope the convection leaving the Indian Ocean does work on the Pacific. We desperately need the -EPO for cold even with the solid -NAO. I think at best we're seasonal to cool with the pattern that's setting itself up. At worst, below the 12Z GEFS. Western trough and the southeast ridge is poking up later in the run.

Thanks Grit. Do you think the -NAO hangs around that long until the pacific improves? Another month? I was hoping the +EAMT would do work earlier and improve the pacific first of January, but it doesn't look like that's the case. Feel like we're on borrowed time.