These could be my famous last words but I just don't see how we miss this one. Its either a huge snow, snow then sleet and ice, or sleet and ice of epic proportions. Its still 5 days out but the windows are narrowing
I think we will get more sleet than ZR in this type of setup. Asheville could turn to ZR quicker than east of the escarpment, but this is a strong high. Places west of Asheville have the trickiest forecast if it turns into a Miller A/B hybrid of Miller B.
It does look like a Miller A/B hybrid, which we have done well with recently in western NC. Jan 2022, Jan 30, 2010, and December 2002 were somewhat similar setups.
https://climate.ncsu.edu/blog/2015/12/nc-extremes-an-ice-storm-for-the-ages/
My opinion- this storm is looking like like your classic old school CAD overrunning that we haven't seen in a long time.
3-5 inches of snow, and inch or 2 of sleet and .25 of ice that turns into an iceberg for days. Thats just what it looks like right now for us foothills folks. More snow the further NE you go, more ice toward SC.
Euro AI also shows more of a cutter but strong CAD so lots of ice.. some of the models have trended towards dumping more cold in the west/midwest. That would not be ideal
I'm going to take a bit of a different approach to next weekend. I'm going to (try) not to get too high or low on each model runs and rely on ensembles until we get to Wednesday or so. We just need to keep the signal until about then and mix in some big OP runs.
A big ice storm is very possible, maybe even likely for someone in the CAD area.
Major questions still are-
1. Low pressure track
2. Strength of High pressure, depth of cold air.
3. Blocking. Need it to stop it from amplifying too much and giving us a rainstorm.