calculus1

No, it’s not funny. It’s our normal.

An amuse bouche prior to the main course on Sunday…

Then, it’s all sleet for those same counties until late Sunday afternoon. That would be a fantastic outcome for these areas. South and west of there, the freezing rain locks in much earlier.

GFS continues with a decent front end thump of snow in the mid to northern tier of western piedmont/foothills NC counties, including McDowell, Burke, Catawba, and points to their NE. I’m really hoping that verifies. Should be pretty to watch fall late Saturday afternoon/evening.

The 06Z GFS continues the incredible cold streak after the storm. Hickory is still below freezing for the entirety of the storm and the week to follow into the next winter storm. Low temps each night are dangerously cold.

Just because:

It’s the big dog… Almost three feet in Hickory by early Sunday morning, on top of the glacier that is still around.

I think I may be most worried about the sustained cold in the wake of this storm. Once Hickory goes below freezing on Saturday, according to the 00Z GFS, we don’t get any warmer than the 20s any day the following week, and nighttime lows are in the single digits (or colder) almost every single night. (Sleet has staying and insulating power.) That will wreak havoc on the power grid and on water pipes. We don’t have infrastructure for temperatures like that on a prolonged basis. Then, the next winter storm arrives on Saturday…

That heavy sleet accumulation turns the NW piedmont into a freezer locker. After -8 F Tuesday morning, we get down to 4 F on Wednesday morning. We are colder than most mountain locations, and it’s not due to CAD.

Crazy cold Monday night: -8 F at 7 AM Tuesday morning in Hickory according to the 00Z GFS.

Stays below freezing for the entire event in Hickory, but swings from a “high” of 31 F at 4 AM on Monday morning to 17 F at 7 AM. That’s a crazy temperature swing over that period.

The QPF on the 00Z GFS looks even more than its most recent runs. 2.5 inches in Hickory?! Wow!

The hubris is so off-putting. It’s one thing to say what you believe and why you believe it, backed with solid reasoning. It’s a completely different thing to allow zero chance that you might be fallible, that you might draw a wrong conclusion on occasion, and that other people are crazy to think differently than you. He may be right this time, but pride goes before the fall…

^ I’ll take what’s behind door number two, as well. The Christmas storm like 15 years ago trended from nothing to amazing simply the night before.

Well, if by hammered, you mean a complete sleetbomb, sign me up!

...said everyone on AmericanWx, anytime their backyard is in the snow area.

It's amazing the power of CAD. You are almost always 10-15 degrees colder than me (if not more), and I'm going to be well below freezing all day on Sunday with a continued variety of wintry weather. This is the only time I am in a "better" position than you for wintry weather, but unfortunately, it doesn't come with the fluffy white stuff.

Can somebody please print the entire region sleet map? Thanks!

Looking at the ZR totals posted above on the 12Z GFS, the northern foothills from Burke, Caldwell, and Catawba northeastward seem to hold on to the coldest upper levels the longest. This results in epic IP accumulations and much less ZR. We are in the primo position for CAD, and it may save us on the ZR, in this instance, keeping us IP much longer.

Three(3) for me. And highs of 33 and 34 on Monday and Tuesday under full sun. Whatever falls will have staying power.

That is a typical type of storm from what I remember in the 1980s-1990s as a kid in Lenoir. Either way, those are EPIC sledding conditions. It will stay around for a week, too.

I'm gutted this morning, too, like the rest of you. It makes me wonder why I even bother with this hobby. I have repeatedly told people it cannot snow anymore in Hickory, and I've been right for the past five years. I actually gave a bit of a positive forecast to several friends/family over the past two days, indicating that this time it finally looked likely we would get some snow. I should never have changed my message, it appears. It's amazing how invested I allow myself to get in this. I do like winter weather, all types, so a mega sleet storm would be something pretty cool to see, but being buried in an inch-plus coating of ice from freezing rain doesn't sound nearly as fun. We will see...

Need to bring the full snowmap into this thread. I see it's up to 30ish inches now, when it's all said and done.

^ That is just unheard of at Hour 114. Wow! Two feet in Hickory?!?! (I know it won't come to fruition like that, but that is an amazing model output with this small of a lead time.) Oh, and how many traces does it take to equate to 23.5 inches?

I'm just so unused to forecasts like this. This is rather mind-blowing: