calculus1

My iPhone13 doesn't have the greatest camera, but you can faintly see the diamond dust in the streetlight. (I had to reduce the video quality to get under the 2 MB threshold.) Diamond Dust.mp4

Orientation of the precipitation on radar seems to be changing now. More SW to NE and less E to W. I think this will lead to the precipitation rates increasing for those of us east of the Apps.

Absolutely! I will call this a trace. Maybe even 0.1 inch now! Just got back from a Jebwalk. 18 degrees with a NE wind and diamond dust in the face is fierce. Sleet began to pick back up as I returned to the house. It is kind of mesmerizing to just stand and listen to it. Unlike snow, which tends to fall so silently and puts a strange quiet over everything, sleet makes noise. You can hear when it increases in intensity and when it slacks back off. Winter weather is as fascinating as it is confounding to predict.

I think it really is diamond dust. All the road surfaces are completely white now, from the "snowfall", not from sleet accumulation and not like an ice glaze.

I didn't think I had anything falling, but I saw your post, so I went out to check. Same stuff is falling here. It's either diamond dust or diamond mist. Hard to say, but mist feels wrong at this temp. 18.3/15

I’m not sure which is making me sweat more: A. The potential for icemageddon, OR B. Watching Alex Honnold free solo Taipei 101 on Netflix. 20.2/14, light IP/ZR .

The temp keeps dropping. Mostly IP, but enough ZR embedded to stick it all together, immediately. These aren't loose ice pellets; they are combining into one big glacial sheet of ice. 21.7/14

ZR mixed with IP here in Hickory. It is cold and windy.

I thought I had all sleet, but there is a glaze over everything. My driveway is already a sheet of ice. We may be cooked.

Moderate sleet. Fun to listen to as it bounces off the windows, trees, leaves, etc. 24.3/12

It has begun. Light sleet now falling. 26.8/11 .

29.5/13 No precipitation yet

31.5/14 IMBY. Need those two numbers to converge a bit more for the party to start… .

That’s heavy sleet with temps in the low 20s followed by a glaze of ice. I can handle that!

I love what the NAM is printing out. Almost all sleet for our areas! Yesss! .

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.