weatherpruf

Don't be embarrassed there are all kinds of abbreviations that I gave up on here. CAD, NAO, EPO and ENSO are the ones ya gotta really know; you'll pick up the rest eventually. And you don't really need to know all of them to understand the forecasts.

We usually don't even do that much in these kinds of storms, we usually top out about 1-2 before plain rain. What concerns me here is the potential for ice on top of those few inches, which would really be dangerous. But I freely admit that I'm no expert, and I have a hard time right now trying to prepare. What time do we expect this whole show to start? I've got a kid coming home by bus from DC Sat night. I don't trust big commercial buses on ice. Worried dad here.

That looks like the it includes the city as well. Let us hope this is not the end result. For all our sakes.

We did not lose power in the 94 storm, the only thing comparable to what is possible here. But it's a good idea to get the generators in working order. And hope for sleet instead.

Well, they were right in some of those areas...

Yes, that was curious, I remember other models had shown the eastern trend. And people here were arguing, but many had jumped ship and didn't expect the huge totals. In the March 2017 scenario, they held onto the warnings because they felt 5 inches of sleet was dangerous, and they didn't want people to think it was hunky dory all of a sudden.

Bear with me. If the low goes south ( but not too far, right? ) how does this keep the storm frozen as opposed to liquid.

My understanding is forecasting actual snow totals is tricky; we did get snow in those storms, but not nearly as much as forecast. Here they are saying mainly rain, with impunity....

Fair points. But given the time of year in Nov, I could give them a pass. I would think at this time of year they could smoke out a potential snow storm.

Granted, that is true, but in the post I saw they mentioned their reasoning, no blocking and no cold air damming, things I see people around here say are pretty necessary. Are you saying that these factors can change? Can blocking develop by then? I am not a student of meteorology, so I am trusting those who know these things. I was under the impression, from reading here, that we are missing key elements.

Why? You don't have much faith in them? They seem pretty sanguine about this one, at least from what I saw posted in the storm thread.

NWS service is talking about a mainly rain event. That's good enough for me to look past it and hope for the next one.

There is no waffling there.

Do you live near the coastal plain? Those sorts of things usually don't cut it here, if I am understanding it correctly ( which I may not be TBH )

It is, of course. But the recurrent theme of warm temps probably can't be dismissed out of hand. It happens; warm rain, then cold. At least that's what I read here.

It hasn't been our year so far. This was typical in the 80's and 90's. Isn't the lack of blocking causing us problems?

How often could one be wrong predicting that? It's like a "cold reading" from a psychic....you can't really go wrong....like John Edwards the so called medium...." it was hard at the end, something in the chest area, there was trouble breathing.." yeah, there usually is at the end " I'm seeing an older male..." of course because everyone has lost someone, probably an older male ( grandfather, dad, uncle ) and " there was a dog or cat" yeah somewhere in the family " and the cat is there with him on the other side" of course it is....." I'm seeing a letter, J..." ( because most people know an older male named Joe, Jim, John, whatever, who has died, ( of course if the dead could talk to someone you'd think they'd say hey it's John here....) anyway, predictions of cold and snowy crop up every winter. I'll give you a prediction right now; summer will be hot and muggy. I could be wrong, not every summer is, but you get the idea....

ugh. Hope that one's wrong. Too early to say I know. Keep us posted my friend. Will be a lot of runs. Worried about my daughter's bus trip to DC this weekend.

2 inches here. Very disappointing storm that was characteristic of a dud winter. Sleet fests don't count IMO. Followed by an equally disappointing March sleet fest.

You could not get your car out. You could not get any kind of salt, including table salt, or sand, or cat litter. It was a real disaster. I took two steps out of my house, having never seen over an inch of ice in my life ( I was 32 ) and promptly fell on my back, and three more times trying to get up. There was an inch of ice on my windshield.

I forget which one it was, but it was pretty close to an ice event, after some snow, whereas the MLK one was just a little snow that quickly turned to accumulating ice, the likes of which I have never seen since. I assume we have better tools to predict that kind of thing these days. Caught most of us by surprise, we were expecting all snow.

Perhaps we are going to get some interesting winter weather after all. People forget, but aside from a snow to ice event in Dec 93, the epic 94 winter didn't get rolling til after the MLK ice storm, and there were reprieves in between when it got milder and we thought we were done. don't know if you are old enough to remember it well.

Thanks, but no trap, have dual sump pumps and a back up water pressure operated pump, so I'm good this year, but a lot of people aren't. These kinds of storms, mercifully, aren't common around here.

Let's hope this turns into all rain. My daughter has a bus trip to DC Friday and overnight Sat. People don't take ice seriously enough and there will be problems.

What might be some of the implications?