Just finished shoveling and going to see how the pavement handles the slush
one tip-if you are going to get freezing rain then don’t remove the snow from your car. Crusty snow is a lot easier to push off than scraping glare ice
32F and light rain but it’s cold enough and light enough to not melt anything
Sleet took over in a flash at 1:28pm
do not think it took more than 1 minute to completely transition to 100% sleet after picking up another 0.5” snow from 1pm obs to bring total to 2”
31F
Heavy snow, went to the huge 2-3”ph flakes for about 10 mins and though changeover might be moving in but back to moderate to heavy 1”ph stuff and all snow
1pm obs
Moderate snow, moderate to heavy snow in last hour with 0.8” additional and 1.5” on the board
Temp down to 31 and baro down to 30.20. Snow is icier but no sleet
The zig zag northwest was a wierd forecast depiction. Snow direction is varying from east to northwest so cold air is not retreating and low is not inland nor will it be up the bay. If baro keeps dropping at 0,04-0.05ph the critical time for immediate n and w suburbs looks to be 2-3pm. Nowcasting at its finest
Snow started 10:10am
currently 32.1 with low of 30. Snow sticking to grass and cars, most shaded concrete and some sun exposed. Rate is light with infrequent burst of large flakes, baro 30.28 down 0.06 in last 3 hours
11am opening obs
light snow. Snow commenced 10:10am. Light dusting on grass and cars, most shaded concrete and some sun exposed concrete
32.1F, low of 30, baro 30.28 and falling 0.02 ph over last 3 hours
However it turns out, when we had our best maps 2-3 days ago there was no low even to the west coast
Beside showing all scenarios models try to microscope things when they should be binoculars or telescopes. They try to predict very specific things for the east coast before Anything has showed up on the west coast or gulf coast and they rarely can do that successfully
30.15-30.30 is golden, higher than that becomes suppressive and under 30.00 and we lose the cold air. This is at the onset and during the event , my current 30.37 will not be suppressive but is a good high point to start the fall from. With a weaker low that is very well placed we can make it down to 29.85. There are exceptions but it’s a great indicator
Been dark about 40 minutes and temp has dropped 3 degrees to 36.5/22
Dont worry about the thin clouds holding temps up, the 30.35 high and n-nw light breezes are controlling.
We are probably going to be 32/25 at event start time and drop to 29/30 with the evap. I don’t think freezing rain will be an issue. I think honestly it’s just too hard to tell what’s going to happen between 1-9pm but I do think by 9 it’s all snow for DC and north and west .
Most of the day was 39-42 and your observation from 11am that this afternoon would torch because it was 40 at 11am was incorrect. Save the despondency for banter
A misdiagnosis that was made at 11am and repeated was that since temp was 40 at 11am we were already in trouble with rising temps. The sun strength is zero right now and rising barometer with fresh nw breeze allows no afternoon warming and that is what happened
Expert similar cold air exertion for the text of the way. I was 38/20 at 11am and 39/20 now, that’s a snower for me