3 hours ago, NorthHillsWx said:

With temps crashing into 20s I have a feeling this gets an advisory for a decent chunk of NC due to travel issues Thursday morning even if accumulations are light 

137 AM EST WED FEB 4 2026  

...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 10 AM  
EST THURSDAY...  

* WHAT...MIXED PRECIPITATION EXPECTED. TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS UP  
TO ONE INCH AND ICE ACCUMULATIONS AROUND A LIGHT GLAZE.  

* WHERE...A PORTION OF CENTRAL NORTH CAROLINA.  

* WHEN...FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 10 AM EST THURSDAY.  

* IMPACTS...ROADS, AND ESPECIALLY BRIDGES AND OVERPASSES, WILL  
LIKELY BECOME SLICK AND HAZARDOUS.  

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...RAIN IS EXPECTED TO CHANGE TO LIGHT SNOW OVER  
THE PIEDMONT TRIAD EAST ALONG AND NORTH OF INTERSTATE 85 LATE THIS  
AFTERNOON AND EVENING. THE SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL BE LIGHT,  
MAINLY LESS THAN 1 INCH. ELSEWHERE, A CHANGE TO A MIXTURE OF LIGHT  
FREEZING RAIN AND DRIZZLE WILL OCCUR THIS EVENING. TEMPERATURES  
WILL RAPIDLY FALL BELOW FREEZING OVERNIGHT CREATING HAZARDOUS  
TRAVEL IN THE ADVISORY  
AREA.

29 minutes ago, Coach McGuirk said:

Yeah, that’s better for NC than your area. But you should like this next one better for your area but it’s from a followup system, not the system this thread is addressing:

0Z Euro:

2 minutes ago, Ephesians2 said:

Anyone have the 18z Euro/Euro AI? 

Euro

2 hours ago, suzook said:

Seems like this drastic cold snap we were supposed to get mid month seems to be fading. Sure we will get some cold days thrown in, maybe 3 or 4 days below normal after the 15th, but it seems like a normal February to me. Some warmth, some cold. Dare I say winter is over for GA???

 What’s your definition of “winter is over”?

 I’m going to enjoy the next 7 days of no torch with ups and downs, low dewpoints, and the progged highest temp of only ~69. The period should avg a bit BN  and this should mean great walking wx. Afterward, I’m hoping any possible torch (say upper 70s to low 80s) is fairly tame and shortlived. Hopefully there’d still be lots of lows down in the 40s.

 Looking further ahead: although the Euro Weeklies maintain a -PNA and don’t have a -NAO/-AO, they cool it off to NN last week of Feb. 

 Winter’s always my favorite season even if not cold, mainly because I enjoy the lack of bugs and humidity as well as the big swings that other seasons typically don’t have.

8 minutes ago, roardog said:

If you're looking at it from where you live, I guess it's not great but overall it quickly brings back the -WPO so they'll be a lot of arctic air pressing into the ridge so I would say it actually looks pretty wintry for the country especially as you go north and west. I know that's not good for your area though.

You’re right that I was thinking more from a E US and moreso from a SE US perspective and should have stated that. My bad. I just edited the post. See if you agree more with the new wording.

 For Michigan and all of the E US, it looks mild through ~Feb 20th. After that, when model skill is very low, it’s much more up in the air.

 Today’s Euro Weeklies are again pretty ugly looking from an E US and especially SE US perspective with a -PNA/BN H5 in SW Canada dominating the weeks after Feb 10th. Also, the -AO and -NAO essentially go away. This -PNA would be a sharp reversal to the opposite of the prior 4 week long beautiful (for the E US) +PNA dominated pattern, which I’ll be able to enjoy for another week. Hoping this -PNA doesn’t last too long and that the model is wrong on it lasting for weeks.

*Edited

The Jan ‘26 30 mb QBO came in at -25.51, Jan’s 2nd lowest on record to only 2015’s -26.7:

https://psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/qbo.data

 Based on the patterns since 1948, there’s a very high chance (I’d say 95%) that it will be positive by next winter, and there’s a better than even chance for the next +QBO period to start by late summer.

12Z Euro: looks good in the Triad

2 hours ago, bluewave said:

The magnitude of the warmth in the West has been much more extreme than magnitude of the cold in the East. So the West has been experiencing historic warmth. While the East has been colder than recent winters, it’s nothing historic compared to our older winters of the past. 

 

 

Climatologist49

 

‪@climatologist49.bsky.social‬

 

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How cold has this winter been so far? The first 2/3 of winter 2025-26 is the 7th warmest on record for the Contiguous U.S.

 

10:22 PM · Feb 1, 2026

 

 

‪Climatologist49‬ ‪@climatologist49.bsky.social‬

· 1d

Here is how all areas ranked from 1 (warmest) to 131 (coolest). Team Red is WAY BIGGER than Team Blue.

 

 

9

 

 

 

 

 

 Thanks, Chris!

1. Indeed, it’s been such a warm DJ in the W 1/2! Thus, geographically as you showed, that makes it 7th warmest for the contiguous US going back 131 years. 

 2. But based strictly on population weighting or gas heating weighting, which are great measures of energy usage for heating, I’m sure you know it hasn’t been warm at all as it has been ~1F BN in the lower 48 thanks to the heavy pop. weighting of the E Midwest/Great Lakes to Mid-Atlantic/NE’s ~5BN easily outweighing the much more sparsely populated W 1/3 of the US’ ~6 AN.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/cdus/degree_days/hfstwpws.txt

3. Related to projected upcoming energy usage: yesterday’s natural gas price plunged an historic 25.7%, by far the most in one day since it started trading in 1990!! This was mainly due to the much warmer models in the E US yesterday going out ~3 weeks vs how they looked on Friday, the prior trading day. Was it way overdone in relation to progged demand drop? Of course it was!

 Here are the largest NG drops in one trading day since 1990:

-25.7% 2/2/2026

-19.1% 3/18/2004

-17.5% 11/15/2018

-17.0% 6/30/2022

-16.7% 6/14/2022

0Z Euro targets RDU with a nice hit:

 The major indices on 1/31/26, the day of the majority of the storm, were near ideal overall:

- strong +PNA: +1.4
- strong -AO: -2.9
- weak -NAO: -0.5
- moderate -EPO: -1.0
- moderate -WPO: -0.7
- MJO: moderate phase 7 (I had thought it would be phase 8)

2 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Really an interesting Winter for expectation vs trend and actuality. I think models might be a little too overdone on the warm up though, although they do develop +epo for some time which can be very warm. GFS ensembles are really warm around V-day.  If we go cold in the 2nd half of Feb, I think the price will rise again. 

1502 ET – Natural gas futures drop 26%, the largest one-day percentage decline since 1995, on warmer weather forecasts and expectations of inventory buildup. “Did the data trend warm enough to justify a more than $1 plunge? Of course not,” NatGasWeather.com says in a note, adding that natural gas price moves “often overshoot.” The Eastern half of the U.S. is expected to warm “well above normal,” the forecaster says, while production recovers after freeze-offs last week. The most-active contract closes at $3.237/mmBtu. ([email protected]; @ptrevisani)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/natural-gas-prices-pull-back-after-weather-driven-rally-4f77624d?

23 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

Yes, they're definitely a step back (continuing the trend from recent days). I actually prefer the daily data, as one can better evaluate what's happening than if one had to make guesses over 3- and 4-day intervals.

Don, Do you mean the WxBell 850 mb maps? What daily data are you referring to? Be careful with their 2m temp maps because I’ve been saying they’re colder than ECMWF’s in house data.

40 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

I'm not sure what data was used to for the run-up in the price, much less the plunge. I suspect that the dramatic shift in the CFSv2 started the sell-off. The latest ECWMF weeklies were not yet available.

In the larger scheme of things, this was not looking like a Top 3 coldest February since 2010 nationwide.

Using AmWx's Top 10 forecasters from 2025, here were the expected February numbers:

IMO, that consensus consistently beats most of what is posted on Social Media for long-range ideas, perhaps because there is no incentive to hype for clicks, views, etc.

Here are the Top 5 coldest Februaries since 2010:

#1: 2021

#2: 2010

#3: 2019

 

 

 

Today’s Euro Weeklies are if anything even worse than yesterday’s if you want a cold pattern in the E US. Also, the 10 mb has pulled up somewhat on the mid Feb reversal chance.

 Cue the folks that say the EW shouldn’t run daily lol, which is irrelevant unless you’d prefer to keep your head in the sand:

4 minutes ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

What month is this future's contract for? March or April?

I think that’s March.

Natgas’ plunge today is even more historic with it down an unbelievable >26% now!!

@Stormchaserchuck1

23 minutes ago, WinstonSalemArlington said:

Besides BAM, who foresaw below normal temperatures for January?

WxBell (Bastardi) also predicted a BN E US in Jan.

 KSAV had 19 for yesterday’s low, which was a new record, beating the old record of 23. This ties with the 19s in Dec ‘22, Jan ‘18, and Jan ‘14 for the coldest since Jan ‘11’s 18. To put this into even better perspective, the coldest there since 1990 is only a little lower, 17! The last Feb with it this cold was 1996. Only 8 other Febs since 1874 have had a low colder than 19 meaning this is ~95 percentile for a coldest Feb low!

 Today’s low there was 23.

@buckeyefan1please pin this. Thanks!

5 hours ago, WinstonSalemArlington said:

I wonder if CLT finally hit single digits.

The CLT low was 10F as of 7:15AM. So unlikely it made it to 9F though not impossible since that’s still a little before sunrise. The 10F was enough to tie the record for the day.

12Z Euro

6 minutes ago, NGTim said:

@GaWx I GOT to know if you got snow this weekend?

Hey Tim,

 Thanks for asking. Yes I did and it was a very nice hit of 0.75” (most winters have none). For more details if interested:

21 minutes ago, wxdawg10 said:

nothing "significant" about this little threat.

 This is the SE and to me the threat of a large area of 1”+ outside the mountains is significant though it’s not currently a threat of something “major”. How many of these occur each winter on average? Not many. And it has the chance to be rather impactful. That fits my definition of “significant”. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t have near the potential of the historic storm of this past weekend and also probably not the potential of the prior storm. In addition, this one isn’t threatening nearly as large an area (nowhere near me, for example). But it still could be significant wherever it hits if and when it does.

7 minutes ago, NorthHillsWx said:

I actually agree, Start it up. Inside 3 days and the signal appears to be across most if not all modeling. Let’s run it back. Screw the negativity from the wake county folks everyone will be happy if we get a coating. It wasn’t supposed to be able to snow in the south anymore, remember? Now we’re bickering over not getting 6” lol 

Thread started:

 Well, what do you know?! The model consensus is increasingly honing in on the threat of a significant snowstorm for Feb 4-5th. As of now, this threat is by far the highest in VA and NC. No rest for the weary!

@buckeyefan1please pin this. Thank you.