GaWx

Yes! Baltimore/DC more than 200% of normal Jan snowfall MTD. DC 8” vs 3” normal, for example. Even Atlantic City and Wilmington, DE are above normal with 6” vs 4” normal. And even Phil has been near normal.

Update. They finally responded and said, “No I am sorry it is closed all fights to SAV cancelled on us today” but opens at 11PM tonight. I’m wondering if that’s accurate due to re-freezing and black ice forming tonight. Why would they reopen when temps are back down into 20s?

I meant closer to the east coast. But yeah, Chicago has had BN snow this month. Then again, the Ohio valley to MO has also been quite snowy. My point was to clarify for the readers that the sucky pattern was not only not sucky in many other areas in the E US but was even the opposite (great) in a large portion (Mid-Atlantic to Ohio Valley to lower Midwest south). Related to this, when it is a great pattern for the south it often isn’t in the north.

Obviously that depends on location bigtime to clarify for the readers! The SE US overall has obviously had this month one of the best patterns ever for wintry precip! The MidAtlantic has done well, too. Mainly only the NE has been below normal in the E US.

Sorry, I know this is somewhat OT, but do you happen to know if Delta flights from ATL are coming into SAV? I’m on a long hold with Delta waiting and waiting. I’m even doing text chat to try to get faster reply. Supposed to take only 5 minutes but it’s been 35 already. Now 45 minutes on hold in text chat. (I have family members with reservation made well before the storm to arrive late tomorrow morning from ATL.)

Usually a rare Deep South wintry event like the most recent one is from a low deep in the Gulf that crosses ENE over central or south FL into the Atlantic. Then it often goes out to sea well SE of the NE US instead of curling back and thus keeping the snow from moving far enough up the coast to reach the MidAtlantic and especially NE coast. So, by their nature, the very deep SE winter storms tend to not impact the NE and sometimes the NW end of the precip is even SE of the well inland parts of the SE like Atlanta. Feb of 1899 was a big exception!

Verification for corridor from SAV to Waycross of 12Z Tuesday model runs: -HRRR runs, which had by far the most snow, were way too high with snow and way too low with sleet because it had too cold 850s -GFS was even worse with 850s as it had them near 0Z from the start, which would have meant much more snow/less sleet than occurred; instead it had quite a bit too much snow/way too little sleet. But also it despite its cold 850s had that mysterious 0.3-0.4” of ZR, which was significantly too high. -Euro did well with low ZR but it had too much snow and not nearly enough IP. It appears to have had too little qpf. -CMC did very well with its 3.5-4” of SN/IP and 1.5-2” of IP, alone, as well as only 0.05” of ZR -NAM did similarly well with 1-2” of IP and <0.7” of SN, but was way too high with its damaging 0.55-0.8” of ZR -ICON did well with its limited snow but it’s hard to grade the ZR and IP since it doesn’t explicitly show either (on WxBell at least) -So overall, these HRRR/GFS runs did worst and CMC best for the SAV to Waycross corridor

Update: Surprisingly, I measured way up at ~1.3” of melted liquid equivalent! Whereas I measured 2.9” of sleet and snow and many in the city were similar, the KSAV official “snowfall” is only 1.1”! That looks too low. For one thing, their sleet changed to snow much earlier than mine did. Don even posted about them changing to snow. Also, it turns out that the melted liquid equivalent for the wintry precip came in significantly higher than earlier expected: ~1.33” per a CHS WSO met. It’s an ASOS and it had earlier reported only 0.71” per the hourlies. And they had only minimal ZR. That leaves sleet and snow. How can 1.33” of wintry precip liquid equivalent with little ZR produce only 1.1” of snowfall? I asked a KCHS WSO met. and he admitted the 1.1” looked highly suspect as being too low. He said it is an ASOS run by the FAA, which NWS has no control over. This is highly disappointing and cheapens the value of “official” records. How can that be the case with our current technology? Any thoughts? By the way, that same ASOS froze up in the 1/2018 storm and caused it to severely underreport liquid equivalent at only 0.23”. I measured 0.75! There was nothing they could do to correct it. @donsutherland1

When I learned about the difficulty in dealing with dry ice, I decided that wasn’t worthwhile. Also, no semi-reliable recent model had anything close to danger level of ZR for outages here. If they did, I would have gone with plan A of buying bags of ice. But I still charged up the 2 power packs just in case because why not since I had them. I have 30 days to return them. What are you referring to about pattern wanting to bomb us with ZR?

Congrats, holy cow on your amazing 9”, your snowstorm of the century! Who would have ever seen this coming this winter? The Cordele record is the 3.5” from the great Feb of 1973 snowstorm. That one gave this area 3.2”.

This was a very enjoyable and interesting winter storm of rare proportions here! I measured ~2.9” (mainly sleet…see image below) from a 12 hour long combo starting as sleet for couple of hours, ZR adding to base for a couple more hours, back to sleet (much more that lasted several hours), and then some snow during last few hours often mixed with sleet. And it is a very solid 2.9”! Temperatures during the bulk of it were in the upper 20s. That’s the most accumulation in this area since 12/1989. 1/2018 was ~2” of a combo. I estimate the sleet portion of the 2.9” was 2”, which would almost have to be the most sleet in the city from any storm in modern records (back to mid 1870s). 1/2018 had a good bit of sleet that lasted ~2 hours (including when mixed with snow), but it didn’t get over 0.5”. This was the 3rd most sleet I’ve ever seen behind only two ATL sleetstorms (2/1979, 1/1988). The ZR portion fortunately was much lower here than the ~0.45” in 1/2018. I’m guessing it was ~0.1” with no more than 0.05” of accretion. Thus, there were very few outages in SAV (only ~200). However, Glynn county (Brunswick) has a whopping ~28K outages, which is ~55%! Nearby Charlton county had a similar % out while Camden (~1/3) and McIntosh (~1/4) had fewer but still many out. So, extreme SE GA had by far the most ZR in the state, which was modeled well. I haven’t seen amounts yet. Total liquid equivalent precip was 0.71” at more inland SAV. Based on models calling for an avg of ~0.10” more in my area, I’m guessing ~0.80” for my place, which would be near the similarly impressive ~0.75” I got in 1/2018 (that one lasted ~7 hours). Had all of the precip been snow (which was not forecasted), perhaps I could have had up to 5” based on rough Kuchera type of considerations (nowhere near 10:1 with 850s borderline). Regardless, this 2.9” of a solid layer, if anything, will very likely melt more slowly than 5” of pure snow. After a low near 27, current temp has struggled to only 33. Thus melting of this rock solid accumulation has been very slow. Edit: For me this was not only the Brick storm (thanks @Brick Tamland) but also the Tony @dsaurstorm due to sleet dominating! He would have loved it! Edit #2: I brought inside 2 samples of the frozen precip that I had collected in 2 cylindrical cups to melt it and allow for an estimate of liquid equivalent. I did something similar in Jan of 2018 to estimate it for that winter storm. I plan to post about the results after this is completed. I’m roughly estimating 0.80” based on adding ~0.10” to KSAV’s 0.71”. @Awesomesauce81 @gtg947h @metallica470

I just measured ~1.5-1.75” of mainly sleet mixed in with the ZR of earlier. Totally sleeted in! Everything bright white. It’s amazing how light it looks more like dusk than the middle of the night! And now after an hour of a little snow mixing in with the sleet, the snow, which includes some big beautiful flakes, is increasing at 2:15! On another check at 2:20AM, it’s still majority pouring sleet!

Finally at 12:50AM, I’m after all of these hours seeing some snow mixung in with the still predominant sleet! It’s 28.6F. I have ~1.25” of sleet on the ground! @dsaur would love it! @metalicwx367

ZR changed back to moderate sleet within the last ~45 minutes and with the colder temp (29.0F), it is accumulating nicely on the ground now with ~0.5” measured! Even my asphalt street is starting to turn white. Roads are very slick with some bridges closed. As Don said, it switched to snow at the more inland airport at 10PM but went back to a mix at 11PM. Even Ft Pulaski is at 29F thanks to N winds off the cold land. Sapelo Island and St. Simons are at 32.

1. It’s been mainly ZR for the last hour here after mainly sleet for a couple of hours. That tells me 850s are probably at least ~+3C due to a stubborn warmer area that some models had. 2. 1.1” officially at KATL (overperformed).

It has turned from sleet to a mix of sleet and ZR with 30.4F. Tiny icicles on some leaves. I expect it to turn to snow soon (within a couple of hours at the very most) as the heavier stuff comes in. We’ll see. Sleet getting heavier again.

Down to 31.0F with sleet continuing. Accumulating easily on elevated surfaces.

Also, it doesn’t seem like a big ZR setup in our area with no wedge. That along with your and other reports is very encouraging. The wind is blowing the sleet up against the window. It is accumulating on the leaves of a bush I just looked at. Down to 32.5.

Sleet has just gotten much heavier and it is loud! Temp dropped to 33.4F!

Southside

Sleet started here in Savannah about 5:50PM with 35.4F. Wind blowing hard!

Unofficial FL record is 5”. That is from Jan of 1800 on border with SE GA near St. Mary’s. @donsutherland1knows about that storm. That record being clobbered!

My sis in Emory area FaceTimed me and it is coming down heaviest yet with a nice dusting!

VERY light rain here in SAV just started at 3:30PM with 37.4F.

Do you agree @purduewx80and @SnowGoose69and @CheeznadoATL may be about to get snow? Not only the radar, but Columbus and especially Auburn have been getting snow recently. Also, doesn’t the 1000 ft elevation help ATL? And @dsaur ~30-40 miles south just started getting snow!