olafminesaw

Round 1, with precip tapering off over Wake county

I'm amazed at how this image turns into potentially .1" or less of QPF east of the mountains. We've had plenty of disappointment around here (and when I lived in Virginia)usually in the form of a changeover, but nothing quite so perplexing meteorologically. Common sense normally prevails but here we are

Not excessively dry sounding at 12z, but generally close to the HRRR. Perhaps the HRRR is overdoing dry air, just a tad

Trends for round 1

First potential flakes moving off the foothills. Could produce light snow/flurries, but no mechanism to develop meaningful precip atm

Positive trends

Models looked abysmal for the triad overnight, but it's encouraging to see the hires models tend towards throwing more moisture back west with WAA as frontogenesis pushes moisture NW

Just remember no matter what happens tomorrow, disappointment is temporary, bad climo is forever

Eric going a bit more aggressive than I expected

Mood

Drier, less amped, east. Probably just correcting towards the rest of models wrt amplification

Oxford to Roanoke rapids always seems to cash in on these coastal late phases, if anywhere in central NC, that's where I'd want to be

The other thing I can't stand from the social media crowd is leveraging uncertainty to maintain engagement. It's the same tropes every time: "we're still x hours out, the energy is not yet on shore, we've seen a few ticks in the right direction, we can expect a NW trend". It's not just these are necessarily bad analyses, it's just that they are always biased towards the bigger snowfall for their target region, they are often based on "vibes", they cherry pick one model out of the dozens available, and they often try to give hope to a scenario that will pan out very rarely.

One trend I've noticed is that for anyone west of the triangle, the majority of our precip comes from the front side WAA band (about 1"), then a massive dry slot with little or no precip, followed by some light snow Thursday morning (dusting to 1"). Could even see some melting during the afternoon on Wednesday, with temps near freezing, especially in unshaded areas, depending on how quickly the first batch of precip moves through. I would just caution that even if forecasts verify, some may be frustrated by the more stop start nature of this event.

The NWS snow forecast maps are well coordinated, but there is obviously some disagreement because RAH held back on issuing warnings and these forecasts just across the border of the forecast office are definitely different (much more aggressive from Blacksburg.

Used to only run out to 18 hours. Was probably for the best. Somewhat useful within 36 hours, and as you say, once precip starts pushing into the area will be when it is in it's wheelhouse

Mostly noise, but regardless of shifts in precip, the GFS looked a bit more strung out to me. The end result was about the same, but not really a step towards the NAM IMO

I think it's fair to say the NAM is probably a bit over amped, but also acknowledge that positive QPF trends on the mesoscale models is a good thing for most and also that the warm nose will likely come into play, at least south of 85

GRAF aligns better with the rest of guidance (not quite as crazy totals). To be taken with a grain of salt, does not seem to pick up on warm noses very well

Always seems to do funky things with precip

The RGEM belongs in the stop the bleeding camp though for the foothills and moving back in the right direction for the Triad and east

Regardless of what happens, the general public is going to in unison say what storm?, around mid-morning on Wednesday

Notice the banding from the Triad N & W. Precip distribution is always less uniform and more unpredictable than we tend to expect