olafminesaw

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

I am beginning to wonder if the mantra that the warm nose always wins will actually be a benefit, to those of us north and west especially. Could help develop heavier precip returns as I believe the hires NAM might be starting to pick up on

Looks okay to me. It is indicating light precip with heavy radar returns, so obviously indicating dry air cutting into totals. I think if those kind of radar returns develop, the column would saturate

The lower resolution NAM tends to do an abysmal job at precip distribution, I would wait for the hires version to come into range

It has been very good for the most part at identifying the late phase/QPF distribution. This is the last four days of model runs. It lost it there for a bit, but no other model came close to getting it right up until yesterday

I have one more negative post and then I'm done being negative. In the triad, if you exclude sleet for the 2022 storm, we have not had a 3"+ snowstorm in over 6 years. During the 2010s Greensboro had 12 3"+ daily snowfalls. I would happily have zero snow a couple years and then get a nice solid 3-5" snowfall, but we can't even seem to manage that after finally breaking the drought. I still think it's possible we break 3", but seems like a long shot at the moment

My sense is it does a good job of identifying banding, dry air etc, but best used within 24 hours. Looks to me like the coastal gets going sooner which is why totals are so high, so I don't necessarily buy that. But precip with the first part of the storm crossing the mountains is better than other models so that is encouraging

GFS slows the bleeding a bit

Still has the late phase but much more explosive. Could be epic for the tidewater, triad to triangle in the battle zone

Hmmm...

I feel this is underdone for Raleigh, where even if mostly sleet, over an inch seems likely

Don't love the trend towards late development, meaning pretty dry West of Durham

Encouraging to see temps in the mid 20s. Should stave off the *drip drip. Rates may be low to start with dry air/poor dynamics.

We do tend to ignore the jet stream impact, which the models tend to underestimate as well. If we can get the storm to slow down a bit we would go from unfavorable jet dynamics as the GFS depicts (right side of the jet streak), to neutral/favorable.