olafminesaw

Ice ice baby?

We're due for a "kitchen sink" type storm that eventually gets washed away by cold rain. Lock it in.

Yeah honestly I'm a little surprised models are only forecasting 40-50 mph gusts considering their tendency to be overdone, particularly on the stronger Euro. It is really hard to get more than 45 mph winds in the Piedmont from baraclonic winds apart from some kind of jet enhancement/sting jet, which does not seem to be present in this case. We'll have to see what the mesoscale models show closer to the event, although they always need to be reduced by 30-50%.

Brings the higher gusts all the way to the upslope region of the blue ridge, which also where flooding rain in that scenario would occur

The Euro has a low 980s mb low going right through central NC. This would smash previous pressure records for the month of December. Kinda has the look of a subtropical storm coming up along the Gulf with a fairly tight pressure gradient

Good to see the PNA trend more positive. Would at least get some cold air to this side of the continent

This next storm could be quite potent. If the GFS is to be believed it drops into the 1980s mb and brings some hefty winds to the area

FWIW after delaying the transition to phase 8 of the MJO the past couple days, the most recent GEFS run sped up and gets us to phase 8 around Christmas. It would be hard to imagine that if this plays out we wouldn't see a marked improvement to the pattern.

Unfortunately if the pattern change does occur it still doesn't necessarily look particularly cold and snowy for us. But it does seem likely we'll get out of the current pattern where Maine to Spokane are getting warm rain. Highly anomalous patterns don't last forever and El Nino tends to shuffle things up at some point

Pretty strong indications that the gears will start to turn on the pattern change in about 10 days. The cold air would begin to move across the CONUS around christmas and settle over the East Coast by the first week in January

Going back 50 years at GSO, 62% of the time there is no measurable snow in the month of December. Of course when factoring in the December totals, years with snowfall in December have a higher average snowfall at 9.8" vs 6.5" in years without snow in December. However, when looking at January through April snowfall in isolation, there is no meaningful correlation to whether snow accumulates in the month of December (6.9" in years with snow in December vs 6.4 in years without). So going forward we shouldn't be pessimistic about our chances in the new Year, knowing that confidence in modeling more than 10 days out is near zero.

Let's not forget, last year around this time we were hoping for a massive Christmas blizzard and a solid pattern afterwards. We know how that turned out. All that to say, I'd rather be hoping for a pattern change now, considering El Ninos are typically more back-loaded.

might be a T-shirt kind of Christmas.

Yesterday's rainfall of 2.86" at GSO not only sets a daily record at GSO, but also is the highest December daily rainfall since 1958. The storm total of 3.1" brings us up to just over average for the year.

Ayyy, let's get our .1" and beat last winter before Christmas.

Monday morning starting to look rather interesting, even on the gfs.

Fair, torch is hyperbole and I'm optimistic on January FWIW. But this explains why the favorable window won't open until the very end of December at the earliest.

We're waiting for the MJO to move into phase 8. Until then, torch.

It's like the past 3 winters' snowfall every two hours through the night.

I just daydream about being atop mount Rainier in times like these:

Definitely not out of the question that the system could bring snow showers to the area, most likely just in the high elevations, but you never know with the cold air mass aloft. It will probably be too dry east of the mountains with that storm track though, after the frontal passage

The Low of 16 at Sanford is really impressive. Could be a record for the month of November, but I can't find that data.