Cold Rain

I thought the same thing. It's a misleading tactic designed to be click bait.

Better than an extra long cold drought event!

Nice little chilly rain event. Good to keep the drought conditions at bay this time of year.

Can you do please do these updates at least 4 times per week? Thanks!!

Going to be an eye-strainer!

Great read, Grit! I hope you bust too warm!!

That's awesome. I think our area might crash all the way down to the upper 20s one night. A few days ago, I remember seeing a 12. Models seem like they might struggle by overdoing temps just a little bit in the long range.

100% agree. Take it and run. All day long!

It is hard to believe that we will get as cold as the models are hinting at next week. Lows below 20? That would be a pretty amazing feat for mid-November. I bet we'll see some moderation in that forecast over the next few days.

Fall is coming! Starting to look chilly as we roll towards Halloween.

Good. We'll expect the rainy pattern from last week to repeat over and over this summer!

The winds upstairs are going to be at the upper end of what we usually see around here. RE: the NAM, I do not trust its depictions of CAPE or meso lows and such right now. It always looks scary severe weather-wise. I won't say there's zero tornado risk because we just don't know yet. At this point, what we do know is that there are some things look likely and some things look possible. It looks likely that instability will be limited, due to an elevated warm layer and a largely overcast sky. It looks likely that there will be a lot of wind energy aloft that can be easily tapped. It looks likely that there will be a lot of rain, and the soil will be easily saturated. It looks likely that flooding will be a concern. It looks likely that even if winds remain below severe limits in most areas, downed trees would still be a concern, due to the aforementioned soil conditions. It is possible that instability will be higher if breaks in the cloud cover occur (hard to tell at this lead). It is possible that a meso-low forms, backing the low level winds and increasing the tornado threat, at least for eastern areas. It is possible that convection earlier in the day reduces instability by the time the main forcing comes through, thus reducing the wind threat. The main take-aways for me right now are that the potential is there for widespread wind damage reports, resulting from a squall line. There is not yet enough clarity or broad support to justify anything higher than an Enhanced Risk at this point, IMO. I certainly wouldn't be using the word "historic" yet. It is possible that things could change for the worse. But that is not the most likely scenario, based on the data available right now.

Strongly agree with all of this.

Same here. Thought you would have done a bit better. Maybe we can get a March Miracle.

How much did you get in December?

12 hours still might be a bit early, but it would probably be at least within the window of appropriate lead time for a thread this year.

That’s awesome. Will we finally be able to get one stick around till the100 hour mark?

Saw a couple of flakes on the way into downtown Raleigh this morning. Of course, that's not all that unusual for a drive in.

It snowed a bit here in SE Wake and then went to sleet then rain. We got about an inch of slush. That was it for the winter.

I saw 10 minutes of snow in the December storm. Unfortunate that we couldn't buy any cold this year.

Hard to get too bullish yet, given our history of watching 7+ day threats warm up on the way in. But we're in the final innings and the signal is strong for a storm. Hopefully, it won't trend north too badly.

Yep. That said, it is a piece of junk. Hopefully, they take it back to the workshop before they put it on the open road. I think we will have at least one more legit shot before all is said and done this year.

Greg Fishel out at WRAL. What a miserable way to end a miserable winter.

I don't know for sure, as I haven't researched it. When I look at a SST map, though, in general, there are plenty of places with warm anomalies that do not have ridging being continually forced. My guess is that the SER is a response. I'm sure there are some feedbacks at work, but generally, it is a response to the placement of negative anomalies elsewhere. What has been somewhat curious to me has been the frequency of the -EPO pattern in winters of late. I don't remember hearing all that much about that index before 4-5 years ago. But we sure have had a lot of -EPOs and an astonishing lack of -NAOs over the last while. This repeating configuration has certainly favored more central areas of the US than the SE. I don't have a sense as to how the PNA has acted over the last 5 years or so...I am remembering it being mixed, but it certainly could have been more positive or negative in general than I remember. What I do remember is not a lot of deep south and southeast snowstorms. Instead, we get this gradient pattern and front end mix events. I think that is a product of the EPO and lack of NAO. We don't get those southern sliders with cold highs to the north anymore. Everything reforms or cuts, courtesy of no blocking. But back to the SER, it really hasn't been a stable feature over the last several years. The thing that stings this year is that nobody saw it coming -- nobody really saw a -PNA/+SER back half of winter. I guess "backloaded" just don't mean what it used to. And by the time we're able to break the pattern, it will be beyond the reasonable window for winter weather, most likely. The GEFS and EPS look horrific as far as the eye can see. SOI diving, MJO allegedly circling favorably, but nothing but SERs down the line. We only get two, maybe three months of the year where we can be in winter weather mode, and to waste more than half of it in -PNA purgatory is really disappointing. Unless something drastically changes, this will go down as the worst winter ever for me. I'm sure that I've had 1" of snow or less in the past, but the expectations going into this winter are weighted heavily in my mind. We have had no really wintry days. By that, I mean one where we had a snow, sleet, or freezing rain event where it was just solidly below freezing all day and you didn't have to worry about the temps. I mean, we haven't even had a clipper come through forcing random snow showers. It's just been an awful winter. Solid F.

There are pretty much no indications in any of the modeling over the next 10-15 days that suggests a turn toward colder weather. By the end of that period, the pattern may begin to change. But that is still far from certain. Whatever is driving this train wreck is locked and loaded for a long time. By the time we turn, it will likely be later in March. We may still sneak through a well-timed event, but you might as well flip a coin. All these intermittent colder solutions 6+ days out end up being warmer as you move in. Without a true pattern change, I a fear the chances of a big winter storm around here are slim to none. The SE ridge looks to really flex in about 10 days.