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Richmond Metro/ Hampton roads obs/disco winter thread


Midlo Snow Maker

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That storm was CRAZY out in the Valley. I lived in Fishersville but still went to Staunton City Schools. Woke up, looked outside, snow was EVERYWHERE. City schools were delayed 2 hrs. I go back to sleep and when I wake up city schools were STILL only delayed 2 hours. I get dressed, etc. and call my mom because she worked for the city schools. WTF?!?!?

"Just go slow, once you make it out of the neighborhood you'll be fine."

So, I clean off the car and leave. It takes 10 minutes for me to get up the hill (driving east) out of my neighborhood in 6" of snow, +SN BLSN, etc. I get to US250 and turn west. Within 1.5 miles, I go from 6" to NOTHING. Not a single flake of snow had accumulated not much more than 1,500 to 2,000 feet from my house (as the crow flies) while I had 6" on the ground. I was speechless.

I remember it well. I was living in an apartment with my brother and a friend and measured an average of 13.5". One side of the apartment building was bare ground. The other side had drifts over 3 feet. My car had this nice sculpted snow shooting off the back, which was surprising since it was powdery. My wife (fiance at the time) was up at Mary Baldwin and didn't receive a flake. A few weeks later I visited her up there and we got close to a foot in just a few hours. That was when the ice storm hit the Piedmont pretty hard.

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NBC 12 is calling for mild winter with more rain than snow with ice storm risks. They are calling for near normal or below normal snowfall 13.0 Inches or lower.

Looking at the distribution of snowfall from season to season since 1897, if they really had to guess, 5-10" is more likely than any other class. No TV station would ever predict more than 30" of snow at RIC nor would any ever predict less than 2".

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It didn't have much support from its own ensemble members at least for the dec 5-6 storm. The models have been jumping around so much, there is not much to be gleaned from them except that the pattern will be a tough one to call snowstorms much in advance.

Wes in response to a comment about recent GFS runs showing a large coastal low.

Looks like there is no point in obsessing over model runs at this stage (but then again, when is there ever a point in that).

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Great to see all the stations in the area coming out with there prediction for winter. Looks like we might have a potential for more ice than snow.

It's interesting that ice storms (ZR) have not been common the last 10 years. After 5.0" officially at RIC from the December 4-5, 2002 storm, there was a rather significant amount of ZR that fell on top. With a good snowcover, it made for a really pretty scene as lots of ice accumulated on tree limbs and power lines. January 29-30, 2000 delievered much more and is probably the last true major ice storm in the Richmond area. December 23-25, 1998 and particularly February 9-10, 1994 were extremly bad. For the 1994 event, RIC had several inches of pure IP and a couple inches of liquid equivalent ZR on top.

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Thanksgiving 12z GFS:

- Possible back end snow from mid-week system laugh.gif

- Impressive cold beginning around the 7th

Not even sure that's back in snow really. Looks more like frontal passage precipitation .. which would be rain if anything. 6 hour total precip deception verses instantaneous 850 isotherm location.

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Drove to Indianapolis on Thanksgiving Day. We saw 72 and sunny in WVA mountains, severe Thunderstorms in Eastern Indiana, and heavy snow squalls in Indiana Thursday night. Still some snow on the ground in OH on the drive home today. Somehow I worry I may have peaked for this year.

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