Feb 18/19 Disco/Obs

[wxtrix]

4.75" snow/0.25" of sleet. just flurries and light sleet now, 24/20.

[Majopa]

3 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

lol everyone look at the FNG

Been here a bout a month or so. Accuweather.com has been better at predicting the weather than the 20,000 different models and forecasts posted here. 

[mattie g]

1 minute ago, Winter Wizard said:

I'm a bit farther west than you. 

Sleet bomb continues here. Measurements in the grass range from 1.2-1.8" or so. 

[nj2va]

Sun poking through here.

[r3w]

Nothing interesting here other than a bit of freezing rain & sleet. Looks cool though I guess.

[dailylurker]

Looks like about 1.5" of snow and mostly sleet. I said this morning how the radar to the SW looks like nothing but scattered light activity after the main band. I got roasted and here we are at 11:15 with reports of sunshine. I guess some people don't like reality mention on here lol. Another bust. Amazing. I will say the sleet is cool to walk in.

[Rhino16]

No precip near Tuckahoe at the moment. It was mostly sleet, and pretty underwhelming(Luckily!). Not a ton of sleet, but enough to cover the roads, and a small glaze of freezing rain on trees.

[MN Transplant]

3/4” sleet depth.  0.42” precip.  What a kick in the nuts.

[mattie g]

Just now, MN Transplant said:

3/4” sleet depth.  0.42” precip.  What a kick in the nuts.

Yup. Lack of precip was the killer in our backyards, which is the surprising part of this one for me, as I never expected to have much in the way of snow.

[wxinVA]

Appears to be done here. Looks like we finished up with about .75" of snow and a dusting of sleet. 

[Cobalt]

0.9" of pure sleet here in McLean. The sandy nature of it is at least interesting. Don't remember Feb 2007 so this is just about the most sleet I've seen in any given event. Pretty paltry total, but we knew what kind of fire we were playing with in this given setup. Still, I'm glad peeps in the NW sections of this subforum cashed in pretty well. Especially the far western members so far this season. I know the past few Ninas have screwed you guys pretty bad (especially 17-18), so seeing multiple events break your guys' way is at least a positive. 

[nw baltimore wx]

7 minutes ago, BlackCat said:

Your question here...

Do you mean how it's sleeting and can rain below freezing?

If so, go here...

https://www.weather.gov/lwx/winter_DC-Winters

and here.

https://www.weather.gov/rnk/Measure_Icing

[Wetbulbs88]

1 minute ago, Majopa said:

Yeah I highly doubt that

Hmmmm. People who have been this for decades...vs. a neophyte sadist with transparently and poorly sublimated depression...

I think I'll take the word of the former. 

[Ji]

this event was awful for Loudoun. Just un eventful. The NAM 3k was right. We didnt even see good sleet and zero snow

[ovechkin]

The nice thing about sleet I guess is that when it’s plowed the piles make it seem like it snowed 6 inches. Next week when it’s 50 plus out those piles might still be there. 

[leesburg 04]

Pixie mist light snowpies falling now almost looks foggy

[leesburg 04]

3 minutes ago, Ji said:

this event was awful for Loudoun. Just un eventful. The NAM 3k was right. We didnt even see good sleet and zero snow

Wait Leesburgwx dude said you had 2.5" of sleet and it was pounding a few hours ago

[leesburg 04]

The pixies are accumulating lol

[LP08]

3 minutes ago, Wetbulbs88 said:

So you're cherry picking data points, congrats. 

The pros at NWS specifically mentioned the NAM's temperature profiles. And many received this QPF, just not our area.

Try again. 

We are discussing the storm, right?  Precip was the issue, especially this morning.  I don't doubt the warm nose at all and was never expecting big snow amounts, but precip will be way underdone. The "pros" still thought that some accumulation would happen.  It was a miss of the big precip.

[mattie g]

2 minutes ago, Wetbulbs88 said:

So you're cherry picking data points, congrats. 

The pros at NWS specifically mentioned the NAM's temperature profiles. And many received this QPF, just not our area.

Try again. 

But which areas received 1" of QPF? Also, I don't see that this area has widespread 0.6"-1.00" of QPF, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.

[Cobalt]

22 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I went with 2-5" along 95.  At the time with all the doom posting about the NAM's showing no snow I kind of considered that a positive bust.  Even that looks high though, although remember sleet accumulation counts.  But I really thought with heavier banding it would mix with snow enough...but the heavy banding (again) set up NW of 95 so that didn't work out.  It was close...you can see during some of the heavy banding places pretty far SE did mix with snow.  I wanted to be optimistic.  Figured we were due for something to break good for once.  I was wrong about that.  But my "fear" all along for what could wreck this turned out to be correct.  Even up here I have mixed with a lot of sleet and its holding down accumulations.  

I think you were pretty realistic for the most part. Even with that 2-5", that came with the assumption that a good bit of that zone would get .8"-1" of QPF, which was what basically every model had as it's output. Even if it's all sleet, that narrowly hits the bottom part of the forecast.  I had an old page from the storm thread still open from Tuesday, and checking back in it, you were pretty clear about the potential warm nose issues. 

Regardless, yeah now we know why the forecast played out the way we did. One of the things that might've calmed people's nerves was the airmass we had going into the event, but of course that's only considering surface temps. I think most expected our fail scenario to be either warmer 850s, or less precip, but the two coinciding was not a recipe for a fun time. 

[Chris78]

Ended up with 3.0 here of Snow/Sleet in Smithsburg. 

[Wetbulbs88]

Just now, LP08 said:

We are discussing the storm, right?  Precip was the issue, especially this morning.  I don't doubt the warm nose at all and was never expecting big snow amounts, but precip will be way underdone. The "pros" still thought that some accumulation would happen.  It was a miss of the big precip.

No, they didn't. I can go back and grab the disco for you. They absolutely mentioned the speed of the storm and the overdoing of QPF. 

[SnowDreamer]

1 minute ago, Wetbulbs88 said:

So you're cherry picking data points, congrats. 

The pros at NWS specifically mentioned the NAM's temperature profiles. And many received this QPF, just not our area.

Try again. 

Uhm... This is a geographically-based sub-forum. What matters to us is how well a model performs in our area. I'm not especially interested in whether or not the NAM nailed QPF in NYC. I'm not saying the NAM is bad. It's been REALLY good this year, but 3k and 12k both busted. 

[SnowtoRain]

Moderate sleet with brightening skies, are sleet rainbows a thing?

[SnowenOutThere]

Well never being in an actual sleet event it was sort of cool but uh it was a bust only around an inch of sleet. My forecast issued to some friends during the 12z runs of yesterday said 3-6 inches of snow and sleet maybe even mostly sleet and almost no snow but unlikely. Total we got 1 inch of sleet that sort of stinks not to mention my forecast was horribly off all because of 1 degree. Did any model do well at the 12z suit with the temp issues and the QDF? Oh well we still got March. 

[SnowDreamer]

Just now, SnowtoRain said:

Moderate sleet with brightening skies, are sleet rainbows a thing?

Look up "sun dog"

[WinterWxLuvr]

16 minutes ago, r3w said:

Nothing interesting here other than a bit of freezing rain & sleet. Looks cool though I guess.

Very nice!

[WinterWxLuvr]

Is more precip coming?

[lpaschall]

Freezing rain and sleet now in Westminster 23F. Ready for the glaze on my snow.