Richmond Metro/Hampton Roads Area Discussion

[mikeeng92]

Still hard to believe how far north this system has trended with the artic high and 50/50 with blocking. 

[overcautionisbad]

Yeah, I'll check back in here January 31st for the 02/02 "storm"

 

I remember getting burned last winter too when we thought Richmond would get a lot, then Hampton Roads got it all. Even the north peeps thought it would shift north to them. The reality for Central Virginia since 2000 has been everything tends to go North of us. When it doesn't it goes South of us. It's the geography from the mountains to the rivers. 

[RVASnowLover]

5 minutes ago, mikeeng92 said:

Still hard to believe how far north this system has trended with the artic high and 50/50 with blocking. 

Truly remarkable to have artic high pushing cold air down this way and ice is our main threat. 

[overcautionisbad]

Still convinced it will be more sleet than ice

 

My gut tells me about 5 inches in RVA. Bigger thump than expected gets everyone excited, but changes over sooner than expected. That's my gut instinct

[wasnow215]

3 minutes ago, overcautionisbad said:

Still convinced it will be more sleet than ice

Maybe but Wakefield probably feels they need to be OVERCAUTIOUS with ice forecast. See what I did there? Haha 

[overcautionisbad]

12 minutes ago, wasnow215 said:

Maybe but Wakefield probably feels they need to be OVERCAUTIOUS with ice forecast. See what I did there? Haha 

Well, in this case I would recommend everyone prepare for possible power outage, figure out where water shutoff is, and expect travel to be impossible Sunday due to ice. 

If your home loses power and heat you will want to turn your water off.

 

 

Euro is pretty nice. Looks it held to 0z. Might be locking in on it?

[Ephesians2]

26 minutes ago, mikeeng92 said:

Still hard to believe how far north this system has trended with the artic high and 50/50 with blocking. 

So I am far from an expert on these issues, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm actually not that surprised that this went north. There's one big ingredient missing and that's the PNA. If you look at the composites of a major snowstorm, we should have a ridge over the West coast, ideally centered a little bit inland, instead, we have a trough there. We should have a negatively tilted trough centered to our southwest, instead we had a Southeast Ridge. We could have done well if the southern stream and northern stream stayed separate, from a longer overrunning event like some models showed, but once it trended towards phasing out west, it was really inevitable that it was going to go north. The upper level pattern looks much more like big ice storms than big snow storms. 

[chris624wx]

12z Euro suppressed for next weekend. 

[RVASnowLover]

Euro was good. 6" seems possible in RIC before the flip

[RVASnowLover]

AKQ running behind the 8 ball like always. They need to issue WSW or Ice Storm Warnings...something

[Deep Creek]

23 minutes ago, RVASnowLover said:

Euro was good. 6" seems possible in RIC before the flip

Being burned so many times in the past, I’m thinking 2-4” snow before we change over to sleet and then freezing rain.

[RVASnowLover]

5 minutes ago, Deep Creek said:

Being burned so many times in the past, I’m thinking 2-4” snow before we change over to sleet and then freezing rain.

Totally understand. Won't know until game time 

[Dick_LeBoof]

So I'm taking a look at the NAM soundings for at Sunday 9z (when the sleet line crosses into our area) and based on my untrained eye, it seems REALLY close.  No wonder the models are struggling with the mid-level thermals.