Jan 17-18 Sunday Funday Storm

[stormwatcherJ]

I can’t even get below 40 degrees an hour from the VA border 

[BooneWX]

7 minutes ago, cbmclean said:

As I mentioned yesterday it's frustrating how condescending and arrogant he can be, but he knows his stuff.  He's also from Parkton (near Fayetteville, NC) so he had a whole childhood to ponder SE snow fails.  That said I think it speaks well of NC weather weenies in general in that many of us, including many of us on this forum, knew that this was very unlikely to pan out and reacted accordingly.  

This is actually a very interesting case of NWP failure.  We rightly disparage the GFS, but in this case I'd say it had the overall idea more correct that the Euro on average.  Yeah the GFS bounced around like a drunk person playing Mariocart but the rock-solid Euro was rock solid wrong in the sense that it was showing no snow because it never brought the precip back NW until the very end.  And when it did, it showed the same phantom snow that the GFS did.  The NAM suite was so lost and will probably insist I got snow six hours after the storm is past.  Oddly, the usually snow-happy CMC was probably the miost consistently correct at range in that it long showed a warm NW track.

I would love to have a long convo with a NWP expert to try and understand why the models always overestimate the speed of cold fronts in general, and always fail to resolve the Apps specifically.

Agree 100% with everything above. To me, the biggest takeaway from this storm won’t be the models though. We all should’ve known better because there was no semblance of a HP to our north. Truly a cold chasing moisture event and out of 20 storms, you might score on 1/2 of those setups. 
 

Moving forward, I’ll be discounting any storm that doesn’t have this. It’s a minimum requirement around here for snow. 

[wncsnow]

We had 10 minutes of light rain and thats it. NW trend did some work but not enough. Nice downsloping cold wind blowing now 

[GaWx]

At Smithville, GA, 10 miles S of Americus, 2-3” reported by EM:

1002 AM SNOW SMITHVILLE 31.90N 84.26W  
01/18/2026 E3.0 INCH LEE GA EMERGENCY MNGR  

2 TO 3 INCHES OF SNOW REPORTED IN SMITHVILLE  
BY LEE COUNTY EM. SOME ACCUMULATION ON DIRT  
ROADS WITH ICY PATCHES ON SPOTS IN PAVED  
ROADS.

[Shack]

11 minutes ago, El Kabong said:

Yes, Larry. We definitely had a couple of rounds of moderate to borderline heavy snow. Changeover happened just before 8 AM so we ended up with about a two hour window of snowfall. 3/4” appears to be the final total here in Perry. Still snowing lightly, but shouldn’t add much to the accumulations as the back edge is knocking on our door.

Yesterday’s warm temperatures definitely created a challenge for accumulations. Our high yesterday was 62°!

Crazy Cartoon Horse sighting !!

Sure was pretty, wasn't it.  It's stopped now in Macon and my temp is up to 34deg now. 

Had a good Jeb-walk while it was still pouring.  

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned but it's only two days away from the anniversary of last years southern snow event.

 

[NorthHillsWx]

Lots of bright banding over triangle right now. Sad thing is we did actually end up with solid QPF, 0.25” so far and raining moderate. Cold chasing moisture rarely works but Georgia is the perfect example why- areas south enough where cold didn’t have to go over mountains are snowing. Pretty textbook look into why it’s 40 and raining here but 32 with 1-3” there

[GaWx]

13 minutes ago, Shack said:

Crazy Cartoon Horse sighting !!

Sure was pretty, wasn't it.  It's stopped now in Macon and my temp is up to 34deg now. 

Had a good Jeb-walk while it was still pouring.  

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned but it's only two days away from the anniversary of last years southern snow event.

 

Has a lot of it melted away already? I read someone else said the Macon camera showed it “gone”, but I didn’t know exactly what he meant. That seemed awfully fast if it did.

[eyewall]

Getting liquid snow here

[suzook]

That backend snow line is impressive! Wonder how far east it can go?

[GaWx]

1-1.25” Marianna, FL, just SW of GA/FL/AL corner!

1042 AM SNOW MARIANNA 30.78N 85.24W  
01/18/2026 M1.3 INCH JACKSON FL PUBLIC  

ABOUT 1 TO 1.25 INCHES OF SNOW MEASURED AS A  
FINAL ACCUMULATION.

[eyewall]

I know it shouldn't because I expected it but it still feels like a gut punch. 

[buckeyefan1]

I had a little flizzard as expected and I’m currently waiting to see if it changes over for the grandkids who are a few hours down south from me  Congrats to the GA, Ala and Florida crew!!

[EarlGrey]

42 and rain here. No way it can get cool enough at this point. 

[Shack]

39 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Has a lot of it melted away already? I read someone else said the Macon camera showed it “gone”, but I didn’t know exactly what he meant. That seemed awfully fast if it did.

Here, at 11:19a.m., it's 35deg and I'd say it's definitely not "gone."  Some notable melt in the "wet" areas of the yard, though, as there was a steady light drizzle almost all of last night here.

But, it won't stay around much longer, I think, as the satellite imagery shows the clearing skies almost to me now.

[SnowGoose69]

45 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Has a lot of it melted away already? I read someone else said the Macon camera showed it “gone”, but I didn’t know exactly what he meant. That seemed awfully fast if it did.

As SE Alabama clears on satellite you can see it melts fairly fast

[eyewall]

12 minutes ago, EarlGrey said:

42 and rain here. No way it can get cool enough at this point. 

Nope. Absolutely cooked. 

[GaWx]

Swainsboro switched from rain to snow at the 11AM hourly:

SWAINSBORO LGT SNOW 34 34 100 W5

[BooneWX]

Congrats to all that scored today! Wild to see snow that far south two years in a row. This is the type of anomaly that will turn some kids into meteorologists. 

[SEwakenosnowforu]

44 now in south Wake. Temp went up 1 degree last hour. Can't make this crap up. Sigh 

[BooneWX]

1 minute ago, SEwakenosnowforu said:

44 now in south Wake. Temp went up 1 degree last hour. Can't make this crap up. Sigh 

I feel for yall. I had a bad feeling for all down east when my temp 10 miles from the escarpment wasn’t dropping at 12 am last night. 

[Summey]

37.9° with 0.31” of rain since midnight.   

[NorthHillsWx]

Too little too late but temp is starting to crash here. Got up to 42.5 and in the last hour have crashed to 39.4 with stronger north wind noticeable outside. 0.47” rain since midnight 

[WXNewton]

Light snow falling in Newton 

[kvegas-wx]

Snowing in Kernersville now

[Upstate Tiger]

After about 15 minutes of sleet, finally gone over to snow in West Lincoln.  Don’t expect it to amount to much but nice seeing it.  

[Tullioz]

Light snow just west of Eden. 37.4°/28.9°

[landof2rivers]

Finally have flakes falling but not many. Still nice to see.

[kvegas-wx]

Pretty quickly just went 100% snow in Kernersville   Flakes noticeably larger.  Decent rates.

Edit 30 seconds later - now its steady snow.  Back edge coming thru.  Maybe 45 mins of solid mood flakes before it ends.

[SEwakenosnowforu]

Temp dropped to 41 now. 3 degrees in one hour.

[WarmNoseHater]

spectacular drizzle in charlotte