January 24-26: Miracle or Mirage OBS Thread!

[heavy_wx]

The transition to sleet here in southern MoCo lines up pretty well with the low RhoHV and high reflectivity on the 4-degree PPI scan from LWX.

[GreyHat]

19F

Humidity 95

ENE 15

Snowing bigger flakes and drifting 

[arlingtonforest]

6 inches in Arlington, sleet, and a little rain.

[Wetbulbs88]

Flipped to sleet about 20 minutes ago. Let's see how far 3:1 can get us!

[balltermen]

5 minutes ago, Scraff said:

Can someone eyeball measure this for me. I can’t reach it from my couch. 

5.8"

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

4 minutes ago, Scraff said:

Can someone eyeball measure this for me. I can’t reach it from my couch. 

Just hold up your beer can, eyeball the relative height of the snow out there on the deck against the can, and there ya go!!!

[katabatic]

Damn Davis, WV reported 13.8" at 7 AM. Might have to do a little drive out that way.

[EastCoast NPZ]

The 6" drought here lives on. Unreal.

[csnavywx]

15 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

I think the snow im getting is grown UNDER the warm nose. Very strong cold CAD. Tiny flakes, poor growth, but still sn nevertheless

Yep. I'm getting primarily needles, which would match up with that.

[aldie 22]

Just finished shoveling my snow stick got corrupted by my dog but about 6.5" but im sleet/snowing for awhile now. I thought that finger coming up from my sw might hurt and it did. Still really wintry out

[T. August]

@CAPE you sleet yet? I wanna know what this massive blob of yellow will do lol.

[North Balti Zen]

Right at 5 inches in Fallston at 8:15 am - wasn’t expecting some of the gusts - at times blowing out here enough to really reduce visibility - racing to try and get 6 or more before the flip to sleet.

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

4 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

NAM thermals are deadly. 

 

2 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

This is the last time the forum underestimates NAM thermals... until the next marginal event. Seems wrong calling this a "marginal event" when the temperature is in the teens.

Fortunately, at least, the NAM was not correct in terms of QPF it appears.  But yeah, there was no way the mid-level thermals were going to hold on in our area through the entire morning (though my hope of hopes was that we'd luck out through 18Z!).

[poprock49]

Kinda hard to classify  the intensity of sleet, but I’d say this is mod-heavy. Don’t mind it actually 

[ErinInTheSky]

Snow is HOLDING ON in Gaithersburg. I see that SN/Sleet line in Bethesda. You better STAY over there hahaha.

[CAPE]

6 minutes ago, SnowtoRain said:

Mostly sleet in Easton now. 4.5" of snow.

After that band it lightened up, in a lull now. Looks like just a bit of sleet falling now.

[SilentTalkie]

Outages starting to show up in SW Virginia. 

[GramaxRefugee]

5.0" at 8:00, all snow

16f

[baltosquid]

Snowflakes falling less sideways now as they get heavier (as in weight) and bigger. It is also heavier rate wise.

[WxUSAF]

6 minutes ago, osfan24 said:

Seeing bigger flakes now. Probably a bad sign.

We're in a little subsidence area looks like based on radar.  Snow sounds icy against the window.  Might go back and forth like the NoVA folks are getting.  

[CAPE]

2 minutes ago, T. August said:

@CAPE you sleet yet? I wanna know what this massive blob of yellow will do lol.

Just went from moderate snow to not much of anything, but what is falling is sleet.

[Scraff]

3 minutes ago, Scarlet Pimpernel said:

Just hold up your beer can, eyeball the relative height of the snow out there on the deck against the can, and there ya go!!!

I figured it out. It’s a 16oz can. So 6.1”

[mitchnick]

Lots of MD traffic cams here

https://chart.maryland.gov/InteractiveMap/GetInteractiveMap

[wxdude64]

Been a while (maybe never) when it is sleeting so hard (again, a few mangled flakes) that vis is .2-.5 mile. 

Temp finally budged up a hair after falling over 16 hours, currently 11.3/8.1 at 8:20 am. A solid .5 to .7 of new sleet/mix in 75 minutes!

[aldie 22]

4 minutes ago, aldie 22 said:

Just finished shoveling my snow stick got corrupted by my dog but about 6.5" but im sleet/snowing for awhile now. I thought that finger coming up from my sw might hurt and it did. Still really wintry out

 

[Kleimax]

Flake size starting to increase. Started Jebwalk around 7:50 mostly just icy little flakes, they’re starting to get a little fluffier now. Wind is def gusting and the snow is drifting a bit. Deep winter out there 

[Snowman.]

Big dendrites all snow in Sterling still holding on for now.

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

As much as I REALLY wish this could have been all or mostly snow, I don't totally mind experiencing what may be a veritable sleet bomb.  In 2007, for the Valentine's Day storm when I was in the Capitol Hill area of DC, we got 3" of sleet.  No snow at all.  But that was a relatively warmer storm (I think it went just above freezing for a short time after the sleet before temps plummeted, and it didn't start as cold as this one).  This event will be very cold throughout.  I hear people talking about sleet bombs from 2017 or 2018 (??) but I don't recall that, maybe closer to the metro areas it wasn't much of anything compared to other locations.  I do remember we were expected to get a ton of sleet in 2021-ish??  Ended up with an inch maybe that was over before noon, kind of a bust.

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

2 minutes ago, Scraff said:

I figured it out. It’s a 16oz can. So 6.1”

Might be the alcohol content, too!!!

[CAPE]

@T. August

You can see a line on radar moving north. When that passed over me snow ended and a bit of sleet falling now.