NorthHillsWx

Until the pacific relaxes this looks like shut the blinds for winter weather for a long time. Models showing that extreme negative PNA look now with what they’re spitting out. Just a ripping flow too, drought areas likely to get much worse. Canada is still very cold and stays cold so there might be hope down the road. December likely to finish BN for most and most of NC has measurable snow already so no shutout. Might be time to throw your middle finger up at the pacific I’m sure it’ll pay attention and listen

The big pond at my farm in Franklin county has completely frozen over. It catches a lot of sunlight and doesn’t typically freeze solid but maybe once or twice a year. Low sun angle and no wind Monday morning likely contributed but this is the first time it’s frozen in December since 2018. Farm bottomed out at 22 last night and 12.6 Monday morning. High only reached 32 there yesterday. Pretty good start to winter regardless of the upcoming pattern reset

Looks pretty set that through around new years the east is going to be NN to AN and the only source of cold would be a sneaky high building in from New England (would get us cold enough so that people laugh at those calling for a torch but not actually provide winter weather shots). NAO now looks to stay slightly negative or neutral, so not much of a factor. PNA is going to stay deeply negative. I hope this is a reset and not a new base state for this winter. This would require an active STJ and with the pacific raging that isn’t going to happen. I get it with NAO going neutral to slightly negative and ridge building over the Midwest, so we’ll have back door fronts and wedge opportunities, but there isn’t any moisture. Dry and near normal through new years would be the best forecast call for the region. Probably a few AN days thrown in

Low of 25.0 actually occurred before midnight, then temps rose to 31.7 before dropping in the last hour to 29.9. Clouds and wind likely contributed to the temp spikes through the night as evidenced by RDU observations

34.7 was the high, low was 14.5 this morning. Already down to 26.0

As @wncsnow is saying, I see nothing muted about this “torch”. To me a week of above normal for the eastern half of the us is a torch. Maybe our temps get muted somewhat bc of a wedge but synoptically the cold is gone from the east for an extended period so this is the dreaded shut the blinds pattern until maybe the first week in January. I don’t see a hell ridge from the SER but if you want winter weather (everyone posting here) near normal isn’t going to cut it and there aren’t any threats as far as we can look out at this point. We’re punting 2+ weeks that’s a given.

That “lake effect” band over far east NC put down some serious snow near Fairfield. Pics are incredible looks like a couple inches… Don’t see that often!

Bottomed out at an impressive 14.5. Dewpoint got all the way down to -3! Currently 15.3

You’ve already had a good winter!

15.1 right now still dropping. About as cold as it can get here without snowpack. If you added snow cover to this airmass here you’d see spots in central NC approaching 0. We’re a whopping 39 degrees colder than this time yesterday

Yawn

Flipped over to a rain/snow/IP mix here. 39.6 EDIT: Finished with 0.10” of rain. 1.49” MTD total and looks like we’re gonna be stuck on that for awhile

Hit 54 at 3:30 but we are tanking now, down to 41

PNA has now trended to insane negative levels around Christmas. It stays negative into January. A +PNA and -NAO with MJO remaining favorable would feed families but alas, the pacific gives us the middle finger

Bottomed out at 27.0

Some sort of CAD wedge will develop and we’ll be stuck at 45 degrees and drizzle all day. Book it.

Already undershot forecast here. Down to 28.4

Snow capital of the sub forum

RDU officially recorded a TR of snow at 4 am so this will be official in the books.

Obviously no one notices these small events like flurries with no accumulation like weenies do but that’s very impressive for this area before Christmas to see 4 events with frozen precip

3 snows and that one event that started as sleet. That’s officially 4 frozen. It’s actually picked up some now, pretty mood flakes coming down. Very wintry, temp up to 37

This is the 4th time we’ve seen a TR of frozen this winter. Maybe that bodes well?

33 with flurries falling. 30.6 was low

I remember when happy hour used to be… happy

What’s amazing is that we’ve even been able to snow at all last year and some this year with these moisture starved shortwaves. It takes a potent shortwave to wring out moisture east of mountains with zero gulf connection or Atlantic development. What caused all the nor Easter’s this summer? I know most of them didn’t cause a lot precip inland but it seemed there was a coastal low almost weekly over the summer. Was it just the well established eastern trough or was there a southern stream connection? I cannot remember I just know the obx took a beating