WidreMann

12z GFS looks stronger with the northern stream system coming in late week and weaker with the system over the SW. I suspect we'll see a suppressed track as the model begins to lose the storm. We'll see if I'm right.

So I guess we're in agreement that climate change is happening and that the sea ice is reflecting a period of ever increasing warming. Right?

It's true that we only have satellite records going back to 1979, but we do have other data going back further than that, some many tens of thousands of years or more. At no point in the past several centuries has the ice been in such a sorry state. Could it have been less during the Medieval Warm Period? Possibly. But the rest of the planet wasn't also baking, so the MWP could be reversed as its local causes receded.

But what would a similar weather pattern have produced 20 years ago? That's the question you have to ask yourself whenever there's a cold anomaly of some sort. Extent probably would have been a good bit higher, but now we have warmer SSTs and temps, so while its pace is great, it's still way behind the historical norms.

This convergence makes it clear that the solution is probably correct. Lots of egg-on-face for folks in the Triangle who were pumping up the Fran 2.0 angle when the storm was still 4-6 days away and the models were showing a lot of uncertainty.

GGEM takes it slowly inland over eastern NC. It was the last outlier. It's still kind of an outlier in its northerliness, but not by as much.

Yep. The models have converged in a way that they were not a day or so ago. They show some track variance and some small detail differences, but the overall picture is pretty much the same among all of the majors (GGEM excepted).

The important thing is that the ridge over the SE is a bit stronger than 18z, which would argue for more of a stall and a more easterly track.

Is the 3k, or the regular NAM for that matter, a reliable tropical model? Don't both of them get their initial and boundary conditions from the GFS?

Indeed, the GFS and Euro show only 1-2" of rain for RDU and wind gusts topping out in the 40s at best. Any more shifts south and it'll just be cloudy and breezy. A far cry from what the public probably still expects from this storm. I was not sold on this Fran-like track that was all the rage Sunday and Monday, but I expected that a track up the coast and out to sea around the upper-level ridge would be the most favored scenario. It's hard to think that we'd get a stall scenario this far north in mid-September, yet now with these persistent big ridges in the eastern half of the country, I guess this may be the new norm.

I bet they'll slow it down at 5 AM. They probably want to see the 00z suite before going all-in on the stall-and-meander solution.

I'm amazed at how small the western part of the precip shield is. GFS doesn't give any rain for central and western coastal plain, even though winds pick up. Strange.

Which storm was that?

I also have no idea how good the Euro's wind gust maps are. The sustained winds map is in the 30-50 mph range for comparison.

weather.us shows basically the same numbers, even higher as we get into Friday afternoon. I really hope it heads further south, or keeps inching eastward and we can stay on the western side of things.

If the storm is moving faster or slower, that will affect its status as of 2 PM on Friday.

But they did: https://weather.us/cyclone-tracks/euro/800-w-320-n/2018091012-240-florence.html. Compare with 00z.

I feel like I deserve a roasting. I mean, the HRRR temps were worrying and we did stay above freezing for most of the event, but we still got a ton of snow.

Except north central Wake, where it is only flurrying. They are having some really bad luck.

Y'all normally get the coastals while RDU gets skipped.

I'm still baffled by the warming. In what universe does moderate or more than moderate snow with a north wind and a completely cold column result in temps warming at the surface? I swear, every storm there's a new meteorological phenomenon that comes in to screw us.

Called it. Ofc, it's snowing now, but it's at 33 and now the other models show temps warming through the event. Not sure how, but I guess that's the way things go.

South Durham, which performs poorly with nearly every storm and I don't know why. Perhaps Jordan Lake. Perhaps gentrification.

Models keep shifting NW and delaying. Temps are too warm. This and that, the usual. I'm guessing we'll see an inch around RDU. I guess if we have enough 1" storms we can reach an average winter again.

Have you seen the HRRR and the 18z GFS? Both keep us above freezing, albeit slightly, through most of the event. RGEM I think is also like that. HRRR actually raises temperatures after precip starts. Hard to believe, but entirely in line with the kind of thing that would happen here.