griteater

Without a doubt, this was one of the worst mean winter patterns of all time. In terms of temperatures...for sites with a long climo record around the southeast, Raleigh seems to be the one with the warmest ranking where so far it has been the 3rd warmest since 1887.

Depends on the source though. Isotherm did very well with his winter forecast (mine was terrible).

See the GEFS tab here: https://weather.cod.edu/forecast/ For GEFS at 500mb, see: http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/ENSHGTWIDE_18z/ensloopwide.html

For next weekend, each run of the GFS Ensemble spits out a few members with a decent storm. We've had some storms work out in the past with this type of setup, but the wave has to drop into the trough just right.

It was 1046 over NW Iowa Thursday at 7AM - https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/dailywxmap/index.html

GFS was too far east. ICON and CMC were close. Just trying to stay in the game for now and hope it improves over time

Ha yes dig deep and farther west with big ridge behind it

It misses but interesting look at 500mb

You said it was a clipper. Can’t come back now

Made a post about it here - https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/53090-one-more-shot-feb-20-21-event/?do=findComment&comment=5481759

@Isopycnic gets the award for first post on the storm (on the mid to long term discussion thread), where the GFS nailed it from 10 days out

In terms of how the models performed, my biggest takeaway was how the NAM had the best handling of the subtropical energy/vorticity coming out of the subtropical jet stream from Baja to Texas. Without this, there's hardly any storm at all. There was a point where the typically solid combo of UKMet/Euro was saying no storm or very weak storm, but the NAM and GFS had it more north (especially the NAM). It was one of the worst performances from the UKMet that I've seen - and it typically does fairly well in our region.

So here's what I think went wrong in parts of the western half of North Carolina with the precipitation amounts. The first map from Thurs at 10AM shows how the core zone of the 850mb warm advection (low level overrunning) stayed to the south from north Bama to SE North Carolina. This is the region that received the solid precip shield. NC missed out on that forcing for precipitation. The second map from Thurs 4PM shows how a large part of NC has flipped over to cold air advection at 850mb. Warm advection at 850 produces lift (for precip production), cold advection does not. Along with it being cold advection, there is also a downsloping component there with it coming across the mtns. The models certainly showed this all along and adjusted downward with QPF late in the game, but were limited all along on the NW side. With this being a weak wave and not a very dynamic system aloft, it was a must for the western 1/2 of NC to get in on this overrunning precip. The eastern 1/2 of NC was able to benefit from other processes leading to precip production higher up in the atmosphere - that is, increasing mid-level frontogenesis and upper level divergence as the storm matured and the final trailing upper wave strengthened a little as it moved thru. The SPC archive maps are really good to view in post analysis - https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/ma_archive/ In summary, the text above further supplements the idea that it is much preferred to have cold air in place prior to the storm's arrival. Not only is it preferred for precip type and pre-storm cold for efficient accumulation when precip arrives, it also helps with lift in the atmosphere as you want warmer air from the south running into colder air to the north to generate overrunning precip - the kind that produces the nice, consistent shield of precip on radar.

Verification time. Right as I thought the models would increase the precip amounts, they went the other way. I also leaned on climo a bit too much (like, it always snows good in Hickory - Greensboro in our storms). Oh well, live and lean, and move on to the next one. A = Forecast was generally consistent and verified F = Forecast wasn't consistent and was way off

Ha, "it snowed every Wednesday for 3 straight weeks in March of 1960 in a repeating wave train"

Not hating the look for next weekend as the models continue to try and drop a northern stream wave down on top of us after cold air sweeps in late in the week (GFS/CMC/Euro all have the look)

Dec storm from last winter had to of been a good one for you, right?

I ended up with a Trace

That will never change. We'll be right back in here for the next one...and hoping it's more like Jan 1988

It's tough getting that high in just the right spot. If it's up over the NE, it can want to slide out too quick too, as you know. Going back to that post I made the other day, it was in the mid-80's today in South Florida....so, I was OK with where the high was located - the bigger issue to me was the subtropical ridge was putting up a strong resistance to allowing the cold air to sink south.

Just pulled an HRRR sounding for 4pm right around Greenville and it shows a very shallow warm layer at the surface and a warm nose that's maybe +0.5 C deg at 800mb

Well, we're on to the next one! EPS shows some hints/splashes of snow across the south here to back up the Op run

It really is....everything just has to fall right when it's like that. Things like, snow hard to get temps to crash and get that first layer down, snow when the sun is down, etc.

The RGEM kept showing 0.2, 0.2, 0.2 for precip, but no, I ignored it

South of a line from Chattanooga to Cape Hatteras, the radar has looked straight horrid....guess it'll get going down east NC later on, but dang. Where's the "What did we learn" thread?