wncsnow

It's been 5 of the past 6 winters with La Nina's I believe. The one strong El Nino was a terrible winter for snow lovers too.

I have conflicting thoughts honestly. On one hand, the cold seems poised to stay on this side of the globe. Canada is frigid and looks to stay that way through at least the next month. We need a mechanism to keep driving it south. The Pacific is the main culprit here. Its roaring and record flooding is occurring in the NW. It can take a long time for the Pacific jet to behave the way we want it to after setting up like this. A lot of Mets who I respect still think January could be OK for us. There's a lot of uncertainty maybe more than normal due to the conflicting factors I have detailed. Another worry I have is the lack of a southern jet showing up in tne long range. A lot of the models and ensembles are going very dry for the rest of this month. My biggest worry is this pattern sets in longer than we want and the next thing you know its early February. Most of us haven't had an impactful winter storm in February or March in over a decade. I'm not sure it can come a major snowstorm late in the season anymore at our latitude.

It turned out to be a weak NWFS. Not even a dusting in west AVL or Black Mountain.

Yep, we have seen this song and dance many times.

Strong gusts in Asheville with showers

And we can't get a trough to center in the right place to save our lives the last 6 or 7 years. There is a tendency for them to center over the lakes or the NE when we need them further west. We could possibly score with that scenario and a strong CAD but the NAO hasnt helped either and the cold scoots away.

As @NorthHillsWx said, the pattern has been too progressive and we really need a tall ridge (+PNA) in the west to get this northern stream energy to dig further south. We are exiting a La Nina but I worry about atmospheric lag. As we all know February and March are usually toast in La Nina years. Most of us haven't seen a big snow in these months since 2014 regardless of the indices.

I posted this 10 days ago. Only thing I would change is the pattern reset time. That may not happen until after Christmas and maybe next year.

Just when I was feeling down about winter weather, I saw shetley commenting on the NWS post about this storm and it made me feel better

Another beautiful drive to Asheville today. Light dusting of snow in Old Fort turned into rime ice on the mountain with the fog and sun breaking through. Wish i could have taken some pictures. As I posted a week or so ago, the pattern is going to likely break down and we are going to warm up for at least a week before Christmas. What happens after that is up in the air but the current colder than normal pattern isn't one that's right for snow for us. We need- 1. A sharper western ridge in the right place- This will lead to energy diving further south to get it where we need it instead of over the Ohio valley. We need it to drop down across the front range. 2. Better southern stream energy. We need a phase to get our best snows and right now the northern stream is squashing the southern stream enough to prevent that. 3. Cold air damming and a 50/50 low to keep it in place. This one might be the most key. The pattern has still been progressive and any highs have been weak or moving away too quickly.

Paste bomb. Prettiest snows by far

Nice coating in Woodlawn/North Cove. Melted quickly though. Some flakes at my house too but its over now. 2 hr delay for schools because the roads are soaked and will be bad.

Eastern VA got some nice banding going on.

Little bit of wet snow mixing in the light rain at my place. 36.

Some gorgeous scenes driving home as there were rain(snow)bows, and the blue ridge revealing snow and ice cover