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SW/Central/SE VA Disco


Martin

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Full circle on this thing with the models. Everything has come back for SE Virginia and points south much like the guidance did with the 12/26/10 event. Don't know if it will be that much but it seems almost certain now we'll see something from this. Whether it's 1"-12" I'll take it.

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We've been saying "next time" for years now. Big snows go N, W, S, and E. At some point, the law of averages needs to dump a 20+ incher on us.

We talk a lot about this in our RIC chat. Anthony (RIC Airport) is quite the pessimist when it comes to our climo, although I don't blame him. March 2009-March 2010 was a great stretch where I personally saw 45" IMBY. However, as you have alluded to, RIC has missed out on the big one, which climatologically speaking is a ~14"+ storm for the metro. Using over a century of data I've calculated this to be a 1 in 13 year event.

 

Accounting for measurement errors, the last time this physically happened in the city was January 1996 (Jan. 2000 was awfully close). So, that means we've gone about 18 years now without a "significant" event (again, Jan. 2000 was within an inch or two but that doesn't technically count).

 

I think when you factor in long-term temp trends, climo data, and the fact that a few of our most recent storms were within the margin of error (Dec. 09 was within a hair of giving us 15" or more), it doesn't seem as bad. It's certainly is hard to watch locations all around us get their due though, save for maybe the Roanoke area.

 

To be honest, having looked over the numbers I now appreciate how fortunate RIC truly was during some of those great stretches in the 20th century. We need to thread the needle with almost any setup here and to do it time and time again, nearly right on schedule from a climo standpoint from the early 60's through the 80's (and before that as well) was remarkable.

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18z NAM is what I'm afraid of. I've seen it more than once with these set-ups where precip will get right to the VA/NC border and completely die. NAM is out there on it's own with this right now, though so we'll see.

After Hr 84 it looks interesting.  If it plays out this way it might be even better for our area with a coastal.  It is possible the NAM is having issues this run, seemed off.

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