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Winter Storm 1/6 - 1/8, 2017


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8 minutes ago, BIG FROSTY said:

I got 8.5 inches, and still coming down!! Glad you were wrong in telling me not to get my hopes up!!!  Don't mean that in a bad way, just happy I got a good snow. 

Yea I def. got it wrong for throwing out the NAM. I feel really bad for others though our area has been seeing 12" or more in single storms for the past few years now.

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I feel bad for the hobby meteorologists out there that put out forecasts for people in their area. This storm just didn't pull through in the Raleigh area and eastward, even though most signs pointed to it being a huge snowfall for them.

 

A lot of these people will experience some huge backlash over this storm not performing.

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18 minutes ago, thess said:

8:15 a.m.: "Any precipitation we see later today will be fairly light," said WRAL meteorologist Elizabeth Gardner. "Dry air behind our viewing area will prevent any heavy bands of snow or rain from arriving as the morning continues."

I think she is generally wrong about that. Its the upper level energy that is moving through and I suspect it will continue to drop some accumulation across a good part of the state into the afternoon.

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5 minutes ago, bargainmusic said:

I feel bad for the hobby meteorologists out there that put out forecasts for people in their area. This storm just didn't pull through in the Raleigh area and eastward, even though most signs pointed to it being a huge snowfall for them.

A lot of these people will experience some huge backlash over this storm not performing.

Doubt it some of those hobby mets on social media have thousands of paying subscribers. The only backlash that is given is if there is no hype to like or share then they unsubscribe. It doesn't actually have to happen.

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4 minutes ago, Jet Stream Rider said:

I think she is generally wrong about that. Its the upper level energy that is moving through and I suspect it will continue to drop some accumulation across a good part of the state into the afternoon.

A few minutes after I quoted that, I looked out and realized it was snowing (lightly but prettily, with a few big flakes) in south Durham. Posted in obvs thread.

 Maybe their "storm is over" headline was damage control.

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I do hope that those who fell below the snow line last night will get 1-2 inches with these final bands.  That would really help it seem like a winter wonderland.  I think that the Triangle has a shot at this.  It will be interesting to see if it comes to fruition.  All short range models has this, and the globals had it yesterday.

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1 minute ago, Timothy Clyde said:

Doubt it some of those hobby mets on social media have thousands of paying subscribers. The only backlash that is given is if there is no hype to like or share then they unsubscribe. It doesn't actually have to happen.

One guy I follow charges a ton of money for his monthly subscription. But it's only useful in the winter months, if you ask me.

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26 minutes ago, broken024 said:

How much snow do you all think Charlotte can get out of the snow coming through now?

Why not just watch and see...even being the widre like skeptic I am...when I got up at 4:30 with my very sick kid, and looked out the window, I laughed...I was shocked at the utter lack of snow. Nice to be able to watch it come down in the day time. And like I said, my kid is really sick and won't be able to go out anyway. She is so sick she won't even look out the window.

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3 minutes ago, QC_Halo said:

Why not just watch and see...even being the widre like skeptic I am...when I got up at 4:30 with my very sick kid, and looked out the window, I laughed...I was shocked at the utter lack of snow. Nice to be able to watch it come down in the day time. And like I said, my kid is really sick and won't be able to go out anyway. She is so sick she won't even look out the window.

 

Oh no. Blessing to you and your child. Hope for a speedy recovery.

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Just now, QC_Halo said:

Why would anyone pay someone for a forecast that the NWS could provide? I really don't get that?..

I guess the convenience of having a "personalized" forecast just for you is worth money to a lot of people. These guys get popular around winter time when local TV stations are conservative and end up missing these big storms by a landslide.

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52 minutes ago, GlaringSun said:

Partly cloudy in ATL with a nice coating of ice on everything, and just a trace of snow.

ATL pretty much needs either a very weak Gulf Low or a raging -NAO it seems to get a snow event.  Even in this case the low being only 1010 or so was too much.

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11 minutes ago, bargainmusic said:

I guess the convenience of having a "personalized" forecast just for you is worth money to a lot of people. These guys get popular around winter time when local TV stations are conservative and end up missing these big storms by a landslide.

Do these personal forecasters offer examples of when their forecasts outperform the NWS?

how much money do they charge?

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1 hour ago, SnowGoose69 said:

ATL pretty much needs either a very weak Gulf Low or a raging -NAO it seems to get a snow event.  Even in this case the low being only 1010 or so was too much.

Not exactly, the Gulf Low pressure needs to stay at least 100 miles offshore the entire time until it crosses the Florida Peninsula between Jacksonville to Daytona Beach to yield appropriate amounts of snow.  The problem with this system is the low pressure formed too late in the process and frontalgenesis like warm air advection made it seem like there was a warm front from Birmingham to Charlotte.  These type of systems are more of an aggravation than anything because they always wind up being ice storms.  Also the mountain ridges in the northern portions of both Alabama and Georgia acts as barriers to rapid spilling of ample Arctic air to overrun the heavier precipitation returns as well.  Atlanta like Birmingham must get a Gulf Low to stay off the Gulf Coast with already 28-32 degree temps in place to substantiate snow/sleet or all snow accumulations in their area.

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Well, that sucked....lol  Its cold for sure, now....hahaha  What an awful under-performing system for many...Congrats on those who got some wintry weather for sure, but this one will be a very good learning experience.  In the end, the weather will do what the weather is going to do, that still will never change.  NAM did a very good job with showing what prob would be the final outcome.  When it came a little north with the SFC low and delayed the change over for many, I thought it was out to lunch, because it was not consistent with other models, but guess what......it did the best job once we got in within 48 hours.....IMHO.....*with regards to thermals and low track*  we ended up with 1.15" of rain which was under performing as well.  Hey, at least the drought should be gone, right?   lol

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1 hour ago, QC_Halo said:

Do these personal forecasters offer examples of when their forecasts outperform the NWS?

how much money do they charge?

I can't speak for all of them, but the guy I follow charges about $60 for the year, or $4.99 monthly subscriptions. For members, he goes into deep detail about the storms and how they're tracking and what to look out for. He also offers a recap of what went right and what went wrong. Unfortunately he'll have a lot of explaining what went wrong with this storm.

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3 minutes ago, bargainmusic said:

I can't speak for all of them, but the guy I follow charges about $60 for the year, or $4.99 monthly subscriptions. For members, he goes into deep detail about the storms and how they're tracking and what to look out for. He also offers a recap of what went right and what went wrong. Unfortunately he'll have a lot of explaining what went wrong with this storm.

I thinkI would pay $4.99 just to see his analysis of how the forecast busted.  I am really interested in learning.

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To be fair, i think the mets did the best they could with the information they had. This storm had plenty of moisture and could have dumped alot of snow for many of us as they forecasted had it not been for the strength of the warm nose that won out vs colder hair. which is always hard to predict. and it was especially tougher for this event. Mets have difficult jobs and mother nature can make a fool out of us all and has time and time again. 

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3 minutes ago, wxdawg10 said:

To be fair, i think the mets did the best they could with the information they had. This storm had plenty of moisture and could have dumped alot of snow for many of us as they forecasted had it not been for the strength of the warm nose that won out vs colder hair. which is always hard to predict. and it was especially tougher for this event. Mets have difficult jobs and mother nature can make a fool out of us all and has time and time again. 

Very true. This one seemed like a tough one to call for many folks including in Atlanta. But hey, the trees look nice and icey! Hopefully we get another chance soon...

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4 minutes ago, wxdawg10 said:

To be fair, i think the mets did the best they could with the information they had. This storm had plenty of moisture and could have dumped alot of snow for many of us as they forecasted had it not been for the strength of the warm nose that won out vs colder hair. which is always hard to predict. and it was especially tougher for this event. Mets have difficult jobs and mother nature can make a fool out of us all and has time and time again. 

Fishel defending himself.

http://www.wral.com/weather/video/16409044/

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Posted this elsewhere (and I'm sure there will be an official post-mortem thread, but wanted to share here if anyone has any thoughts):

I wonder if the "urban heat island" we saw had anything to do with the relatively little amount of wind we had - usually I think of cold air coming in with a nice northerly wind, but that didn't happen (compare the wind readings now at ~10:30a EST to the day prior http://w1.weather.gov/obhistory/KRDU.html). 

One thing I noticed (that may not be odd - someone else can chime in here if I'm wrong), but the only sounding data for the RDU area came from the NCSU Sounding Club at about 0z last night - was surprised the NWS didn't seem to have their own data. Perhaps more sounding data prior to the event could have better confirmed what the temperatures were looking like aloft (esp in comparison to how the models were predicting soundings to look like)? QPF wasn't the big question mark in the rough forecast, but rather temperature profiles, and those weren't generally well sussed out by models (except the NAM and a few others).  

The question about which model better handles WAA - is there general data about the NAM here? People seem to be arriving at the conclusion to better trust the NAM when it sees a shift/WAA, but is that something NAM-specific or should we be looking more to see if any model is suggesting temperature profile problems? Seems like guesswork that could be verified using historical data and model predictions. 

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48 minutes ago, ajr said:

Posted this elsewhere (and I'm sure there will be an official post-mortem thread, but wanted to share here if anyone has any thoughts):

I wonder if the "urban heat island" we saw had anything to do with the relatively little amount of wind we had - usually I think of cold air coming in with a nice northerly wind, but that didn't happen (compare the wind readings now at ~10:30a EST to the day prior http://w1.weather.gov/obhistory/KRDU.html). 

One thing I noticed (that may not be odd - someone else can chime in here if I'm wrong), but the only sounding data for the RDU area came from the NCSU Sounding Club at about 0z last night - was surprised the NWS didn't seem to have their own data. Perhaps more sounding data prior to the event could have better confirmed what the temperatures were looking like aloft (esp in comparison to how the models were predicting soundings to look like)? QPF wasn't the big question mark in the rough forecast, but rather temperature profiles, and those weren't generally well sussed out by models (except the NAM and a few others).  

The question about which model better handles WAA - is there general data about the NAM here? People seem to be arriving at the conclusion to better trust the NAM when it sees a shift/WAA, but is that something NAM-specific or should we be looking more to see if any model is suggesting temperature profile problems? Seems like guesswork that could be verified using historical data and model predictions. 

One other challenge we had in the Triangle I think was the timing of the precip.  It was raining at my house by 4pm yesterday when earlier proggs had this beginning as all sleet/snow around 10pm.  That difference had an impact as well.

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