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Jan 25/26 Storm Threat...(Part 3)


Marion_NC_WX

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Um, no. Mountains yes..everyone else just a cold rain. Boundary layer temps on the nam are way too warm for everyone in nc outside the mountains for snow. Temps are near 40 and using hky's sounding the warm nose goes all the way up to 875mb.

There is a sliver of hope for some in north ga on the nam though as the deformation axis/precip is so intense it drops snow levels probably down to 1500 to 2000 feet in some areas. Nega(the poster) for example could get lucky but as soon as that moves out, the temp rapidly shoots up. That is the only hope anyone outside the higher elevations have..is that extreme dynamical cooling/very intense precip rates can cool the column enough so that the foothills have a shot for a few hour time period.

Simply put there just isn't much cold air with this one folks and it's hard to nearly impossible for me to find a way where snow is going to be a significant player outside of the mountains. The mountains could do pretty well depending on if that deformation axis sets up there. But for the rest of us, I just can't see this being anything other than rain. You can take these snow maps from accuweather and anywhere else and throw them in the garbage because it's not happening outside the mountains short of a miracle.

Have you looked at the Euro? If it's right, someone outside of the mtns in NC is going to get pounded.

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Well that kind of stinks about the missing data on the NAM, b/c for RDU at hour 84 the temp drops to 35F and 850's plunge from +6 to -2.5F and everything else looks cold enough, and we get .31" of precip which would be snow and there would be a little more to come. So a couple of wet inches of snow wouldn't have been out of the question per this run. Oh well.

Any chance any of us have outside of the foothills/mountains is for a really amped up storm, slow moving, and we get hit by wrap around snow. Nothing big, but it would be nice to see flakes fly.

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Had not looked at anything for a while- this one all comes down to how deep the system gets by the time it reaches GA/NC. The NAM says not deep enough so even with the 500mb low taking a good track there is not enough cold air upstairs for the dynamic cooling to produce snow- I looked at the NAM soundings and there is just too much warm air at the surface up to 850mb for even the strong dynamics to overcome, The 6Z GFS was similar, However, the Euro and Canadian held out some hope for a deeper system with colder air aloft, so maybe the NAM and GFS are under doing the strength. That the only hope here I am afraid- and even f the deeper scenario is true, any heavy snow could be pretty brief after a prolonged period of moderate to heavy rain. So hope is hanging by a thread-

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Have you looked at the Euro? If it's right, someone outside of the mtns in NC is going to get pounded.

How do you figure? I've looked several times trying to find a way for non mountain locations and I just don't see it. I can't pull up exact soundings like you but 0c 850mb isotherm runs north to south through the mountains and everywhere east of there is solidly above freezing through 78 hours. (plus 4c from gso to charlotte). Needless to say everyone is comfortably above freezing at the surface too. Sometime between hour 78 and 84 850s do fall over the foothills but hardly cold, I'm guess -1..-2c tops. But only 0.25 to 0.35 falls after that time and that is hardly enough to overcome the warm boundary layer that will exist. I can't see where the 0z euro suggests non mountain locations will get hit hard...at best the only area that has a shot of something is the foothills. The mountains above 3500 feet probably get drilled though.

Couldn't agree with you more. CLT on this NAM run, for example, never sees surface temps below 40 and 850 temps struggle to even get to freezing with a decent ULL track. Precip rates aren't going to save most of us outside of the mountains folks, there just isn't any cold air to work with. It's a shame because this could have been a big time storm for many.

Yeah I hate being so pessimistic about the chances because this is a great setup if there was just a little more cold air but it is what it is. It is indeed a shame because some would get bounded into oblivion. Everyone shouldn't be so down about it though, most have had a great winter already and gfs/euro show more potential in the long range with yet another arctic outbreak.

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How do you figure? I've looked several times trying to find a way for non mountain locations and I just don't see it. I can't pull up exact soundings like you but 0c 850mb isotherm runs north to south through the mountains and everywhere east of there is solidly above freezing through 78 hours. (plus 4c from gso to charlotte). Needless to say everyone is comfortably above freezing at the surface too. Sometime between hour 78 and 84 850s do fall over the foothills but hardly cold, I'm guess -1..-2c tops. But only 0.25 to 0.35 falls after that time and that is hardly enough to overcome the warm boundary layer that will exist. I can't see where the 0z euro suggests non mountain locations will get hit hard...at best the only area that has a shot of something is the foothills. The mountains above 3500 feet probably get drilled though.

Well, here's something you probably didnt see since i posted it in the middle of the night:

Ok, here's what I was talking about. This is for KFQD(Rutherfordton, NC):

This is through 6z wednesday:

Temperature to start out with is 38º, 850's are at 0.5. Then temps fall to 0.5C at the height of the precip with the warmest 850 temp at 1.2C. .67 falls during the evening and early part of the night.

From 6z wednesday on:

The temperature is still at 33º with 850 temps of -2.1C. By then, an additional .31 has fallen during the late night/early morning hours. The temp does warm up to around 37 or 38 or so during the afternoon with .21 falling between 12z and 18z.

It's almost like the euro is trying to tell us this is a rate dependent storm system.

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Maybe if it gets delayed enough, another HP could sneak in. Just playing with some ideas here, lol. Not that that's going to happen.. :arrowhead:

I don't know why, but this is a colder run, the surface temp and 850's crash as it's coming up the coast and it looks like a lot of NC could see a little bit of wraparound snow. It's a much colder run as the storm is passing, don't know if it's right, but it is.

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How do you figure? I've looked several times trying to find a way for non mountain locations and I just don't see it. I can't pull up exact soundings like you but 0c 850mb isotherm runs north to south through the mountains and everywhere east of there is solidly above freezing through 78 hours. (plus 4c from gso to charlotte). Needless to say everyone is comfortably above freezing at the surface too. Sometime between hour 78 and 84 850s do fall over the foothills but hardly cold, I'm guess -1..-2c tops. But only 0.25 to 0.35 falls after that time and that is hardly enough to overcome the warm boundary layer that will exist. I can't see where the 0z euro suggests non mountain locations will get hit hard...at best the only area that has a shot of something is the foothills. The mountains above 3500 feet probably get drilled though.

Yeah I hate being so pessimistic about the chances because this is a great setup if there was just a little more cold air but it is what it is. It is indeed a shame because some would get bounded into oblivion. Everyone shouldn't be so down about it though, most have had a great winter already and gfs/euro show more potential in the long range with yet another arctic outbreak.

After already almost 50" for the year, I would gladly love to share the wealth with everybody else. I'm assuming that even up here we are looking at a verywet snow with low snow ratios?

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Well I don't know what happened but the surface temps look colder, yesterday none of the runs showed the 32F surface temp line even close to NC (non-mountains) and today the surface drops into the 20's as it's passing and it doesn't sky rocket to the 40's like it was yesterday after the storm is north of us. Quite a change.

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I don't know why, but this is a colder run, the surface temp and 850's crash as it's coming up the coast and it looks like a lot of NC could see a little bit of wraparound snow. It's a much colder run as the storm is passing, don't know if it's right, but it is.

Yeah, much colder compared to the 12z NAM, and previous GFS runs. Now lets hope for a delayed event for later in the week, and we will be in business!

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@78 our 850's are cooling in NC and it's looking a bit like the NAM.

Yeah but the surface doesn't look good at all. Looks like low 40s and rain to me. I hope that's wrong! Even with dynamic cooling you'd still need surface temps to be within the ball park of freezing. I don't know if dynamic cooling can overcome such a warm start. The delay in the storm and the HP sliding out is what's killing it.

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Yeah but the surface doesn't look good at all. Looks like low 40s and rain to me. I hope that's wrong! Even with dynamic cooling you'd still need surface temps to be within the ball park of freezing. I don't know if dynamic cooling can overcome such a warm start. The delay in the storm and the HP sliding out is what's killing it.

Yea and interestingly enough those temps start crashing around RDU when it's pulling away...no such luck here.

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