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Pattern Jarring January

1300m said:
Of all the wintry modes of precipitation, sleet is by far the biggest waster of liquid-equivalent. And I've lived through numerous snow to sleet storms. Sleet doesn't accumulate on top of snow, it falls through it and compacts the snow accumulation you have. Others may love sleet, that's fine. Me personally, I'd be fine if I never saw another sleet pellet in my life.
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OMG, I hope Tony doesn't read this. ;)

Different strokes for different folks. I get what you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if a storm has both sleet and snow and still achieves 6" of total accumulation, that's even more impressive than a pure 6" snow since it is harder to do as you pretty much stated/has more water content.

I learned to love sleet in ATL in 2/1979. I never had thought of sleet accumulating til the great 2/1979 4.2" sleetstorm. That storm was forecasted to be largely snow. So, when it turned to sleet very early on, I was initially very disappointed as I wanted to see a multi-inch snowstorm and also the sleet didn't look pretty while falling. I figured at that point that the storm wasn't going to be a big deal after all. And boy was I wrong! As the storm continued, I started noticing the sleet was piling up and looking like snowcover. I started to love the loud sound of sleet! And talk about staying power!

Yes, it would have been 10" if it all had fallen as snow. But I was more than happy with my 4" of sleet/concrete. OMG that was a huge mess and it melted so slowly!
 
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A full on four inch sleet storm would be fun. But it usually just screws up snow for me and I don't get much of either. Toss in a little zr for good measure, and you have a wintry mixed bag of sucktitude.
 
1300m said:
This is very true, and a valid point. My only counter to that is often this stuff is measured on a snow board and you never see that much on the actual ground when it's a mixed event and that is what I'm really getting at when I say it's "deceiving". Perhaps I could have phrased it a little better!

You're also right that if you can get a good base of sleet and then snow on top of that it really does have a lot longer staying power. I think a lot of the sleet bitterness for me revolves around Jan. 2017, when every model under the sun 24 hours out (except the NAM!!) painted us in 12" of snow with no warm nose to only end up with about 2" of sleet/snow accumulation due to a multitude of factors (rain to start, then sleet and light snow to finish).
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The ~0.50" of ZR and ~0.25" of sleet was an incredible base for the 2" of snow that SAV received on top of it all last week. As long as it stayed cold (highs in 40s and lows in 20s), the snow in shaded areas hardly melted! It became like little glaciers.
 
SoutheastRidge said:
If you say Raleigh is overdue for a 6" snowstorm then I guess Atlanta is due also since it's been 35 years !
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One thing to note, IS that they measure in the middle of a runway median only at the BUSIEST AIRPORT IN THE WORLD, very stupid...many many parts of ATL in the city limits had 6 in or more Dec 8th, and years before as well. The airport has a massive heat island effect so thier measurement readings are never accurate.
 
BPATL said:
One thing to note, IS that they measure in the middle of a runway median only at the BUSIEST AIRPORT IN THE WORLD, very stupid...many many parts of ATL in the city limits had 6 in or more Dec 8th, and years before as well. The airport has a massive heat island effect so thier measurement readings are never accurate.
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It's not a bad place to get an average. You folks NW of the city almost always score, just like Dec 8.
 
BPATL said:
One thing to note, IS that they measure in the middle of a runway median only at the BUSIEST AIRPORT IN THE WORLD, very stupid...many many parts of ATL in the city limits had 6 in or more Dec 8th, and years before as well. The airport has a massive heat island effect so thier measurement readings are never accurate.
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Yeah it doesn't make sense. I mean in Carrollton I've seen at least 3 snows of 6" in the last 30 years and yet the airport hasn't had any ? That makes no sense at all.
 
tractor girl said:
You're still slightly WNW of the city, so it makes sense that you see more snow.
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No, Carrollton is actually south of I-20 which means it's slightly south in latitude of the city. Atlanta averages just as much snow as Carrollton so there's no reason why Atlanta should have gone 35 years without having a 6" snowfall.
 
SoutheastRidge said:
No, Carrollton is actually south of I-20 which means it's slightly south in latitude of the city.
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You are far west of the city and barely south of 20. My point stands those to the west and north of the city almost always get snow where folks to the east and actual south of the city do not. The airport is a good spot otherwise people would have the wrong idea about Atlanta getting snow all the time. A LOT of people in Atlanta did not see any snow in our Dec event. It was frustrating to be one of those individuals.
 
tractor girl said:
You are far west of the city and barely south of 20. My point stands those to the west and north of the city almost always get snow where folks to the east and actual south of the city do not. The airport is a good spot otherwise people would have the wrong idea about Atlanta getting snow all the time. A LOT of people in Atlanta did not see any snow in our Dec event. It was frustrating to be one of those individuals.
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I've always wondered why areas west of I-85 seem to get more snow than areas east of I-85.
 
Gfs keeps improving at H5 . We just need the NS to bacl just a little to allow a more SW. Like previous runs showed

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1300m said:
This is very true, and a valid point. My only counter to that is often this stuff is measured on a snow board and you never see that much on the actual ground when it's a mixed event and that is what I'm really getting at when I say it's "deceiving". Perhaps I could have phrased it a little better!

You're also right that if you can get a good base of sleet and then snow on top of that it really does have a lot longer staying power. I think a lot of the sleet bitterness for me revolves around Jan. 2017, when every model under the sun 24 hours out (except the NAM!!) painted us in 12" of snow with no warm nose to only end up with about 2" of sleet/snow accumulation due to a multitude of factors (rain to start, then sleet and light snow to finish).
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1300/Rain Cold/SD,
Do you know if 2/26-7 6.5" SN/IP was all from one storm? Per the hourlies, there was a four hour break between the 0.12" of 2/26, when there was 2.0", and the 0.55" of 2/27, when there was 4.5".

2004-02-26 38 31 34.5 -12.3 30 0 0.12 2.0 0
2004-02-27 46 30 38.0 -9.0 27 0 0.55 4.5 2
 
GaWx said:
1300/Rain Cold/SD,
Do you know if 2/26-7 6.5" SN/IP was all from one storm? Per the hourlies, there was a four hour break between the 0.12" of 2/26, when there was 2.0", and the 0.55" of 2/27, when there was 4.5".

2004-02-26 38 31 34.5 -12.3 30 0 0.12 2.0 0
2004-02-27 46 30 38.0 -9.0 27 0 0.55 4.5 2
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I just remember getting screwed again. That’s the only memory that got imprinted, unfortunately.
 
GaWx said:
1300/Rain Cold/SD,
Do you know if 2/26-7 6.5" SN/IP was all from one storm? Per the hourlies, there was a four hour break between the 0.12" of 2/26, when there was 2.0", and the 0.55" of 2/27, when there was 4.5".

2004-02-26 38 31 34.5 -12.3 30 0 0.12 2.0 0
2004-02-27 46 30 38.0 -9.0 27 0 0.55 4.5 2
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Hey Larry. I recall you telling me that ATL got a foot of snow in one month before if I remember correctly. When was the month and year of this occurrence? Also, when was the ATL's snowiest season/year on record and how many inches? Thanks.
 
Storm5 said:
Gfs keeps improving at H5 . We just need the NS to bacl just a little to allow a more SW. Like previous runs showed

Sent from my SM-J320VPP using Tapatalk
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Thing I'm worried about is if we get the NS to back off too much it may not be cold enough to support snow. Hopefully I'm wrong
 
GaWx said:
1300/Rain Cold/SD,
Do you know if 2/26-7 6.5" SN/IP was all from one storm? Per the hourlies, there was a four hour break between the 0.12" of 2/26, when there was 2.0", and the 0.55" of 2/27, when there was 4.5".

2004-02-26 38 31 34.5 -12.3 30 0 0.12 2.0 0
2004-02-27 46 30 38.0 -9.0 27 0 0.55 4.5 2
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I'm not sure if I'm mixing storms here but I remember one in this time period that dropped snow we got dry slotted. Precip started again mixed with ip then went back to snow overnight. Jan-Feb 04 was a great period for us and capped off the stellar Jan 2000-Feb 04 period. We had a long drought until Jan 09
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