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Jan. 17-18, 2026 SE Winter Weather Threat

mydoortotheworld said:
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Final total map of GA 1/21 for that storm for comparison. It was too far NW with the northern edge of precip, dry air was too much if I remember correctly
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If I remember correctly, the models were dry for the Atlanta and Athens areas right up until the day before the Gulf Coast blizzard. I wound up with about an inch where every flake that fell stuck, and was happy not have been shut out. This was the storm the CMC insisted was going to be historic for N Ga. for days before caving.
 
tractor girl said:
I live near the upper portions of the precip last year, the flakes were small and wispy. Still managed to get 2 in, but it did not last long
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It took a while to get going for me, but a late band had bigger flakes and took me from probably about an inch of snow to about 2.5" roughly.

For it being dry snow, it held on fairly decently. Last bits of it weren't gone until over a week later.

It's good to look back at this event actually as it shows that while there may be a shot, it's not quite as high...yet based on ensembles.
 
mydoortotheworld said:
View attachment 183385
Final total map of GA 1/21 for that storm for comparison. It was too far NW with the northern edge of precip, dry air was too much if I remember correctly
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For the 1/21-2/25 storm, the GFS, Icon, CMC, and NAM had NW trends of the NW edge of the qpf shield at least as late as 12Z on 1/20. For example, this shows the 4 run NW trend of the GFS from 18Z 1/19 through 12Z 1/20 for 24 hr precip ending 3AM on 1/22:

IMG_7092.gif

So, NW trends up through even the day before wouldn’t be surprising. It happened similarly in 2/2014.

Edit: This lead to the storm being mainly sleet instead of snow here though I, just like Tony @dsaur, LOVE sleet!
 
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mydoortotheworld said:
View attachment 183385
Final total map of GA 1/21 for that storm for comparison. It was too far NW with the northern edge of precip, dry air was too much if I remember correctly
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geez...when was the last time southern GA had back to back winters with 4"+ events...Raleigh hasn't had that since 2018 and before that 2010.

gfs-deterministic-east-snow_24hr-8780800.png
 
Wild Weather Monger said:
If I remember correctly, the models were dry for the Atlanta and Athens areas right up until the day before the Gulf Coast blizzard. I wound up with about an inch where every flake that fell stuck, and was happy not have been shut out. This was the storm the CMC insisted was going to be historic for N Ga. for days before caving.
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I was so excited by the 12z run of the GFS on Jan 21 which brought the 1+ inch totals north of the city after being very concerned about the wrong side of the cutoff, and when the storm happened, I saw about 10 minutes of light flurries and nothing more. It really did crush my spirits too because we had been north of the extremely heavy snow band of the previous Jan 10th snow event, only ending up with just over 1 inch, although I am thankful that it at least broke the 1 inch drought of 5 years.
 
The good news is most of this board is going to get NAM’d big time here pretty soon. The bad news is I just scrolled back through the Jan 25’ storm thread and now I have a bad taste in my mouth. Deja vu. I will say the one thing the western folks have going for them is we are not in the jackpot right now. We were in the jackpot at the same timestamp last year. So that’s good. In my mind, if things work like they used to this will come back west substantially.

However, if things work like they did last year, this is going out to sea soon
 
Still up in the air, but looking at the maps, the trend to more of a west and even SW entrance indicates moisture should be ample for precip in some places. The N /W trend is possible but I think it will be more of an expansion of the precipitation field to the North and West of the system will be the end result. Most of the precip will be east of Raleigh in my opinion but there will be some WAA to make the east and coastal areas more a mix than pure sn. Western Piedmont areas will be cold enough to produce snow but moisture will be limited and spotty. Not sure about Al, Ga and SC but they should be hoping for a southern and western trend. It is likely to be a mish mash until 24 hours ahead of the event
 
BKWRN29 said:
Can anyone explain why last years coastal storm did not NW trend while most storms in the past have NW trend?
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That airmass kept trending stronger and stronger. It was very atypical from what I remember. It was underestimated by every model.
 
KyloG said:
Day 3 out last year for the 1/21 event the Euro was clocking central NC and was too far west. And of course we remember all those super bombs that the CMC kept spitting out which was dead wrong. It's why I like seeing these weaker model runs at day 4, not get our hopes crushed like last year.

And the Euro AI was east/supressed at this range for last years event.

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Completely different airmass from that event to this one.
 
iwantsouthernsnow123 said:
The costal storm developed had a NW trend. Brought snow well north of expected.
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Yep. In Atlanta we basically had a sharp SW->NE cutoff of the snow line. The SE parts of the city ended up getting snow and everything NW of a line got nothing. Really, until the moment of, we had no idea if we'd actually get anything or not.

I remember Apple Weather showed a 0% chance of any precipitation/snow that day, but school was canceled because FFC said there was still a minor chance we'd get snow. There was a big Facebook thread in our school system's parent FB group where folks were so upset they canceled school for a "0% chance!". They had to eat their words the next day when we got snow mid-day that would have caused a major problem for the busses.

The traffic map from that day was crazy.
1768418790981.png1768419352976.png
 
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xshare said:
Yep. In Atlanta we basically had a sharp SW->NE cutoff of the snow line. The SE parts of the city ended up getting snow and everything NW of a line got nothing. Really, until the moment of, we had no idea if we'd actually get anything or not.

I remember Apple Weather showed a 0% chance of any precipitation/snow that day, but school was canceled because FFC said there was still a minor chance we'd get snow. There was a big Facebook thread in our school system's parent FB group where folks were so upset they canceled school for a "0% chance!". They had to eat their words the next day when we got snow mid-day that would have caused a major problem for the busses.

The traffic map from that day was crazy.
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Yeah, that's pretty wild. They prevented snowjam 3.0 in east ATL on that day by being overly cautious, which was the correct move.
 
BKWRN29 said:
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on Twitter he added "The Reliable" EURO A.I.... look, I get verification scores ect but my god, enough with the glazing of the EURO. Like if its that much better just get rid of the other suites, apparently no one looks at them or cares what they say anyway so why even run them. The issue that makes it annoying though is if roles were reversed and EURO was showing an amped stormy solution they wouldnt post it and then theyd hug the gfs. It is the double standard for me
 
Mahomeless said:
Absolutely LOVE where the EURO is right now….the king of over-suppression!
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I think it's best we just see little steps in the right direction and not jump the gun like the GFS did.
E.G., no massive overcorrection that needs further refinement
 
It's NAM time IIRC. Are we "Discount the result, it's the long range NAM". Or if a banger shows up are we "All hail the NAM regardless if it's 84 hour NAM"?
 
BKWRN29 said:
Can anyone explain why last years coastal storm did not NW trend while most storms in the past have NW trend?
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But the precip did trend NW on the models up though the day prior as per my prior post’s GFS trend GIF (that included changing my main precip type from snow to sleet).

Here’s an even later trend GIF (HRRR) keeping the NW trend going for the 1/21-2/25 storm through 6Z on 1/21! Note that this brought RDU from nothing to 0.1” qpf, which is ~what they ended up getting and gave them 1.5” of snow:

IMG_7094.gif
 
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Even if moisture works its way NW towards the foothills region, may have a lot of dry air to work against us. Some models are showing moisture here others are not. a blend would be yes moisture is falling but drying up.
 
xshare said:
Yep. In Atlanta we basically had a sharp SW->NE cutoff of the snow line. The SE parts of the city ended up getting snow and everything NW of a line got nothing. Really, until the moment of, we had no idea if we'd actually get anything or not.

I remember Apple Weather showed a 0% chance of any precipitation/snow that day, but school was canceled because FFC said there was still a minor chance we'd get snow. There was a big Facebook thread in our school system's parent FB group where folks were so upset they canceled school for a "0% chance!". They had to eat their words the next day when we got snow mid-day that would have caused a major problem for the busses.

The traffic map from that day was crazy.
View attachment 183392View attachment 183397
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that was a painful eternity watching the big hole on radar fill in.
 
KyloG said:
Last year the airmass was ridicously cold...why it snowed a foot down in New Orleans to the panhandle.

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I think the primary shortwave was shearing as well. The CMC was overzealous because it kept it amped up longer thus gave those insane weenie runs.
 
Snowflowxxl said:
James Spann needs to quit speaking in absolutes. It’s unprofessional and is how you end up with 2014 on rare occasions. If it was a tornado outbreak he would not use that language
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He does this every single year. In his defense, a tornado could be deadly where as snow, not so much. I assume that is why he hypes severe weather and not snow. Either way it’s annoying. Like just be real.
 
LukeBarrette said:
We have had this convo. AI models perform too warm on the surface
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I haven't seen any data or comments on how the ai models handle marginal temps situations or dynamically or evaporational cooling. I wouldn't trust any precip type outputs until we have solid data to base it on. Hopefully we will learn something with this one
 
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