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Wintry January 23rd-27th 2026

broken025 said:
Second round stays south and gets Florida and the Carolina beaches in on it. Wild run.View attachment 186331
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Wow, that 12Z GFS modeled historic snowstorm came out of nowhere! But of course that’s just great entertainment so far out.

Well before that and thus much more significantly as of now, KCHS has since yesterday afternoon been warning about a significant ZR threat for this weekend even way down into much of the just inland and even possibly coastal SE SC/upper GA that could linger til as late as Mon AM. As I posted last night, the last few GEFS runs of individual members have been strongly advertising a ZR threat in the KCHS forecast region:

KEY MESSAGE 2: WIDESPREAD PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR THIS
WEEKEND, BRINGING INCREASING POTENTIAL FOR A WINTER WEATHER EVENT TO
IMPACT THE REGION.

MODELS CONTINUE TO SUPPORT POTENTIAL FOR A WINTER WEATHER EVENT
IMPACTING AT LEAST PORTIONS OF SOUTHEAST SOUTH CAROLINA AND
SOUTHEAST GEORGIA THIS WEEKEND. THE SYNOPTIC PATTERN WILL FEATURE
STRONG, COLD HIGH PRESSURE WEDGING DOWN THE EASTERN SEABOARD THROUGH
THE WEEKEND, WITH AN AREA OF LOW PRESSURE FAVORED TO DEVELOP OFF THE
SOUTHEAST COAST. BROAD MID LEVEL TROUGHING WILL LARGELY BE IN PLACE
TO START, WITH A STRONGER WAVE DIVING INTO THE REGION LATER IN THE
WEEKEND. FURTHER ALOFT, WE CAN FIND AN IMPRESSIVE UPPER LEVEL JET
POSSIBLY ON THE ORDER OF 160+ KNOTS. THE CONDITIONS WILL CERTAINLY
BE IN PLACE TO SUPPORT PRECIPITATION SPREADING ACROSS THE AREA, WITH
INCREASING CONFIDENCE OF SOME OVERLAP WITH COLDER TEMPERATURES.

ATTENTION THEN TURNS TO PRECIPITATION TYPE AS COLD AIR SETTLES INTO
THE REGION. WHILE FORECAST DETAILS ON TIMING, AMOUNTS, AND P-TYPES
WILL CONTINUE TO BE REFINED IN THE COMING DAYS, A PERUSAL OF MODEL
SOUNDINGS INDICATE A NOTABLE WARM NOSE CENTERED AROUND 850 MB WITH
SURFACE TEMPS DROPPING TO NEAR OR BELOW FREEZING SATURDAY NIGHT INTO
SUNDAY MORNING. THIS WOULD SUGGEST FREEZING RAIN AS A PRIMARY
THREAT, WHICH ALSO JIVES WITH THE LATEST NBM PRECIP PROBABILITIES.
THE PROBABILISTIC WINTER STORM SEVERITY INDEX (WSSI-P) SHOWS CHANCES
OF MINOR WINTER STORM IMPACTS ACROSS THE ENTIRE AREA, WITH EVEN A 20-
40% CHANCE OF MODERATE IMPACTS ESPECIALLY NORTH OF I-16.

THE COLUMN BEGINS TO DRY OUT LATER SUNDAY INTO MONDAY, BUT IF
PRECIPITATION LINGERS, THE THREAT FOR WINTER WEATHER COULD CONTINUE
INTO EARLY MONDAY AS ENSEMBLE GUIDANCE SHOWS HIGH LIKELIHOOD FOR SUB-
FREEZING TEMPERATURES AGAIN SUNDAY NIGHT. WE WILL ALSO NEED TO BE ON
THE LOOKOUT FOR TEMPS/WIND CHILLS APPROACHING COLD WEATHER ADVISORY
CRITERIA SUNDAY NIGHT AND BEYOND.
 
Webberweather53 said:
You can clearly see the influence of this atmospheric river here with convective heating in it pumping the mid to upper ridge ahead of the Baja low, which slows it down. Global models have a bad habit of underestimating this latent heat release >> mass response process or potential vorticity redistribution.

That ultimately favors things to go more south downstream.

View attachment 186352


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Would that juice up the moisture too?
 
Webberweather53 said:
You can clearly see the influence of this atmospheric river here with convective heating in it pumping the mid to upper ridge ahead of the Baja low, which slows it down. Global models have a bad habit of underestimating this latent heat release >> mass response process or potential vorticity redistribution.

That ultimately favors things to go more south downstream.

View attachment 186352


View attachment 186353
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The shear width of that upper level divergence is amazeballs

IMG_4644.png
 
packfan98 said:
6z Euro AIFS. Colder, snowier, and further south.
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Seeing the Euro AIFS continue to tick colder and south is really what I like to see (just seems to have been the best model this year to me). It's not surprising either that today's trend across the board seems to be less Baja low interaction. Those things NEVER come out, so I'm guessing all the models likely trend to less and less interaction. Ultimately this may end up being a completely overrunning type event for the SE. An amped system with the Bajo low completely phasing I bet won't happen, and these 2 inch+ qpf totals are in my opinion overdone. I just hope we keep a good inch of qpf snow for mby when all is said and done!
griteater said:
That green line moving south in Pennsylvania is what’s nice!

View attachment 186349
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A 1042 high in N Virginia for our wedge? That will do wonders. Usually for our threats those things are in North Dakota.
 
LittleMountain said:
Where do you think is “sitting pretty” right now? I-40 in NC? Or further south?
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Im not Webb but for all snow definitely the I40 crowd. But the best rates and possibly highest totals are going to be right above that transition line. Northwest of 85 in SC gets a ton of lift here and makes out on precip. Sure we are going to have sleet mix in but we generally out perform in qpf. The highest qpf totals are likely inand above Atlanta where they battle mixing. Oconee and Pickens are typically colder through the column and get close to the same qpf being the direct Lee side. Webb or Grit or Rburrel can Def explain it better.
 
Goose88 said:
By that would it be heavy enough for snow instead?
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No. The marginal temps at the surface(31-32 degrees) are overwhelmed by latent heat release and heavier precip pulling down warm air from aloft. Besides the fact that heavy precip would run off.

That said, if we somehow get upper 20s in here like in GA, all beats are off.
 
ChattaVOL said:
Can you explain what being slower does?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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When you hang the Baja low back further, you don't inject quite as much moisture/energy into the already rather stout overrunning boundary along the Arctic front. More Baja invovlement (i.e. faster, gets wrapped up in everything quicker) is going to inject more moisture and "amp" the system north, shoving the p-type corridors north with them. Higher ice risk for many that are thinking they have mainly sleet/snow coming.

If the Baja low is slower/further back, you can still glean some moisture from it to keep the chances of a very impactful winter storm up, but you run less of a risk for mixing issues further north. For your location, you definitely want to root for this Baja to hang back further to avoid the mixing line overtaking Chattanooga and flipping you to freezing rain.
 
Brandon10 said:
Again. Id be surprised if the snow and transition line does not set up between Us264 and HWY70 In Eastern NC based on if these trends continue.
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I think Hwy 17 east might be mixing a lot and maybe 20-30 miles inland from the immediate coast but the cold air is stout...but sleet mixing in is almost guaranteed around here at some point if the coastal low pops to close....
 
Ross said:
personally, i do not buy the gfs solution. and that is not because it gives me less snow, which to be clear, it does big time. my take is that i do not think the "long fetch/conveyor belt" solutions pan out very often. typically models will settle on a shortwave or a different feature that eventually becomes dominant over the course of an event. given this event is just throwing a subtropical jet against a broad imposing mega cold trough, i guess it could happen, but i favor models settling on a more defined storm eventually
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Agree, typically the model gets confused with back to back systems, and as opposed to a steady fetch, there tends to be lulls.
 
Downeastnc said:
I think Hwy 17 east might be mixing a lot and maybe 20-30 miles inland from the immediate coast but the cold air is stout...but sleet mixing in is almost guaranteed around here at some point if the coastal low pops to close....
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Agree. I think we will see a good snow hit that runs 70 to the north and then as the coastal low pops the warm air change over to about Belhaven, New Bern. Just based on climo.
 
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