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Wintry February 19-21, 2020 Winter Storm

I think the Midlands sees snow Thursday evening. I don’t think it’ll stick but I do think it’ll be flying around as the system pulls away.
Agreed. Accumulating snow would require temps to collapse much faster than expected and strong rates. The latter is likely but the former is not imo. My hopes for the backend flurries from the coastal low are not high.

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I think the Midlands sees snow Thursday evening. I don’t think it’ll stick but I do think it’ll be flying around as the system pulls away.
yea i definitely think some flurries will get down here

Pulled from the recent 3KM NAM, the area circles during the heart of the precipitation makes me a sad panda. It gets beaten down over time, but not until the best moisture is leaving the area:

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Here’s how I see it playing out. Nam has a weak 850 low tracking across CAE to ILM. Assuming that’s correct it would put the best lift in the black and red circles I added here. The red is the area where I believe the transition zone will be and just north of it in the black is the area that should be mostly snow and has the chance to see the highest amounts. The 264 corridor from Washington to RDU may get hammered if the mixing stays to the south. It’s going to be a close call though.
F3ECA3B4-2BFE-43F6-ACBE-7E3945CD4B5C.jpeg
 
This is really neat, it shows the RPM being a beast, and how the NAM + RPM outperform large snow events vs GFS/Euro at larger lead times: https://ams.confex.com/ams/44Broadcast/webprogram/Paper294758.html (its a video presentation)

Retrospective analysis of global model forecasts and of NCEP's short-range ensemble forecasts system (SREF) revealed that forecasts based on the WRF-ARW dynamical core (including WSI RPM) were much more consistent and accurate at predicting the northern extent of heavy precipitation than forecasts based on other dynamical cores (NAM, GFS, and ECMWF). This presentation will provide both an analysis of the available real-time numerical weather prediction models, as well as an analysis of retrospective runs of the RPM system (using its WRF-ARW core) to reveal what components of the WRF-ARW contributed to the accurate snowfall forecasts, especially in the northern part of this snowstorm.
 
Here’s how I see it playing out. Nam has a weak 850 low tracking across CAE to ILM. Assuming that’s correct it would put the best lift in the black and red circles I added here. The red is the area where I believe the transition zone will be and just north of it in the black is the area that should be mostly snow and has the chance to see the highest amounts. The 264 corridor from Washington to RDU may get hammered if the mixing stays to the south. It’s going to be a close call though.
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You must be super pumped in Wilson
 
You must be super pumped in Wilson

Not yet, I’m riding that fine line of being all snow or mixing with a lot of sleet. I know these mixing zones oftentimes are further north than even the NAM shows but I’m hoping I can stay all snow... and that it’s right with the qpf. I’ve only seen a foot of snow once in my lifetime and that was the December 2010 Christmas storm, would love a repeat here.
 
This is probably the closest to the true RPM (out to 72 hours) that I have access to, but as you see, it's quite a bit different, in the Deeper South, especially(midlands of sc), and seems to try and match what the RPM modeling posted in various threads and our local forecasts are starting to show:

snoc.hr72.png
 
Not yet, I’m riding that fine line of being all snow or mixing with a lot of sleet. I know these mixing zones oftentimes are further north than even the NAM shows but I’m hoping I can stay all snow... and that it’s right with the qpf. I’ve only seen a foot of snow once in my lifetime and that was the December 2010 Christmas storm, would love a repeat here.
Even with all the potential mixing, once you flip to all snow, the bands are going to be nuts in the coastal plain as the coastal low cranks up on the back end of the storm
 
poop I’m kinda getting just a little pumped here lol, after the winter it’s been, I’ll take 0.5-2 inches of snow or even sleet to go, this winter has been so bad that it makes just a little amount seem great
I definitely think we have the potential to get a sneaky few to several inches if this initial overrunning is more intense than forecast. A few inches of sleet in CLT with some snow thrown in isn’t an unreasonable expectation. If we stay all snow however...
 
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