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Wintry Jan 15-16 Winter Storm Discussion & Obs

Memphis is mentioning the EURO in their afternoon disco:


Area Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Memphis TN
343 PM CST Fri Jan 14 2022

.DISCUSSION...

...A Strong Winter Storm to Affect the Mid-South Saturday
Afternoon through Sunday Afternoon...

Ahhh yes, the calm before the storm. A nice and dry day across
the Mid-South at this hour. Temperatures range from the upper 40s
to upper 50s across the region. The latest surface analysis places
a 1003mb low over the Texas Panhandle with a warm front extending
into north central Oklahoma. Aloft, GOES east Water Vapor Imagery
depicts a positively-tilted trough over the Dakotas with an upper
low pressure system off the New England Coast. Another shortwave
trough was analyzed just off the Front Range of the Rockies.

The aforementioned troughs are expected to phase and dive south
over the next 18 hours or so. The trough will quickly cutoff and
deepen as it moves in the ArkLaTex region by tomorrow afternoon.
Ahead of this feature, strong lift and moisture will pool over the
Lower Mississippi Valley. As a result, rain showers will begin
early on Saturday morning and spread north across the rest of the
region through the afternoon hours. Rainfall could be heavy at
times and some thunder is possible, especially over northwest
Mississippi. WPC has outlined a good chunk of the CWA in a
Marginal Risk of Excessive rainfall to account for this. 1 to 2
inches of rainfall is possible with locally higher amounts.

A TROWAL will develop over the Mississippi Delta by late
afternoon, as strong Cyclogenesis occurs beneath the upper low.
In addition, the pressure gradient will tighten significantly by
late afternoon and a wind advisory may become necessary over
northeast Arkansas.

The main event will kickoff around sundown on Saturday. Cold air
will begin to undercut the warm air and convert rain over to
snow across extreme northeast Arkansas and the Missouri Bootheel.
Atmospheric soundings support this quick changeover, although
there may be a couple hours of a rain and snow mix. Model
guidance continues to be less than helpful on location of heavy
snow and snowfall totals. Nevertheless, there is still some time
to fine tune the forecast.

The most consistent model over the past couple of days has been
the ECMWF, which has a significant snow storm along or just south
of the I-40 corridor. This solution remains consistent, but
significantly higher than a lot of the model solutions. The
National Blend of Models is still the preferred approach at this
time. It attempts to weigh all solutions and arrive at the most
reasonable solution. This largely translates to a swath of 2 to 4
inches centered around the I-40 corridor, with slightly less to
the north and south of the area. This seems reasonable given the
high model spread at this time. We still do not have enough
confidence to upgrade the winter storm watch to warnings or
advisories at this point. Will continue with the watch for now.

The final fly in the ointment is the highly dynamic nature of this
system. With significant shear, lift, and moisture in place, a
deformation zone will form somewhere over the Mid-South. This
will be the area of most concern, as snowfall rates could be
extremely high where any bands set up. In fact, some areas could
see upwards of 8 inches of snowfall. I believe that the ECMWF is
broad-brushing the convective nature of this event with its
current solution, but alluding to the area of highest snowfall
accumulation. The CAMs will hopefully latch onto this and lend
some higher confidence to our forecast over the next several runs.

The upper low is expected to lift out pretty quickly on Sunday.
There may even be some good clearing of skies for a few hours.
However, another quick moving shortwave will sneak in behind it
late Sunday night and will likely increase cloud cover once again.
Decided to undercut guidance for high temperatures on Sunday, as
good CAA and cloud cover will be in place.

A couple of quiet and dry days will occur Monday through the
middle of next week, as we remain in dry northwest flow. A cold
front looks to arrive on Wednesday and bring some showers and
maybe a little thunder to the region. Cold air looks to chase the
moisture, so winter weather looks low at this point.

Behind the front, arctic air will build in across the region
through late week as a 1043mb high moves into Mississippi Valley.
Expect below normal temperatures through this period.
 
B674ED81-C3F0-4521-8C12-87BD8923740A.jpg82DED8D6-EB6A-41CE-8512-4CAD1154168C.jpgFWIW, Brad Travis with WAFF48 did a FB live and showed these.
He showed GRAF model that had much higher totals and I missed the screenshot.
 

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CLTwx said:
Very well stated. But, you and I know that as conservative as he is, he's damn good at nailing profiles and his predictions are usually solid.

However, I want his ass to be dead wrong! SNOW ⬆️
Click to expand...
I do remember twice that he was dead wrong on the profiles and there ended up being more snow and sleet for the south and southeast parts of the metro area.

In February 2014 he had southern Mecklenburg and Union Counties only getting 2-3” before going over the freezing rain, and that FGEN band hit the next morning and put down 6” in no time.
Then in January 2016 he said the same areas would only see ZR and we ended up with 1-2” of sleet after about .5” of snow.
 
The common denominator for all of us east of the mountains. FGEN for the win.
Chazwin said:
I do remember twice that he was dead wrong on the profiles and there ended up being more snow and sleet for the south and southeast parts of the metro area.

In February 2014 he had southern Mecklenburg and Union Counties only getting 2-3” before going over the freezing rain, and that FGEN band hit the next morning and put down 6” in no time.
Then in January 2016 he said the same areas would only see ZR and we ended up with 1-2” of sleet after about .5” of snow.
Click to expand...
 
ATLwxfan said:
The globals at this point are useless for soundings and maybe just useful for track. GFS tracking the low right into the wedge still seems whack.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
I keep waiting for the GFS to fold to the colder meso models with its surface temps in the wedge time frame for the Atlanta-Athens area and it just doesn't budge. I hope to be able to in the future refer to the GFS as horrible in handling CAD's in this part of the world. I hope.
 
Wild Weather Monger said:
I keep waiting for the GFS to fold to the colder meso models with its surface temps in the wedge time frame for the Atlanta-Athens area and it just doesn't budge. I hope to be able to in the future refer to the GFS as horrible in handling CAD's in this part of the world. I hope.
Click to expand...

Yeah I mean we need to debrief after storms and document this kinda stuff so that in the future we have clear reference points.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Wild Weather Monger said:
I keep waiting for the GFS to fold to the colder meso models with its surface temps in the wedge time frame for the Atlanta-Athens area and it just doesn't budge. I hope to be able to in the future refer to the GFS as horrible in handling CAD's in this part of the world. I hope.
Click to expand...
That kinda reminds of the February 2015 Ice/Sleet Storm when the GFS was way off on temperatures in NE GA just 12 hours before. It had those areas in the mid to upper 30s with rain and they actually were 10-12 degrees colder with major ice
 
Shawn said:
I need to see these gulf members please. This is what I have:

View attachment 105636View attachment 105637View attachment 105638
Click to expand...
I think what's deceiving with the surface low placement on both the operational and ensemble maps is the surface low feature is actually elongated (occluded?) and the location of the absolute lowest pressure is irrelevant. It's better to look at the surface wind barbs to get a handle on how the low-level flow is interacting with the low from the CAD high. Then once in Georgia, it of course begins the handoff to the coastal in SC.

That said, the GFS did take another tick south with the overall surface flow although it didn't appear to change the model's thermal profiles much at all...yet.
 
Guys several post has been deleted because of banter or small talk. Please use this forum for this.

Misc - 2021-22 Fall/Winter Whamby Thread

True. Winters just been so disappointing around here lol. I just remember most of them were so exciting when I was a child, Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk A lot of us get biased for nostalgia. The older you get, the better things were when you were a child. ? That said, you're absolutely...
southernwx.com southernwx.com
 
ryan1234 said:
I definitely don't think we will see much in the way of rain. Whatever falls is going to be frozen. This CAD is just too stout. Area's further east, closer to the LP, sure. But I am pretty confident CLT stays frozen throughout the entire duration.
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Yep if the CAD is there, and I think it will be, that is a lock. Everyone NW of highway 72 in SC would stay below freezing. I would also think all of Union county NC would stay below too. Might be iffy for Wadesboro down to Lancaster and SE of there though.
 
Chazwin said:
That kinda reminds of the February 2015 Ice/Sleet Storm when the GFS was way off on temperatures in NE GA just 12 hours before. It had those areas in the mid to upper 30s with rain and they actually were 10-12 degrees colder with major ice
Click to expand...
That was a big bust for lots of people. Was supposed to be rain here too, but we got sleet.
 
JHS said:
That was a big bust for lots of people. Was supposed to be rain here too, but we got sleet.
Click to expand...
Yeah the key to it was a mesohigh that formed in SW VA that helped strengthen the CAD… the short range models picked it up, but the GFS never did
 
snku_acc.us_ma.png
 
Zander98al said:
Checking the 22z HRRR. The HRRR is really trying to establish a surface low on the gulf by Midday Saturday. Only a few more hours to the 00z to see the whole picture. This is Paramount for snow totals being pushed south
Click to expand...
Hmmm you guys around the I-20 area needs to definitely follow this storm closely there’s definitely going to be some surprises especially in Alabama
 
00Z should be interesting tonight. Curious so see if the NAM can speed things up and if it holds that ice look. We go into an ice sounding for about 8 hours. Considering it is normally stronger, make it 10. Doubt we stay sleet either.

NWS must be discounting NAM to a degree because there is no mention of ice in my point and click.
 
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