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Wintry Jan 15-16 Winter Storm Discussion & Obs

BelmontWX79 said:
Here are the individual GFS Ens member for precip type. Many are showing snow and decent snow at that over Most of North Carolina and Upstate. This should pull some of you from the cliff...or not.View attachment 104026
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Very good point. If we had the gfs showing a massive hit and the ensembles showed a miss we’d be concerned.
 
griteater said:
Bull is ready to drop the hammer on us (me included). The stronger wave actually creates more confluent flow into PA/NY, so it makes sense that the damming is getting stronger. It was just kind of shocking seeing that wave run the apps like it did

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Yeah, I don't understand an inland track if the CAD is stronger...something has to give
 
RainlessSnowless & Grumpy said:
At this point couldn't a Miller B actually be better for the 85 corridor instead of an amped low cruising across south GA into the coastal plain?Seems if the parent low stays weak west of the apps and doesn't hit us with a warm nose and the new low pops far enough se that we may avoid the majority of its warm nose as well? We may sacrifice some precip in the transfer though. Am I out in left field with that or not?
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I would say.....if you just want a winter storm, (snow or ice), then the worst case scenario is a super amped Miller A like you mentioned where the wave is west of the Apps (kind of hard to imagine, but still possible I guess). Probably the best we can do here is a Miller A/B hybrid where the parent low runs into S Bama, then shuffles due east to the coast. In that case, with the strong CAD, you'd get accumulating snow & sleet based on the cold temperatures we are seeing. If you go true Miller B, with weak low west of the Apps, you are going to put more pressure on the damming high, and you'd get less snow, then go to sleet or frz rain depending on strength of the CAD
 
I’ll reiterate my sentiments from earlier. I just don’t see the LP coming this far north. There’s definitely going to be a major ice and sleet threat but personally I think that’s going to be centered much closer to the I20 corridor. Maybe midway between I20 and I85. The CAD dome is too stout for any LP to plow right into it. The GFS has done this for years.
 
BHS1975 said:
I thought when the low transfers it screws the Charlotte area with less precip.


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Miller B's are known for having suspect precip output thru the piedmont....but it varies of course. You want to see a healthy storm with a good moisture fetch. Dec 2002 ice storm was a Miller B and had a LOT of precip with it
 
BHS1975 said:
I thought when the low transfers it screws the Charlotte area with less precip.


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Not really because typically a Miller B will produce a solid period of overrunning on the front end that by the time the tranfer happens, the heavy precipitation has already occurred. Now once you go east of CLT metro into the Sandhills the transfer or mixing can hurt things
 
It's more to it than just looking at the cold surface temps and thinking the low plowed into the CAD. The parent high was retreating and if you notice the isobars digging east of the mtns were retreating with the high and opened the door. The low doesn't care what surface temps are. I'm not saying it's correct, just what it showed and why.
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More times than not the confluence lifts out earlier than it appeared at D7. More times than not, these systems amp more than they appear at D7. More times than not, the track ends up farther north and west of the way it appeared at D7. Just playing the odds, once you start seeing hints/signs/signals of a robust system, you can usually count on those things happening. In those cases, the ensemble mean does not jerk way left like the op does. But it will tend to drift in that direction and get there eventually.

But none of that guarantees anything here. I have a concern that the degree of CAD is still being underestimated, even as cold as it looks now. Again, going by the odds, that's a decent bet. I also have strong reservations, given the aforementioned CAD, that a low is going to plow into it. Impossible? No. But likely? I don't see it right now.

I hate going from a ULL/dynamic driven all snow event to a Miller B or Miller B hybrid situation. My expectation is for a lot of ice and slop, the way it looks now. It seems most likely that we're going to see a lot of frozen precipitation. I just wish it was going to be predominately snow for a change. The odds of that scenario have gone down over the last 24 hours, IMO. Can it come back? Sure. If we had a strong west-based -NAO, I'd be much more enthusiastic about that probability. Since we don't, the first paragraph outcome seems reasonable to me.

Not panicking or throwing in the towel or jumping ship or bittercasting or whatever. We're probably going to get a significant winter storm. Tracking it with everyone is fun. This is what we wait all year for.
 
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