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Jan. 17-18, 2026 SE Winter Weather Threat

Webberweather53 said:
Winter storm types always fall on a spectrum, but this isn’t a classic miller type a setup where you have a strong coastal cyclone throwing precip back into the colder air to the NW and then the coastal low is really driving in strong cold advection that crashes the entire column. It’s there of course but this is very weak in this case and not the main driver of your precipitation, as I showed earlier.

When you get these types of Miller A events, usually we have blocking to the north to slow everything down & amp the trough/coastal, that’s obviously not happening here because the background flow is very fast and progressive.

View attachment 183691

The background pattern is more like Jan 2014 (overrunning) than it is a coastal low

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The surface features also don’t look right for a miller type an event in NC. There’s a surface low over the Great Plains where a surface high should be! Again, no high-latitude blocking either with the wrong sign of anomalies over Greenland.

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I agree, but overrunning implies a storm starting as snow, with warm air overrunning a cold air mass initially, that will later warm the column and change it to rain. This scanario is the opposite. Again, I am just trying to clarify terms, which has a major effect on how we are viewing a storm.
 
Webberweather53 said:
Winter storm types always fall on a spectrum, but this isn’t a classic miller type a setup where you have a strong coastal cyclone throwing precip back into the colder air to the NW and then the coastal low is really driving in strong cold advection that crashes the entire column. It’s there of course but this is very weak in this case and not the main driver of your precipitation, as I showed earlier.

When you get these types of Miller A events, usually we have blocking to the north to slow everything down & amp the trough/coastal, that’s obviously not happening here because the background flow is very fast and progressive.

View attachment 183691

The background pattern is more like Jan 2014 (overrunning) than it is a coastal low

View attachment 183694

View attachment 183695


The surface features also don’t look right for a miller type an event in NC. There’s a surface low over the Great Plains where a surface high should be! Again, no high-latitude blocking either with the wrong sign of anomalies over Greenland.

View attachment 183698

View attachment 183699
Click to expand...
You raise a good point about the lack of a blocking HP. For one, it provides an additional cold air feed and it keeps whatever cold air is present from escaping. If this were in place, I'd be more confident if I were outside of the western parts of the Carolinas but since this is not the case, I get the feeling that this will be mostly rain for the folks in Eastern NC/SC. The track of this LP, while it is important, can't do enough on its own to provide cold air unless it was much stronger.

I'm am not a meteorologist, just a person who enjoys keeping up with the weather and whatever it brings in most cases. I hope my gut feelings about this event are wrong but looking at the cards we may be dealt, I would fold right now with this hand. Hopefully, things will turn out differently and this post will give more the more optimistic folks a chance to say "See, I told you so."
 
NCSNOW said:
Nam is way quicker with precip verse its 6Z run. I'd cash out in a heartbeat with this run , if it worked that easy

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It would help our chances if the NAM is right about the precipitation arriving earlier than expected. My residence in Wake County is right on the rain/snow transition line which is the case for many winter events. Looking at the last frame of the NAM, it looks like whatever snow falls will be washed away by a cold rain at the end of the storm. Heavier precipitation rates might help out with that.
 
Mitch West said:
It would be a pretty bad fail by the Euro if a scenario even close to the NAM was to play out.
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In its defense it is closer synoptically to the NAM than we may be giving it credit for but very minor differences go a long way in such a setup
 
Stormdoc said:
I agree, but overrunning implies a storm starting as snow, with warm air overrunning a cold air mass initially, that will later warm the column and change it to rain. This scanario is the opposite. Again, I am just trying to clarify terms, which has a major effect on how we are viewing a storm.
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Yeah exactly, that’s part of the problem I’ve been bringing up. These overrunning events usually start as snow then change to ice, tho that’s not always the case. We may be starting out as rain because the cold air doesn’t get here first, that could be a huge problem...

This looks like an overrunning event in some sense because of how the moist ascent is overriding the Arctic front and the precip is largely co-located with warm advection aloft. The coastal low itself also isn’t super strong or giving us a ton of cold advection and that’s tied to the pattern being highly unfavorable for it as noted earlier. This whole setup just doesn’t look right at all no matter how you slice it.
 
8820b4cb23d0d20b81a1706470524b6f.jpg

Guess I’ll take that over snow i guess


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Webberweather53 said:
Yeah exactly, that’s part of the problem I’ve been bringing up. These overrunning events usually start as snow then change to ice, tho that’s not always the case. We may be starting out as rain because the cold air doesn’t get here first, that could be a huge problem...

This looks like an overrunning event in some sense because of how the moist ascent is overriding the Arctic front and the precip is largely co-located with warm advection aloft. The coastal low itself also isn’t super strong or giving us a ton of cold advection and that’s tied to the pattern being highly unfavorable for it as noted earlier. This whole setup just doesn’t look right at all no matter how you slice it.
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Thank you for clarifying. For more snow in the Carolinas, we have to hope the stronger dynamics will outweigh the negatives you mentioned, but it will be a challenge.
 
Oconeexman said:
You honestly wanna be on the razors edge. Heaviest rates will occur there but its a gamble...lol
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Which is usually I85. The 2 best places to be is immediately south and east of the NC/SC mountains on the state line where you get additional lift and probably 5-10 miles north of the transition line
 
I feel much better for most of us here in Alabama and portions of Georgia in regards to the cold. We simply just need precip and thats exactly where we want to be in this situation. Someone in south central Alabama is going to get clocked imo.
 
Stormdoc said:
Thank you for clarifying. For more snow in the Carolinas, we have to hope the stronger dynamics will outweigh the negatives you mentioned, but it will be a challenge.
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No worries.

I just feel like we’re between a rock and a hard place with the way this is setup in the Carolinas.

Pattern doesn’t quite fit temperature wise with your usual overrunning event as you noted, whereas we also don’t have enough blocking over the top to slow this event trough down and really amp the coastal to feed us more cold air. Gotta really thread the needle here to make this work out at all
 
Webberweather53 said:
Yeah exactly, that’s part of the problem I’ve been bringing up. These overrunning events usually start as snow then change to ice, tho that’s not always the case. We may be starting out as rain because the cold air doesn’t get here first, that could be a huge problem...

This looks like an overrunning event in some sense because of how the moist ascent is overriding the Arctic front and the precip is largely co-located with warm advection aloft. The coastal low itself also isn’t super strong or giving us a ton of cold advection and that’s tied to the pattern being highly unfavorable for it as noted earlier. This whole setup just doesn’t look right at all no matter how you slice
Click to expand...

One thing is for sure if model guidance holds.... it won't be a "typical" overrunning look for us in the Carolinas... Thanks, Webber!
 
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