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Pattern January 2021 - Joyless January

Can't understand why you are telling us to punt this one, when the model support for a western NC snowstorm is increasing. I understand that the ULL track is not too favorable right now, but the trends are in favor of a more southern solution. Please explain to us non-mets why this one will not trend better during subsequent runs.

I'm almost ready to punt this one if I was outside the mountains or far western/NW piedmont of NC. Not seeing anything super encouraging that would favor a southern solution, the models verbatim rn would favor cold rain for most everyone east of the mountains. Seeing a ton of warm advection in the forecast soundings and that's a recipe for not only a stronger than forecast warm nose vs globals but NW trend even if nothing really changes synoptically because the models don't have the vertical resolution to fully resolve warm advection and more WAA = greater lateral extent of precip & NW shift of the rain-snow line + warm nose. This is actually a somewhat similar setup in some aspects to the big storm that hit the NE US earlier this month.
 
I'm almost ready to punt this one if I was outside the mountains or far western/NW piedmont of NC. Not seeing anything super encouraging that would favor a southern solution, the models verbatim rn would favor cold rain for most everyone east of the mountains. Seeing a ton of warm advection in the forecast soundings and that's a recipe for not only a stronger than forecast warm nose vs globals but NW trend even if nothing really changes synoptically because the models don't have the vertical resolution to fully resolve warm advection and more WAA = greater lateral extent of precip & NW shift of the rain-snow line + warm nose. This is actually a somewhat similar setup in some aspects to the big storm that hit the NE US earlier this month.
How can it go further NW than it currently is? That block ain’t no joke.
 
Just for curiosity, are the datapoints you’re looking at here for WAA the warm “nose” and southerly flow at lower levels?

Warm advection is basically all the data points through the sounding where the winds are veering and that's evident throughout a very deep layer of the troposphere verbatim on the Euro. There is veering and warm advection all the way from the sfc to about 300-400mb on the 12z ECMWF. Bleh
 
How can it go further NW than it currently is? That block ain’t no joke.

The block verbatim doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of redirecting the storm over coastal VA/NC vs SC/GA, the latter of which we need to see to maximize our chances for snow here. Warm advection can easily shift the precip & rain-snow line 100+ miles NW of modeled w/ the exact same look synoptically, which would basically place it at the Blue Ridge Escarpment instead of I-40 where the Euro currently has it
 
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