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Pattern January 2021 - Joyless January

Honestly reminds me of a SE version (without the TC) of what we had in mid November, stuff straight out the tropics View attachment 60999View attachment 61000View attachment 61001
Yup, that too was arguably an atmospheric river event. Interesting that we're looking at getting two of these in just a few months. I've never known them to be terribly common, but they do occur on occasion.

Thanks for posting better graphics and more models showing this than what I had!
 
Went from a severe threat to a wedge with elevated storms on the first one ? hey if the next day is warm I’ll take it F78B7241-35E7-4307-BBF1-CC5978103B3B.png431EE965-F8A4-46F7-B151-9FE199594B8B.png
 
Yup, that too was arguably an atmospheric river event. Interesting that we're looking at getting two of these in just a few months. I've never known them to be terribly common, but they do occur on occasion.

Thanks for posting better graphics and more models showing this than what I had!
Yeah they can happen especially in the late summer/fall around here, but I honestly don’t remember much of these in the winter and January especially (other than the ones we’ve had on the edge of the southeast ridge in recent winters with elevated thunderstorms but I wouldn’t even call those atmospheric river events or are they ? Lol)
 
That disappoints me because I know that will never be replicated here. Oh well, as long as something can produce measurable snow between now and March I’ll take it.

It’s been almost 20 years for Raleigh and it’s difficult to imagine it happening again. But, I guess that’s why we do this...hope. A 3-4” for Raleigh is a home run in my book.
 
It can happen anytime but the given odds on any day of it happening are incredibly low lol. Wonder how the 2020s will be snow wise , lower or higher than the 2010s. Odds would say higher but who knows .
Warming climate vs regression to the mean imo yields similar to slightly more than the 2010s
 
Yeah they can happen especially in the late summer/fall around here, but I honestly don’t remember much of these in the winter and January especially (other than the ones we’ve had on the edge of the southeast ridge in recent winters with elevated thunderstorms but I wouldn’t even call those atmospheric river events or are they ? Lol)

Not familiar enough with this sort of setup you're describing to say for sure, but I don't think so. You wouldn't see much of any convective precipitation in an atmospheric river. The atmospheric rivers are usually concentrated strips of very moist air that are pulled from the tropics by a low level jet ahead of the cold front (a sort of juiced up subset of the warm conveyor belt/warm sector). But the near-saturated nature of this air means the synoptic forcing for ascent by the approaching upper level trough drives a deep moist adiabatic profile. The low level jet/moisture transport is reinforced by the resulting latent heat release.

I think this is a bit less familiar because the framework of an atmospheric river just doesn't get applied for eastern US weather as much as it does out west (where the rivers are often the biggest deal weather-wise), but definitely on occasion a similar phenomena will occur when developing cyclones tap into deep tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico and/or western Atlantic.
 
A 10” storm seems insurmountable. We havent had a 10” winter in 17 years. One can hope though.
Eh when you think about it we had some opportunities this decade but they were just a little north east south west. Realistically just looking at it statistically and taking the randomness of weather out of the equation we are probably closer than we know
 
Eh when you think about it we had some opportunities this decade but they were just a little north east south west. Realistically just looking at it statistically and taking the randomness of weather out of the equation we are probably closer than we know

I guess these were close. No complaints, happy to take a repeat on any of these.
DE7CE65B-90D0-4B23-997F-DD4D70E01270.pngC2AC5B5D-BA8C-4855-810F-2A69B116E357.gifAA81F239-BC36-4B86-9340-BD3B7711BABF.gif
 
Eh when you think about it we had some opportunities this decade but they were just a little north east south west. Realistically just looking at it statistically and taking the randomness of weather out of the equation we are probably closer than we know

Places as close as Chapel Hill got >10" on Jan. 2018, and Hillsborough twice that year (December, I do believe). I think far northern Wake got close to or over double digits in Dec. 2018 even. Of course the Wake County gradient usually nicely coincides with places like Hillsborough (or better: Roxboro) scoring, so maybe that isn't much comfort. I was in Raleigh for both 2018 storms.
 
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