GSP Morning AFD Discussion 01/04 3:00am
The aforementioned low-level jet will establish a pronounced warm nose across the area before the column fully saturates with the warm nose strongest across eastern portions of the area. Wetbulbing via saturation of the dry airmass will help establish an in-situ wedge of cold air east of the mountains. Sub-freezing wetbulb temperatures will be common at precipitation onset from the mountains through the North Carolina foothills and Piedmont, especially deeper into the wedge along and north of I-40. Thus, a mixed bag of precipitation types is expected Friday night into Saturday morning. A brief period of snow is expected across the mountains before the strengthening warm nose switches things over to sleet and then freezing rain.
Farther east, in the in-situ wedge, freezing rain will be the predominate precipitation type with a brief period of sleet possible across the northern foothills. Without a sustained source of cold dry air, and given the self limiting process of freezing rain due to latent heat release, all locations will eventually see surface temperatures warm above freezing. This will occur quickest on the edges of the in-situ wedge with the northern foothills and mountains the last to see temperatures rise above freezing late Saturday morning. Pretty much everyone should be seeing a cold rain by noon, if not earlier.
The question now turns to how much snow/sleet/ice accumulation can be expected. The quick transition to ice across the mountains will limit snow/sleet totals to 1-2" followed by 0.05-0.2" of ice. In the in-situ wedge, marginal wetbulb temperatures and light winds will lead to modest ice accretion at best with most places on the edge of the wedge seeing a lot of runoff and less freezing of the rain. A few hundreths of an inch of accretion will be possible along I-85 before quickly warming above freezing with roughly 0.1-0.2" along a line from Statesville to Hickory to Rutherfordton and Columbus.
Historically, even during in-situ wedge regimes, the foothills immediately against the Blue Ridge escarpment, especially along and north of I-40 tend to hold on to sub-freezing air the longest and have proven to be stubborn to warm. Guidance often struggles to resolve this with the NAM often having the best handle on low-level thermal profiles in wedge airmasses. Thus, more weight was given towards the NAM thermal profiles, which supports a longer duration of freezing rain against the escarpment. In addition to climatological support, probabilistic guidance also paints this area as the location most likely to have the potential to receive warning criteria ice accretion. As such, a winter storm watch has been hoisted from Alexander/Caldwell counties southwest along the escarpment through Henderson and the mountains of Polk county. The highest ice totals are expected to occur in this corridor from Lenoir to Marion to Lake Lure and Hendersonville. Eventually, winter weather advisories will be needed across the surrounding counties where ice accretion is expected. Two limiting factors that could result in less ice would be temperatures warming quicker than currently forecast and the potential for deep convection along the Gulf Coast to inhibit greater inland moisture transport and reduce available QPF. A period of northwest flow snow showers will also be possible along the Tennessee border Saturday night