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July Surprise!

I've heard the winter snows there suck though, compared to places like Boone, Blowing Rock.. even though it's at a slightly higher elevation.

When everyone thinks of the mountains of NC, they just simply think of it as one big monotonous region and that couldn't be further from the truth. The difference between Highlands and Boone is greater than that between NYC and the Catskills. There is a lot of variation in climate between the 2, elevation be damned. Highlands being on the southern escarpment is known more it's precipitation because that southern escarpment from Highlands over to Hendersonville tends to wring out the most moisture coming out of the Gulf. If you want to be in an area when a classic Miller A is going to overun a cold wedge, the Highlands is your best bet because you're going to see 2ft paste bomb with flakes the size of printer paper. They don't happen very often but those Southern Mountains tend to be the sweet spot for those setups. If you want a more consistent powdery snow, then you'll want to be where NWF event out of the Great Lakes tends to manifest and that is only the Western Escarpment, facing northwest (i.e. Border Counties, Boone, etc). Latitude means just as much as altitude in these parts.

As for the snows sucking, I would venture to say that Southern WNC has had some of the best snows in the last decade in regards to singular events. I know the Highlands areas was ground zero for the 02/2015, 01/2016, 12/2017 storms and ample others over the last few years, but again the consistency is lacking.
 
Love the radar this afternoon! Storms firing to the south and in the mountains. Should make for plenty of OBF's later on today.
 
Yeah these areas are favored heavily with storms moving off the mountains and maybe a few storms later around south CLT (similar to Saturday) it’s harder for stuff to make it farther East due to timing as seen on Friday/Saturday and Friday 2 weeks ago CEE1F71C-8325-4810-A52B-9F80A0D02531.png
 
Nasty

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My guess is that those storms currently in Aiken County aren't gonna make it my way before raining themselves out and that sucks. It'll be even better if they rain themselves out and reestablish west of me. /s

Should also add, the heat index is 109. I'm not sure how we're not under a heat advisory because I thought the heat advisory criteria was just a HI of 105.
 
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