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Wintry More SE Snow ? (1/16-1/18)

tractor girl said:
Kurt Mellish on this winter in ATL:

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I wonder which location he is basing this off of, KATL? Its easy to forget Atlanta only had 2.3" with the early December event, and they also only had 4.5" during the 93 Superstorm. I wish I could find some numbers for Cobb County over the past century.
 
1300m said:
I'm not sure if I have just become increasingly aware of the ineptitude of forecasts for our area, or if they are actually getting worse, but it is honestly just embarrassing. My forecast map wasn't great either, I had 3 to 5" but I made that map on Tuesday afternoon. Obviously by Wednesday morning it was apparent a large area was getting 6-8". I think previous history of busts and underperformance starts to cloud the judgement of many who have been here too long. That, and I think most are too slow to react to short-term model trends. It's like they made their forecast two days ago and aren't willing to change their minds no matter what the trends are suggesting.

P.S. I think probabilistic forecasting is a joke. It's just a crutch to lean on so you don't have to actually make a forecast and stand by it. Most of the general public just take it as forecasters have no idea what can happen when they start talking about probabilities (from my experience). I also largely feel the same way about ensemble guidance. It's a tool in the long range but really isn't that great, and folks like Fishel treat it like the latest, greatest thing in forecasting. In reality, it's nothing but an average of wrong answers. You can stir a bunch of garbage up in a pot, but it's still garbage. I really feel like as a whole, meteorology is deemphasizing the skill of the individual forecaster, and the forecasts are really suffering for it.
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Well said. I made my forecast at 3am that morning so I had the 00z suite to use, but even so, many forecasts as you can see well into the early AM didn’t adjust. WRAL simply didn’t put an updated forecast out until they saw totals trending up I believe. Brad P from Charlotte uses Probabilities a lot too and a lot of times he busts low as well. Is it time to discuss the methodology here? I mean really, I challenge any met to sit here and justify using this in place of
1. Trends in latest modeling (not simply output)
2. Their own brain
3. Trends upstream aka ground truth!!

SREF members? Random ensemble members??? Climo and 11:1 ratio blend?
afbe53f6dd7525717fa4a58cfdd4d86d.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
This was probably as close as we'll ever get to a true board wide storm. Generally, winter events in the SE are confined to either northern, middle, or southern sections of a state (eastern or western if you're in Tennessee and North Carolina). It's really hard to get the right ingredients for everyone to score. Having the precipitation accompanying an arctic front certainly allowed more people the chance to get in the game. I read where every county in Alabama had measurable snow which was the first time that's happened since the Superstorm of '93.

Even though we only received about 1/4" to 1/2", it's always magical to see snow falling from the sky...so I'll call it a win in my book. Maybe we'll have a Fab February as that has been a good window in the past for snow in middle Georgia.

Thanks again to the input of the professionals (Delta, 1300m, and Webber) and amateurs alike who saw the potential last week and gave us some great PBP and model analysis.

Hopefully we'll have one or two more to track before the winter's over. La Nina FTW!
 
Kylo said:
Officially RAH records 5.9" for Raleigh. Still can't break through that 6" ceiling but who's complaining, great event.

0.49 of precip to 5.9" of snowfall, SLR > 10:1.

View attachment 3319
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Some of the precip likely didn't tip the bucket, so those SLRs are probably closer to 10:1 or perhaps even less than that but regardless this was a great storm!
 
In the southern part of upstate SC storms don't often work out when the cold air supply is coming in from the west but this time was a little different. 850's were well below freezing and the entire column was frozen. That's why we were able to get 33 degree snow for almost the entirety of the event. The upper levels of the atmosphere saved us
 
From a meteorological standpoint, did we ever figure out why the city of Columbia, proper, got the shaft? The HRRR was the only modeling honking on rain being the primary precipitation type for them. I assumed it was incorrect in handling the thermal structure based on other guidance, including the Euro.

The European run that @1300m posted is about right here in this state. A lot of it didn't actually accumulate due to wet/warmer temperatures, though.

Edit: Actually, the ICON was insistent on rain/snow at best too.
 
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Here's the final snowfall accumulation map for this event & comparison w/ my forecast. Not bad, I couldn't be happier with how the jackpot zone in the east-central piedmont evolved although I didn't do well at all in the southern coastal plain and Outer Banks.
January 16-17 2018 NC Forecast snowmap.jpg
January 16-18 2018 NC Snowmap.png
 
I had to make a minor correction to the map, a few individuals who reported to me after the fact from Spivey's corner and Stedman seem to support 1-1.5" in eastern Cumberland and western Sampson. Visible satellite also shows a 20ish mile wide stripe of deeper snow cover there.
January 16-18 2018 NC Snowmap.png
Screen Shot 2018-01-18 at 4.43.32 PM.png
 
J.C. said:
I wonder which location he is basing this off of, KATL? Its easy to forget Atlanta only had 2.3" with the early December event, and they also only had 4.5" during the 93 Superstorm. I wish I could find some numbers for Cobb County over the past century.
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Since KATL has the only official ATL snow measurement, I'd say KATL. The 4.6" is, indeed, already currently tied for 11th highest when you go back to 1930-1, when the airport started measuring. However, if one were to back to the late 1870s, my records show that the 4.6" is tied for ~25th as there were many big snow years 1880's-early 1900s. Also, the official snow measurement at ATL used to be further north in downtown prior to 1930.
 
1300m said:
I'll take it a step further. They blew this forecast. They blew the last one. They blow virtually every forecast here in our market. But they always blow them too low. As long as they don't predict a big snow and that doesn't verify everything is fine. I don't get it. I honestly don't get why anyone watches them because their forecasts are so useless more than 24 hours out they hold zero value. But somehow folks just keep coming back.
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Very true, also I guess why folks still watch CNN
 
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