JUST WONDERING.............

[NCGal]

A FEW YEARS AGO, IN RALEIGH, N.C. WE GOT 22 INCHES OF SNOW. I AM 33 YEARS OLD AND HAD NEVER SEEN IT SNOW LIKE THAT BEFORE. IS THERE ANY CHANCE THAT WE MAY SEE ANOTHER STORM LIKE THAT?WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT OUR WEATHER THIS WINTER, WILL IT BE SNOWY OR ICY??? THANKS!!!!!

[WoodstockWX]

temps up and down but avging AOB normal, and WET WET WET an STORMY, you should see at least 1 accumulating snowfall in January.

[Anonymous]

A FEW YEARS AGO, IN RALEIGH, N.C. WE GOT 22 INCHES OF SNOW. I AM 33 YEARS OLD AND HAD NEVER SEEN IT SNOW LIKE THAT BEFORE. IS THERE ANY CHANCE THAT WE MAY SEE ANOTHER STORM LIKE THAT?WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT OUR WEATHER THIS WINTER, WILL IT BE SNOWY OR ICY??? THANKS!!!!!

NCGal, I may be very, very WRONG, and the good folks here at S2K may be feeding me prime CROW for the next ten years running.......................

But if we get this cross-polar flow and we keep on getting heavy precipitation events such as we have seen all throughout this year, then I say there is every chance you could see snow like that again THIS winter!!!

The entire Mid Atlantic is running 10 to 30 inches ABOVE norms for rainfall this year. Here in N VA where I live, the rain never really stopped. My lawn was MUDDY all summer. IT NEVER DRIED OUT!! We had unprecedented mosquito problems. You know, when you have a lot of rain, there are these green marks on your driveway? Well, for the first time in my whole life, MY driveway had those marks, from standing water from SO DARN MANY THUNDERSTORMS ALL SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!! In a normal summer, our grass is BROWN!!! We'd be screaming for water!! Crying about our dead brown grass!! Bemoaning global warming and all about how the climate is changing and about how the summers are getting drier and hotter!!! Well that did not happen THIS summer!! Woodbridge VA got nearly 70 inches of rain this year. I had puddles of standing water in my yard this spring, summer, fall and even during the last big rain event we had.

All it is going to take is one time, ONE TIME that the atmosphere is cold enough for snow and no warm air in the mid-levels (e.g., no snow changing to rain or a mix) during the event, and we have 3.0 to 3.5 inch precipitable water QPF indications, and we will be BURIED in snow, to the tune of 2 to 3 FEET. Sure, it's a stretch. Everyone here on the Mid Atlantic knows this is a stretch. THREE feet of snow would constitute a new record here or where you live in NC, for that matter. But who ever heard of such a WET winter last winter, AND a wet spring, AND a wet summer, AND a wet fall, and now we face a very, very frigid cross-polar flow..........

I think everyone can put two and two together here......... while I do admit this is a stretch, we have had a truly wet year. Can anyone find me any solid indicators that January thru February will definitely trend MUCH drier in the east and south through those two months?

FRIGID COLD + VERY WET STORMS = POSSIBLE RECORD SNOWS, especially in places where people are not prepared for it. The Deep South, the southern and central Mid Atlantic away from the mountains, and other locales. If Greenland Blocking takes hold and our storm (s) should slow down and stall..........with all the cold air around (Can you say 1060mb High over Quebec with a classic CAD signature in the MA?) we may be talking about the freakish snow accumulation of the millennium!!!! Three feet, four feet, who knows? Hell, this monster of a rain year we've had, NO ONE would EVER have thought of it!!! So why not snow this winter? If we could have 5 to 9 inches of rain in each month from May through September here in the east, why not those very same rain equivalents in snowfall? Can you imagine a seven inch rain equivalent as snow in a single month? If temps were in the low/mid 20s, the water/snow ratios would be AWESOME!!!!! Seven inches' worth of rain in a winter month could well fall as SEVEN FEET of snow in that same month!!!! When you factor in the arctic cold, and crank in your 20 to 1, hell, 30 to 1 water to snow ratios, this gets unbelievable!!!! It could well be 10 feet of snow for the month!!!

Remember last January in the Outer Banks of North Carolina? We had a cross-polar flow. It was as cold as the north side of any given mountain up in New Hampshire skiing country. Even colder. A storm dumped 8 inches of snow in the OBX because a cross-polar flow advected so much cold air into that region and the precipitation stayed all snow throughout the event. Winds whipped that snow into 2 foot drifts!! We're talking about the Outer Banks here!! I bet you there was sound-effect snow off Currituck! I will lay you odds that they saw sound effect snow off that sound!!!

Now you take this year. Our big wet year. Now we have another cross-polar event coming in 10 to 14 days. It may well be COLDER than last winter's. A storm tracks in such a way that the Carolinas get precipitation from it. No huge snow for us here in Virginia; the northern jet suppresses the storm SOUTH. But North Carolina gets plastered. So does South Carolina and Georgia. The cold is as bad as, maybe it rivals 1985's outbreak. Look, you saw what happened last January on the OBX. You know it can happen.

I give you the record snow of January 2004 over the southern MA: A record or near-record Siberian Outbreak courtesy of our Cross-Polar friend, come to drop on by from the top of the world. A storm comes tracking across the southern US. It dumps ice and snow across the south. Long before it ever hits the Carolinas, this storm has already knocked power out all over the south due to massive ice accumulations. People all over the south are shivering due to Siberian cold plus unaccustomed heavy snow accumulations. Our storm moves into the southeast and interacts with the unbelievable frigid air in the east. It does a Miller B over to the ocean just east of the GA coast and deepens. It moves NNE, spreading snow north and east as it does so. The Carolinas get very heavy snow. There is no mixing due to the very cold nature of the airmass. The OBX gets BURIED in three feet of snow. I'm sorry, but people get trapped in it. They are not prepared for storms like this. Richmond gets a foot, because the Greenland Block and other factors conspired to make the storm slow down and stall. It has that QPF I was talking about. Three inch rain potential goes over to snow. The temperatures are in the low 20s. The water to snow ratio is out of control. Forecasters in the southern Mid Atlantic are going literally crazy. The storm has become stationary just off the coast east of the NC/SC border. Virginia Beach and the Tidewater are under Blizzard warnings. Washington DC is under a Winter Storm Watch for 6 inches of snow. They get 5 inches, because the main part of the storm is suppressed. The Carolinas are declared a federal disaster area because of 40 inches of wind-driven snow and bitter cold. The OBX are cut off from the rest of the world for 3 weeks, by monstrous drifts over 25 feet tall. People all over the Carolinas and south VA are digging out for weeks.

This is one winter we need to really keep an eye on. Now, IF precip settles on down, is merely normal Jan and Feb, then it'll be a normal winter snow-wise. BUT, if the year-long wet trends continue, then somebody is going to get buried and good.

Because it only takes one storm with 2 or 3 inches of precipitable water plus bitter cold air and the Greenland Block to slow it down or even stall this big dogg, and then Watch Out.


-SnowBlitzJEB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BRING IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!