WINTER STORM WARNING: THE WINDOW IS CLOSING

 When does the snow start?  Is that a flake falling? Is it when it starts a powder coating on the deck?  Or is it when it starts sticking to the roads? The main attraction for snow starting to accumulate should be around darkfall, but light snow is possible by midafternoon...or errant flakes flying before then.  By supper time, be home and hunker down.

Click HERE for the WINTER STORM WARNING details.

My original take from Wednesday was the 3-6" range, but the 7-8" upper range kept eating at me yesterday as each model run got a tad heavier, so I've bumped it up to 4-8" for ACA.  4-6" for the valleys, 6-8" above 3500'.  By sunrise, we should have half or more of our snow on the ground, and by 1pm the bulk of the accumulation will be done.  The only question is will there be any wrap-around NW flow to lightly add to totals through the afternoon, or will the moisture have dried up?  The EURO wants to add another inch or so, the GFS not so much.

Temps fall later this afternoon, and if you think we've been cold recently, you ain't seen nothin' yet.  Saturday and Sunday will be bitterly cold, and whatever sticks will stay for days.  Lows Sunday morning may drop below zero, maybe even Monday.  By Sunday into Monday, winds should pick up, making for windchill values in the minus 10l to minus 20 range Monday morning.  God forbid we get a power outage from downed power lines.

The quality of the snow should be akin to Splenda, not heavy and sticky, so snow piling on trees and power lines is not expected.  That's a saving grace.  Travel in and around the region will be shut down for a bit, and not all road salts work in such low temperatures.  You have time this morning to get your ducks in a row for sitting a spell.

This is a state-wide event.  Here are the projected totals across the regions (click on any pic to enlarge):

Bob

HERE WE GO AGAIN...

 This post will be a short one...there's already hysteria over early headlines and model runs that are over-the-top-hot with a snowstorm moving into the mountains Friday night, overspreading the entire state on Saturday and for coastal areas into Sunday.  I'll give you a quick synopsis for now, updating late Thursday evening.

This map is a generalized "% chance of snowfall amounts above warning criteria" that gives you a good snapshot of the extent of this expected storm, that ultimately transfers into a deep coastal low:

1)  Both the EURO and GFS have ACA with a couple of inches of snow on the ground by daybreak Saturday.

2)  The EURO stops our snow by Saturday evening, while the GFS has accumulating snow continuing into Sunday morning.

3)  There is no scenario with a 'warm nose' as all temperatures will not only be very cold but possibly the coldest we have had yet.  Whatever falls will stay for days

4)  As I write at 3:30pm Wednesday, the GFS totals ACA out at 5-10" (valleys to above 3500'), while the EURO totals out Saturday evening at 3-6" (valleys to above 2500').  I see nothing portending 14-20" that some other outlets are showing, not at the moment.

5)  Winds are expected to really pick up which will only exacerbate potential power outages and make for dangerous wind chills.  

SO... that's it for now.  The EURO indicates moisture pulls away sooner, and I hedge with that at this time.

As a P.S., I had a follow-up appointment with my surgeon down in Arden this morning.  On my way back, I decided on a whim to go over to 191 and take that highway in to the Outlet Mall area.  Remember when we jumped up to 50 degrees Sunday and I mentioned the AVL airport area stayed in the upper 20s all day?  Sleet and ice wreaked havoc there.  The tree damage rivaled some sights after Helene, with freshly cut stumps just off of the highway edge all over the place,with sleet still piled up in many areas.  We could have had it so much worse.

Until tomorrow evening, y'all...

Bob

DODGED THAT ONE...

What a bizarre storm that just blew through...we came out with possibly the best of solutions after a night of thick icing when the warm nose overwhelmed us with temps rising into the lower 50s in the afternoon.  The heavy rain dispelled the ice and we were back to normal roads, decks, and stairs. (Click on all pics to enlarge).

However...that warm nose slammed on the brakes just NE of us.  AVL airport sat in the upper 20s while we 'basked', relatively.  At one point, Hendersonville was 31 degrees colder than Waynesville.  Locations along the Blue Ridge Escarpment stayed in freezing territory as that wall of water came through, with strong winds, and they fared far worse with copious power outages still in place.  Roads in central NC are treacherous with travel not advised for now.  Click HERE to see the up to date interactive power outage map from Duke Energy.

We call it CAD for "cold air damming".  Consider the geography of NC, with the Appalachian Mountains serving as the edge of a tub...cold dense air moves in from the NE and fills the 'tub', which is why locations on the escarpment and points east fared far worse.  

We have a lot to be thankful for, even with our 2-3 hour power outage yesterday.

The incoming arctic air has been slow to arrive, but we saw our Monday high whatever we had at midnight, and today will be in the deep freeze.  As I type, the NW winds haven't picked up much, but they will, and power outages are not out of the question.  

What we also have is a light coating of extremely fine snow, which we'll have blowing in for a bit today. Light is the operative word...any warnings we have are for the bitterly cold temperatures and windchills, with our coldest night of the season tonight.  I saw the 'expected snow' which had us at zero, so this 'high end' map is actually what is happening. Tonight, I expect to give zero degrees a run for the money, if not slightly in the negative.  Winds will have to have died down to get the lowest reading, but that's not a contest I care to win.  Anything that is sticking is staying for a while.

Click HERE for the latest public information statement on sleet and ice totals around the region.  Click HERE for all of the cold weather warnings, etc.

Bob

"WARM NOSE" EXPLAINER, UPDATE TWEAKS

We now await the arrival of our wintry forecast this afternoon. I don't have anything to add or change from my previous post...a 'warm nose' is what we'll be dealing with, which should be keeping us more in ice and minimal snow.  However, we should start out as snow before the precipitation type kicks over this evening.

  I always like to share/educate with information to maybe better understand what we are dealing within our particular area.  Below is the Sat AM national map showing all of the watches and warnings.  To say this winter storm is expansive is an understatement.  Notice the black circled area, a noticeable bump upward with a break in the ice storm warnings, not a straight line across.  That's the warm nose of air trying to push up from the Gulf of Mexico thanks to a smaller area of low pressure on the LA/MS coast. (Click on any pics to enlarge):

National warning/watch map Saturday AM

As a rule of thumb, the higher you go in altitude the colder the air should get, but often times the air will warm up just a few thousand feet above the surface.  All precipitation begins as snow, even in the summer, and then it melts.  If the air column stays below freezing, it's all snow.  This one missed us as it will fall farther north.  If the air column warms above freezing at some point, we're now back in rain.  The kicker for us is how close that freezing line is above our heads.  If it's high enough, say 10,000 feet, it will turn back into sleet/ice pellets on its way down.  If it's low, like 5,000 feet, it may not have enough time to refreeze and will hit the below-freezing surface as rain, freezing into a glaze of ice (the worst-case scenario).  

I'm afraid the latter is where we fill find ourselves tonight.  As I mentioned earlier, the High Country above 5,500 feet may find itself in the above-freezing temps and mostly rain, ultimately.  Warm air is lighter than cold air, so the warm air can't push out the cold at the surface, but aloft it can 'nose' in, creating our problematic forecast.

The massive engine driving out storm is a huge low back in the Desert Southwest, with an equally massive high pressure near the Great Lakes driving in some bitterly cold air. With the counterclockwise flow around the low, it will pull in a tremendous amount of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico...but at the same time, it's pulling in the warmer air, as well.  The map below is for this evening, and I drew in the white arrow to show the intrusion of warmer air into our set-up:

SATURDAY evening surface map

And that's the end of this missive.  Forecasting just where that freezing line aloft will be for us in Haywood County has been a real bugaboo for this ever-changing winter storm.  I still see us in rain and above freezing Sunday afternoon, and we'll take all of that we can get to dispel what ice/sleet we have, but Sunday night into Monday will be NW flow snow showers and deeply cold temperatures.  What sticks will stay for days.

Icy roads are a no-go.  Our decks and stairs will be the first to ice up, as well as the vegetation, so I'll be watching the ice on the deck railing.  Once ice gets thick and heavy enough, then power lines and trees can start to snap.  With power, often it's the transformers that blow, so don't be surprised to hear a kaboom or two.

As we all say, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.  Over and out.

Bob

WINTER STORM TIMING, CONCERNS

Honing in on this cantankerous storm that WILL be wreaking havoc in many areas...and what appears to be a saving grace for us here in ACA, depending on how we get through Saturday.

In a nutshell, I'm still siding with the EURO which has a warmer, less snowy/icy overall solution. The GFS still wants to put down inches of snow, but I just don't sense that will be the case.

First, model run comparisons, and for these I'm widening out the view to a more regional look (click on pics to enlarge):

I started at 10pm... precipitation will be falling by early afternoon, and probably as a wet snow.  But the above 10pm graphics tell the difference of a snowy GFS and an icy EURO.

The 9am Sunday run shows the GFS hanging onto snow with sleet mixing in; the EURO is still in freezing rain.  HOWEVER...note the green in SW NC of rain showing up, with surface temps above freezing.  Also note the green in what are the High Country locations above 5,500', tall enough to be in the warm sector and potentially above freezing.  The reason I'm going with the EURO is the warm nose continues to be very aggressive working from SW to NE.

3pm Sunday run shows us potentially in all rain, with the GFS refusing to give up the snowier/icier ghost.  Assuming we go to all rain, cross your fingers it removes as much ice as possible.  Sunday night the temperatures crash, and whatever is left over will stay for a few days as we go into a deep freeze.  Winds will pick up, and if there is ice on the trees/power lines, they can still come down.

So, is this a minor event for us?  Not at all, given accumulating sleet and freezing rain take over as the dominant precipitation.  Freezing rain is the worst of the worst, in terms of power outages, inability to travel, and downed trees.  For my prep, I'm not touching the UTV; instead, I've gathered and prepped my chain saw supplies, for the first time in a while.  Power outages appear to be very likely, so prepped for that.

Oh, and on the back side will be NW flow snowshowers, which might lead to some light accumulation overnight Sunday into Monday.  And insofar as accumulations, when you deal with wet snow, sleet, and freezing rain, that's almost immaterial.  I'll be closing watching my thermometers and will report on the Facebook page from my place on the mountain.  Freezing rain is the most dangerous.

Bob

WINTER STORM WATCH: AN ICIER MESS AHEAD

 In one way I was flummoxed at the rapid model changes the past 48 hours, far more rapid than 'normal'...but there isn't that much that is normal in weather anymore.  Gone is a snowmageddon, now an icier mess that we don't talk about accumulations so much as the potential for trees down, power outages, etc. Many won't be able to travel for a while; give me 4" of snow and I'm fine, but give me 1.5" of sleet and I'm not budging.

Click HERE for our current Winter Storm Watch.

There is still a big difference between the GFS and the EURO.  The GFS brings in snow at first in the 4-8" range Saturday, where the much slower EURO has maybe flurries or light accumulation of snow for us.  The EURO paints us in freezing rain and sleet for most of this event, which kills any talk of accumulating snow.  Accreting ice on power lines and weakened trees is the potential thorn in our side, and we're talking a tremendous amount of real estate under that cloak.

I'm hedging with the EURO at this point, which will push a warm nose in SW North Carolina Sunday to where temps may be above 32 degrees with some rain.  There is a snowy NW flow backside as the moisture departs, but at this moment I see little in the way of accumulation there.

Warm air is lighter than cold air, and we should have below freezing temps at the surface through Saturday.  With warm air aloft, depending on how far aloft it is, we get an icy solution.  For me, freezing rain is the worst, followed by sleet, then snow.

Many years ago I was on duty at News14 Carolina in Charlotte (now Spectrum News).  We were staffed 24/7 in weather, and I went on duty at midnight.  Around 2am, it was 27 degrees outside...and it was pouring flat-out rain.  I mean pouring, all freezing on every surface.  The ice storm took out power to some 1.6 million customers.  You could hear trees break and fall, transformers exploding all around....it was an icy hell that brought the region to a halt for days.

Our Watch will become a Warning as Saturday approaches, and I'll update with any changes.  We still have today and tomorrow to get our ducks in a row for whatever this whirling dervish of a winter storm decides to throw at us.

Bob

TIME TO GET SERIOUS: WEEKEND SNOWSTORM LOOMS

Been a while since I've posted something like this...reminiscent of December 18, 2008, after which I started this blog after we got hit with 18" of snow with a forecast of 6-8".  This is a long post with lots of graphics you can click on to enlarge.  Yes, this is early in the week and this is a good ways out, but this is no skunk.  This storm is a bowling  ball that will knock down a lot of pins, but it won't be a gutter ball.

Meteorologically, this is our classic set-up of a large area of low pressure kicking east out of the southwest and southern Rockies, and scooping up a lot of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. We've been in a very cold pattern that will continue to hold on with a large dome of Arctic high pressure sitting over the western Great Lakes (part of the polar vortex that has gripped the northern tier states).  The temps will be here, the moisture will be here, and the recent numbers per potential accumulations are humbling, to say the least.

As with any storm, there will be a boundary/front that plays a critical role dividing snow from ice/sleet/freezing rain.  It's just north of that boundary where temps are closer to 32 degrees which means the air can hold more water than 26 degree air, and that's where you get a "snowmageddon", a crazy dumping.  South of that boundary is potentially crippling ice accumulation.  In this graphic, by far the 'tamest' of the models, you can easily trace that whitish boundary....however, this model is odd man out as all other runs have that boundary much farther south.  Just gives you an idea of what I'm talking about:

SAT NOON TEMP BOUNDARY GFS

SAT NOON TEMP BOUNDARY EURO

I'll be referencing "GFS" and "EURO" models, as those are the two major 'go-to' models.  As a rule of thumb, the EURO does a better job than the GFS when it comes to snow totals, but there is an improved GFS .125 that is a bit more detailed (I'll just call it GFS here). The EURO is a bit slower to develop the totals early on, compared to the GFS, but by the end of the pony ride Monday daybreak they are both hot and heavy on a pretty equal basis.

Before my onslaught of maps, let's talk timing.  Overnight Wednesday and Thursday is a small chance for some freezing rain, with daytime highs going well above freezing. Friday night some light wintry precipitation will begin. It's pretty much all day Saturday and Sunday the snow moves in, heavy at times, maybe a few breaks as well...but this won't be all said and done until early Monday morning, so it appears.

I'll be stacking the timed maps of accumulations with the GFS first and the EURO second.  For now, just the maps (remember to click on pics to enlarge):

SAT NOON GFS

SAT NOON EURO

SAT NOON GFS

SAT NOON EURO

SAT 6PM GFS

SAT 6PM EURO

SAT 6PM SIGNIFICANT WX GFS

SAT 6PM SIGNIFICANT WX EURO

SAT 9PM GFS

SAT 9PM EURO

SUN NOON GFS

SUN NOON EURO

SUN 6PM GFS

SUN 6PM EURO

SUN 6PM EURO
THIS IS DISTURBING...

MON 6AM GFS

MON 6AM EURO

I preface this with "I know it's early and it can change", but to see these two models showing serious and similar snow totals makes my old weather ears perk up.  And that 6pm Sunday "significant weather" map showing widespread icing potential in the EURO would be disastrous, if we were to get a layer of ice on the snow.  That part is far too early to call, but I hope that model calms down in future runs.

For the moment, just throwing all of this out there so you might want to think ahead of the curve and have what you might need.  Power outages are always a possibility, and not being able to travel our roads is almost a given should the heavy totals come to pass.  I had surgery last Thursday, so I'm not in the best position to tackle the snow, but I'll have my UTV and snowplow set and ready to go.

I'll update after more model runs and report any changes in a day or two as this system comes into focus.

Bob