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Major snowstorm about to hit the South (Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh)

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Holly Springs, NC here. Southwest of Raleigh by about 20 miles or so.

Sounds like it's still just raining here. This morning they were saying 6-9". Methinks this will be another "lol meteorologists are in the pockets of the grocery stores!" system.
 

Ragarra

Member
Va beach, va and snow started about an hour ago already covering the roads and quite heavy snow fall. Supposed to be around 10-14 inches by the end.
 

Blizzard

Banned
So GA overreacted over the "snow" again?
Well, a year or two ago they erred on the side of NOT getting snow and got mocked by the whole country because snow actually hit and everyone was trying to leave town at the same time.


I guess predicting weather accurately is hard. One of my friends is a meteorologist and said this two days ago:

"Why is this forecast so difficult? The potential is there for very substantial snowfall accumulations across metro Atlanta given this setup (e.g. 3-6 in.) and ironically greater chances for higher snowfall on the south and east side of the metro area. There's also still the significant probability that accumulations remain ~ 1in. This is the forecaster's dilemma, how do we communicate this well? The trend is favoring a more substantial event."


Florida saw something similar with Matthew. It was supposed to go one direction, then it was supposed to directly hit the coast, and it ended up skirting the area and going somewhere else. There were like 10 different models all saying different things, and figuring out which one(s) to follow is not easy.
 

Althane

Member
Well, a year or two ago they erred on the side of safety and got mocked by the whole country because snow actually hit and everyone was trying to leave town at the same time.


I guess predicting weather accurately is hard. One of my friends is a meteorologist and said this two days ago:

"Why is this forecast so difficult? The potential is there for very substantial snowfall accumulations across metro Atlanta given this setup (e.g. 3-6 in.) and ironically greater chances for higher snowfall on the south and east side of the metro area. There's also still the significant probability that accumulations remain ~ 1in. This is the forecaster's dilemma, how do we communicate this well? The trend is favoring a more substantial event."


Florida saw something similar with Matthew. It was supposed to go one direction, then it was supposed to directly hit the coast, and it ended up skirting the area and going somewhere else. There were like 10 different models all saying different things, and figuring out which one(s) to follow is not easy.

And, on the personal level, when you get stuck in your car for 26 hours because of the traffic jams caused by the snow? Yeah, you play it safe.
 

Kettch

Member
Still raining here in south Charlotte. Pretty disappointing, we always seem to be on the wrong side of the snow/rain line.
 

hom3land

Member
Just checked all ice here in Cary...wtf where's my snow? Last I heard it was snowing in Durham.. Curious if it continued.
 

oo7

Member
Sanford, NC here. 40 minutes south of Raleigh. Boooooooo, told my kids there would be snow in the morning. Thanks for making me a liar god!
 
Let me know how bad it gets out there! My office is in Rome and I'm not sure I can trust my employees to report accurately :p

Haha I already know I'm going to have employees calling out on me Sunday morning.

Outside the apartment it looks like maybe 1-2 inches but it's to cold to get out and check.
 
Mostly sleet and ice at the NC/SC border.

15941374_10158052578190646_4084811230488311743_n.jpg
 

blinkz

Member
Mooresville NC here got about 5-6 inches and still snowing. My dog isn't having it since we lived in Tampa until a few months ago.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Nothing here in East Atlanta but rain, unless any ice overnight was melted by 8:30 am--seems unlikely as it was 22 out when I got up.
 

Kangi

Member
I've done this song and dance before. Weatherman says 3-5 inches of snow. I say 2 inches. Actual weather says, "Joke's on you! One inch, top. And that's mostly ice."
 

gdt

Member
Getting a little bit here in Allentown PA, but it's supposed to end really soon. Like within the hour.
 
Meanwhile on Cape Cod MA, we are about to get feet of snow in a blizzard. The supermarket is slammmmmed right now. This stuff is incredibly hard to predict because a tiny degree out in storm tracking and it completely misses and a single degree temperature changes can be the difference between snow and rain.
 
I'm right outside Chapel Hill and it's pretty legit here. Not a full northern blizzard or anything but about 3-4 inches on top of an inch of solid ice with some wind and temps going down to 3 degrees by tomorrow night. No one's going anywhere until at least Tuesday given our lack of infrastructure dealing with snow/ice.
 
So GA overreacted over the "snow" again?

Sort of. More ice than snow in Cobb county. But in the last "snow" storm we had it wasn't the snow that caused the problems. Surface temps were right at freezing but the roads were just slightly above freezing, so the first hour of precip melted. But precip rate was quick enough to cool the roads which then started forming ice. The rest is pretty self explanatory. Everyone was caught off guard, left at the same time, roads quickly became a cluster fuck and only got worse as it got later in the evening.

Here is a sounding that shows what went wrong with the storm last night:
FFC.gif


Basically, models were wrong about the 850mb temps as the storm rolled in and how quickly the warm nose would drop to freezing. So, instead of snow we were getting sleet/freezing rain mix.
 
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