50s next 2 days before cold, maybe snow?
The surprise on Wednesday was that were no surprises. Snow has remained mostly in West Virginia, north of I-64, and in some elevations above 3,000 feet, as widely expected. It has been a cold rain in most of Southwest Virginia, with a few pellets of sleet here and there. Surface temperatures hung in the upper 30s to mid 40s in most locations. Overnight, there may be a little more snow mixed in as temperatures drop behind a cold front.
We’re back in the 50s for highs a couple of days before an Arctic cold front arrives late Friday. The Arctic front along with some weak clipper-like disturbances may allow for some light snow or snow showers, in addition to what is typically kicked up on northwesterly winds blowing up and over the Appalachians. The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center paints a little zone of white through the Roanoke and New River valleys and along the Blue Ridge from Friday evening to Saturday evening, signalling what the experts there see as a zero percent chance of 1 inch accumulation, with high chances in West Virginia’s typical mountain upslope areas and lesser chances in central and eastern Virginia. One of the disturbances is expected to trigger a stronger low-pressure system offshore, but it will likely be too far east to have much impact on our region. (UPDATE 12:10 AM, 2/14: The Global Forecast System computer model on Wednesday night revived a swath of snow over Virginia for Friday night and early Saturday. We’ll see if that builds or wilts with additional data on Thursday. The North American Model only spreads light snow or flurries over our region for a few hours.)
The Arctic front will bring a couple of days of highs in the 30s and lows in the teens and 20s before temperatures recover back into the 50s for highs next week, and a new storm systems brings what will likely be all rain about Tuesday. Late next week, another storm system may spread moisture into some wedged-in cold air, but this is way too far out to read much detail on.
February 13, 2013 - 7:06 PM
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Taking the spousal unit to Natural Bridge to snap some crab legs on Friday night Kevin – could it get slick on the way home back to Botetourt?
Doubt it will be much of a problem right now, Ken, but stay tuned in case there are any changes. Would probably be minor amounts even if something did change.
Just got 1 report of light snow in Radford via Twitter.
Picking up from the previous string, whicn I couldn’t respond to….thanks, Kevin, for your management of this blog.
Would love a little more description of some of the terms that get used.
Radar is not showing much down here but up in NoVA there seems to be more precipitation.
Mike in Marshall – how are things up your way?
I’m in DC – what are things looking like in town tonight?
Blasted wind is howling here again tonight. Do Not Like!
Not sure why everyone is throwing in the towel on winter already, I mean, we still have that Siberian snowpack thing going for us, and there was that polar atmoshperic warming or something, not to mention DT said WOOF just the other day about this weekend’s “storm”. By the way, I heard the spring peeper’s tonight – earliest I have ever heard them. The good news is we are only a few weeks away from the 20th anniversary of the greatest Southern Appalachian Snowstorm of all time, so hey, things are looking up!
A few random flakes in the Bent Mountain area and on the Parkway on my drive back home a few minutes ago…
Not much change in the teleconnections. Some indication that the NAO might go into a positive routine, but it is at the end of the outlook timeframe, 10 days and more. Extremely iffy, and NOT consensus. In fact, the GFS outlook is one of those predicting that the North Atlantic Oscillation will continue to hug the neutral line.
The 500 mb polar view showed a finger of dark blue (fairly cold air, but not intense like a purple would be) knifing into western Ontario, almost reaching Thunder Bay at west end of Lake Superior, where NG and I visited a couple of years ago. Maybe that is one of the contributing factors leading to a cold weekend here.
Hey, Kevin, do you or anyone else know what kind of winter Eastern Europe is having? The reason I ask is that if I am placing areas of green correctly, it looks like E. Europe is in a mild phase and has been that way for a while, I believe. I think you and maybe others mentioned here last winter that they really had it rough.
DT is pretty high on Zn ice storm for the 22nd to 23rd
If you take the Euro model straight up for 22-23, it looks a lot like snow to mix to ice for us. Of course, it won’t look like that a week from now.
On 2nd thought, I am going to start believing in global warming and climate change. Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue came out today, and a luscious babe named Kate Upton was in skimpy bathing suits in Antarctica. The new hotbed beach resort. Uncrowded, no pigeons or sea gulls to steal your food. Just penguins.
New GFS (0Z) … you guessed it … brings back the snow threat for Friday night/Saturday … and look where the heaviest splotch (darkest green shade) is in late Friday night:
http://tinyurl.com/cdvozg9
NAM had much lighter snow overspreading the region for a few hours.
There is even talk here about a Saturday snow. We shall see
Robin “Skeptical about Snow” Reed just showed his channel’s forecast model, and it shows a little clipper giving Hokieburg and Roanoke snow about 2 PM on Friday. Good luck, Kevin ….. re: the snow meter.
Happy almost Valentine’s Day. This morning it was ‘almost slush’ on the windshield – at least that is what it looked like. A little windy here tonight. Altogether a cold, wet, somewhat miserable day. This is what ‘winter’ is like in Houston, TX. While it is not freezing, I remember the bike rides to school on days like this. School was a mile away, no buses, my mom didn’t drive so that is how we got ourselves to school, no matter the weather.
Some of the short range models show the Saturday threat as well.
But it’s just one run.. two days to go..
Happy Valentine’s Day Weather Bloggers.
As the sun comes up over the ridge this Valentine’s morn, the skies are clear with a slight breeze. The temps are 26.
Nevermind about the short range models. I was going off DT’s latest post early this morning. Realized later it was just the GFS. Sorry.
HPC reaction to snow on GFS: Bump us up from 0 into the 10-20 percent range for 1 inch:
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/pwpf_24hr/prb_24hsnow_ge01_2013021412f048.gif
6Z NAM/GFS both spread light snow pretty widely over our region. 6Z GFS is more north with somewhat heavier snow.
I’m expecting kind of a clipper type thing with light snow/snow showers, but keep it the back of your mind.
Doppler Carol, thanks for checking in. It’s probably snowing to beat the band since I’m not there! I’m in sunny southern California for the week… Sunny and 70 during the day, 30s at night and dry. I did check in last night and DC had a chilly rain yesterday with a brief transition to very wet snow. Nearest accumulation well west of town out in Maryland.
Not sure where my co-workers get their weather forecast from, but several are claiming Roanoke is going to get five inches on Saturday. This could be their way of trying to freak me out!
Kevin, I have a question about the 2m temps on the models. I know you have said that you prefer to use the 850mb line to guesstimate where snow will fall. Yesterday, though, I decided to play around with the 2m and compare it to the actual temperature for our area. It was fairly accurate. I noticed that at times we were under the 850 freezing line but the surface temp was hovering just below 40*. What made yesterday different from other times?
Sigh….of course the one time I WANT the snow to WAIT until Sunday it probably won’t LOL We are leaving, heading West towards deep SW VA on tomorow afternoon.
2m line is the surface temperature, Newman — that is, 2 meters above the ground, where temperatures are officially measured. The 850 millibar line is about a mile up. The 2-meter temp line doesn’t tell you anything about how cold it is aloft, which is essential for snow. Very generally, if it is below freezing a mile up, it is likely to be snow at the surface, at least in midwinter. This can fail in cases where there simply isn’t enough low-level cold air to keep it as snow on the way down, such as yesterday.
When the 2-meter line is below freezing and the 850 is above freezing, that is a common freezing rain/sleet setup.
Sammy: The 0Z GFS last night did indeed pump out 3-5 inches of snow across the area. It has been the lone run showing that in the last 3 days. Hardly a consensus — or a likely to happen occurrence.
Weather Journal alum Kathryn Prociv today has an interesting piece on USTornadoes.com about severe weather radar signatures.
http://www.ustornadoes.com/2013/02/14/understanding-basic-tornadic-radar-signatures/#more-2588
And she had a piece on Capital Weather Gang about hurricanes vs. nor’easters:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/hurricanes-vs-noreasters-what-makes-them-different/2013/02/13/df35d3de-7598-11e2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_blog.html
New 12z GFS leaves us high and dry this weekend.
http://forums.accuweather.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=191344
Looks like it could be a good thump for the northeast though.
Actually, looking at the QPF output, I’m a little intrigued:
http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/Image.php?model=gfs&area=namer¶m=precip_p60&cycle=12&image=gfs%2F12%2Fgfs_namer_066_precip_p60.gif
Any chance for some white stuff in South West Franklin County
I’m used to forecasts varying right smart between different forecasters, but I believe this is the first time that I can’t find even two that agree. Somebody will have egg on their face come Monday. And we’re only 24 hours out now and the forecasts are for the Roanoke Valley only. But the area around RV. differs greatly, so I reckon they should be able to pick one area, call it a hit and take a win home.
Kevin, I have been looking at the models on NCEP and something caught my eye with the GFS and GEFS-MNSPRD models. Both showed different levels of coverage in regards to precipitation. For example if you look at hour 42-60 on the 12z GFS the precipitation is there but the coverage is not. However, if you look at the 12z GEFS-MNSPRD for the same time frame the coverage is much greater. Why such a difference in the models?
LOL Henry M. has us here in Greene under his strip of 3-6 inch snow! Who is he trying to kid? All these weather guys seem to change their minds like they change clothes! DT especially!
Interesting read on how bad it is up here in norhtern Virginia for snow the last 3 years!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/washington-dc-falling-deep-into-dungeon-of-snow-futility/2013/02/13/975896fa-7606-11e2-95e4-6148e45d7adb_blog.html#pagebreak
The force field up here has got to break someday!
Doppler Carol, we just moved on top of Bent Mountain (2750′) and were wondering about this wind trend. Hoping these high winds weren’t the norm up there and your comments lead me to believe they’re not as common as they have been the past couple months? Thanks.
Thanks, Kevin, for the link to Kathryn’s post about hurricanes vs. nor’easters. I had been trying to explain to my husband that nor’easters were sort of like winter hurricanes, but didn’t have the weather knowledge to really know what I was talking about!
Kevin, now that you can see the end of “meteorological winter” from here, do we still end up with one of the warmest winters on record?
Despite being a degree above normal, Roanoke’s current average of 39.1 for February is well off the pace of previous months, and of last winter. December/January averaged 43.2, matching the warmth of last winter’s 3 months, so February would basically have to average about that to keep this winter on the same pace as a year ago, the second warmest on record. Winter may have a shot at finishing in the top 10 warmest, but I think there are going to be too many rainy days and too many cold fronts, even short-lived shots, between now and the end of the month to finish as warm as last winter.
Kevin, if you were more avidly interested in how you did on your snow meter thing {and I realize that you’re not, it is just something fun}, I have a video that might express how you might feel if you were pleading with the weather/snow gods to give you that measly one inch for the two cities sometime between now and Sunday night.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPXM7i0dv30 I heard this song just an hour ago on the radio.
Doppler Carol and City EM, I bet that DC will say that late winter and early spring is normally the windiest time of the year. And that yes, both Bent Mountain and Dopplerville are very windy places. That is my experience about the seasons from delivering mail in ROA city for 15 and 1/2 years. That’s the trouble with wind, IMHO. It tends to be strongest during the time of year when it makes cold weather feel (sometimes) much worse. But let it be a scorching summer day, and often the wind can be totally missing in action. That was one itsy saving grace about the day of (hours before) the derecho. It reached well over 100, but at least there was a breeze.
Right now, Doug, I think I’d have a better chance of getting an inch to verify my snow meter if the two cities were Bluefield and Lynchburg rather than Blacksburg and Roanoke.
OK. But did you link to the music?
Can’t right now, not plugged in for it on work computer. But I’ve heard the song before.
The Weather Channel has a 70 percent chance of snow for Martinsville where my brother lives could this be true
Not seeing much indication of that. Maybe a 70 percent chance of seeing some flakes. Not a 70 percent chance of seeing accumulation.
Martinsville is actually dead center of the zone colored with the least chance of getting an inch of snow in the most recent HPC map. Will be posting new shortly.
Reminds me of an old song we sung on the way to a game. “Same song,10th verse, could be better but its gonna get worse”.