Lack of low-level cold air may inhibit Wednesday snow
If you haven’t already, be sure and look up one of the many dramatic videos posted on YouTube of Sunday’s tornado in Hattiesburg, Miss. The tornado was rated EF-4, the second strongest level. Blessedly, no one died in the tornado, even though it tore into part of the University of Southern Mississippi campus. It may seem early for tornadoes, but mid to late winter is the start of tornado season along the Gulf Coast.
Though the wind advisory expires for western Virginia at 7 a.m., some breeziness will continue throughout Tuesday, but it will be mild with highs in the 50s as the westerly winds blowing down the Appalachian slopes compress and warm slightly. The fact that we’re not getting true Arctic or Canadian air out of this most recent cold front plays a significant role in our Wednesday weather.
The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center’s 1-inch snowfall map issued Monday evening, covering the time from 7 p.m. tonight to 7 p.m. Wednesday, delivers a pretty good idea of the current consensus expectations (as of late Monday) on where snow will be most likely with the next storm system. Guidance has generally closed on a track that will be somewhat south of us with the surface low, with the weak upper-level low tracking farther north. Generally, that’s a track that can lead to significant snow in our area, but there just isn’t much low-level cold air to support it, and the storm system does not appear to be dynamic enough to “create” its own cold air as we saw with the Jan. 17 snow and even last Thursday night locally over the Roanoke Valley. It will be razor-thin margin on Wednesday between cold rain and snow, and as we’ve seen lately, it’s easy to cross over that line. For now, the chances of snow are better the farther north and west you are relative to Roanoke, especially at 2,500 feet and higher elevations. Most locations from the Roanoke Valley and Blue Ridge north and west will probably see a little snow by Wednesday evening, but the chances of a widespread accumulating event appear to be low … for now. Stay tuned to forecasts, and keep an eye out the window Wednesday, just in case there are changes.
Some upper-level energy swinging around an eastern U.S. trough this weekend may trigger a snow event of some sort near or in our region. Forecast guidance is bouncing around with the specifics of that situation. One thing that will be much different than Wednesday is that the atmosphere will be much colder.
February 12, 2013 - 12:10 AM
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Very warm and windy midnight now. 53* according to the display on the right side of this page at RRA, and 48.5 here. I think that is higher than the normal high temp for ROA.
That is some great footage of the tornado.
DT is saying our last chance for snow is February 21-22 storm, after that spring time cometh!
Best I can tell, I’ve had around 14.5″ to 15″ of snow sofar.
32, partly cloudy and breezy up here on Doppler Ridge this Tuesday morning.
Jared, I almost added a similar line to the blog entry above. Strong indications that some of the things that have allowed these intermittent borderline winter weather scenarios and occasional cold pushes (can’t really call it a cold or wintry pattern) are unraveling and a milder pattern will commence.
WD: I’m just a hair over a foot of snow this winter at my location (1400 feet, several miles east of you), so 14-15 would make sense at your few-hundred feet higher elevation. Roanoke’s official total is 9.2 now. I got 3 more inches than Roanoke’s official total on Jan. 17 and 1 more inch last Thursday/Friday. Roanoke’s official total was a fraction higher than mine on Jan. 25 and then there that was that one oddball little system several days ago that was a half-inch in the city and you and I got a dusting that looked like a mediocre frost.
Our cumulative snow total for the winter is 14.4″ in Pulaski County, at 1900′ of elevation. I’m sort of glad the storm tomorrow is looking rainy…I have some scheduled field work on Thursday that is dependent upon the weather not mucking anything up, so it looks good for that now. I got the feeling this morning as I walked to my car that our winter was about to come to a close…I never quite had a good feel for the mid-week system doing a lot here, and color me a bit dubious for the weekend potential at this point too.
Tomorrow’s storm is no longer silicon fantasy. Radar shows a fairly expansive precipitation shield to our south and west.
http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/Conus/southplains.php
We’ll just need to keep an eye on it and see how things set up over the next 24 hours. I don’t think the models are going to be a whole lot of help at this point.
Wouldn’t take much to flip Wednesday into a 1-3-inch snow for some of our region and for the weekend event to disappear entirely.
Your dubiousness is warranted.
And as for the weekend, I’m not writing anything off until at least Thursday or Friday. The models are split right now, but the trend has been more towards the Euro idea of a storm missing the east coast wide right. We’ll see though. There’s enough uncertainty in my mind to still warrant keeping an eye on it.
As hard to believe as it may be, my snow total is nothing more than a trace! Haven’t even had the ground covered yet this season! Location : 6 miles southwest of Bedford city at 1000′ elevation
Not hard to believe this winter, Bedford Snowman.
Just waiting to see what kind of odd twist tomorrow produces.
Even if the larger storm is offshore this weekend, it’s still possible we get one of the component disturbances/shortwaves producing a lighter snow.
Kevin, oddly enough…my feeling is that the best chance for a final widespread snow in our region may be one of those rare times when a freak atmospheric quirk forms, which, given how this winter has gone, wouldn’t surprise me terribly. It’s been an odd winter for sure…but despite it all, not too far from a typical winter snow-wise for me.
So I guess my total snowfall for the winter will be 3-4 inches! That’s laughable when they say we average 16 inches here. Oh well, been living here 10 years and have had only one real winter, might as well get use to it!
The wind blowing today seems more like March than Feburary . Winter may end abruptly but the wild ride may just be beginning
Feels like the kind of year we’ll have some kind of mid-late March wintry threat, doesn’t it?
Something that could throw us for a loop tomorrow is the possibility of getting a front-end thump of wintry precipitation. The NAM hints at this. We’ve been talking about where the freezing line sets up mid event and the possibility that rain will change to snow on the back end. But we could well get a period of snow and/or sleet to start at the outset late tonight or early Wednesday, then go to rain (or not much of anything). Just something to keep in mind.
If you’ve ever wondered why the models are so much different sometimes, this graphic explains it all.
http://tweetimgs.pmarshwx.com/pmarshwx/20130212/20130212140242.jpg
Yeah, Kevin…I was kinda thinking something like that. It’s just been one of those winters where I could see us having spring-like weather, things budding and blooming a bit early, and then a thump of unexpected winter when we least expect it.
Jared: An average is not a guarantee of anything.
And Kevin…that graphic on the weather models is simply superb. I got into a weird argument with my dad over the weather models. He said any meteorologist who used the European models immediately disqualified themselves as a credible American meteorologist in his eyes. When I told him that the Euro model trended far more accurate than the American models, that the American ones were not only less accurate but sometimes wildly wrong and incapable of getting even some of the best-definied storm systems correctly predicted, he didn’t have much to say after that. But, given his political lean, his uninformed, off-hand comment was not terribly surprising.
Love the cartoon, Kevin. Before things get too crazy again (or is it too late), I wanted to thank you for spending all this time with us. I don’t know how you do it!
Kevin, I just loved your comment #19! Hilarious!
Still cloudy here and still gusty (cold) winds out of the northwest. Temps are sitting at 39. Keeping the fire going in the wood stove.
I was just saying to Mr. Griggs a little bit ago that my grandfather, who was born in 1903, used to say this: “What February borrows from March, gets paid back in April.” I would say that at this point, we better be on the watch for some spring snow/cold air scenarios.
Here in Blacksburg I am expecting some sticking. I have seen all winter how easy it is to get snow/sleet. It doesn’t need to be 32 to stick. The ground seems ready for sticking despite some warm weather. We finally had a last bit of snow melt overnight that wiped out the last bit, but it took days of over freezing temps despite only 1 and 1/2 inches from last week.
Spring must be around the corner! I received my first email alert of the season this morning from pollen.com that “allergy conditions in your area have reached a medium to high range”! 5.6/medium for Cedar/Juniper, Elm and Alder. Hopes dashed tomorrow when it drops back to 1.1/low after the wind drops and precip arrives.
Bedford snowman, I hope you get more than a trace of snow before the end of winter. At my home just north of the Bedford city limits I have 1.6″ of snow for the season. The largest storm was January 25th when I received 0.7″, so I am not doing much better. It just seems like snow is trying to avoid Bedford this year.
Kevin I hate to contradict you but the graphic you just showed was incorrect. Yes the three of them sit at desks as depicted but the one difference is they use a coin toss to make their predictions. That way they are right 50% of the time.
Nice cartoon. I’ll have to say I’ve always been partial to the Euro and especially after how it handled Sandy. Curious Kevin, in one of his video blogs, DT showed a line graph of how the individual models perform in relation to one another. Can you tell me where to find that? It reminded me of a NAO ensemble with the spaghetti lines.
Jay Webb of “7″ at 6:50 A.M. said just about the exact same thing that you did in your 10:02 AM comment, El Senor Myatt. Possibility of early morning sleet or snow. I hope that whatever happens holds off until at least 7:40 AM, and preferably until 8:40 (when I will be loading up the truck). But it is no biggie. Also not a “snow biggie.” Tomorrow, that is.
By the way, For what it is worth, The Weather Channel is on board for practically a statewide snowfall in Virginia on Saturday in its Weekly Planner. Last time I commented about The Weekly Planner, someone came on and ridiculed it. That’s OK, just please don’t ridicule me. It is another source of info. Weekly Planner also shows nearly all of Virginia getting a rain/snow mix tomorrow (pale green color). Yet the hourly forecast for the 24017 Roanoke city zip shows temps only dropping to 39* tomorrow AM.
Unlesss we get another surprise like last Thursday night, it certainly looks like the roads are unlikely to be a problem in most of Roanoke city. The time of day (unless the precip arrives sooner that what I saw) is also a minimizing factor in ROA for tomorrow.
Harrisonburg area has hardly any snow the last two years I’ve lived here. Im from Abingdon Va and the snow we’ve had here might reach 10in in two years.
Snow chances are going…going…going fast.
12Z NAM, GFS & CMC say…well…it’s not good.
Western VA will see some snow Wednesday night but 1-2″ inches max especially in the higher elevations above 2500′ You’ll have to go north of I-64 and west of 29 to see anything. DC, MD points north to Philly and southern NJ may see 1-3″
These 3 models join the Euro for this weekend and beyond. Nada
Looks like the Pacific Jet gets rolling again with a huge trough in the west.
Shanon (Nurse Snow), my grandmother was born in 1896 and she always said that April borrowed 12 days from March to kill off all the old cows (that didn’t die before March).
I’ve heard that one too Michael, or at least a similar version. I think the sayings have some merit to them.
Well, let’s see if I got this right. Nobody’s saying that they’ve seen the fat lady on stage singing, but think they’ve heard her backstage hummin.
I am planning to take the kids skiing Feb 25, 26. Originally was going to snowshoe, but have family in SC that wants to meet me in Boone,NC. Based on what the models are showing now, is there any reason to think I should head to snowshoe to see good weather, or should Boone be okay then too?
Quags: I got 4 1/2 inches of snow Thursday night with the NAM and GFS showing no measurable snow for 300 miles, the HPC having us in a zero percent area for 1 inch and the Euro showing maybe an inch. So that may be why we’re a little hesitant to be so definite on a fairly borderline situation.
Other John: Weather is no respecter of political viewpoints or national boundaries. Maybe why we like it so much.
Good to see everyone jumping ship five days out. Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane.
“It’s way too early to get into run-by-run recaps, but the 18Z GFS was still very diffuse with the low, basically a glancing blow of light snow in our region.”
-Kevin Myatt on December 15, 2009
“Based on last night’s forecast guidance it was leaning to an out to sea, slightly brushed scenario. This solution is still out to sea, but at a little bit different angle and with a stronger low, so it throws more moisture this far inland. Like I said above, it’s just 1 run. The GFS could be on to something, or it might have just eaten beans before going to bed and woke up with a weird dream. As you say, Scott … we’ll see.”
-Kevin Myatt on the morning of December 16, 2009
“Before someone beats me to it … I Just peeked at the new 18Z North American Model … if it verified it would be a HUGE hit for most of the western half of Va and NC. But … it’s just 1 run … 3 days left …”
-Kevin Myatt on the afternoon of December 16, 2009
Disclaimer: I don’t expect this weekend to be a repeat of Dec. 2009. I’m also not saying Kevin is throwing in the towel. Just using his play by play as reference to prove a point.
Kevin, I completely agree!
And yes, the fat lady is humming for the moment, but it’s still a few minutes before she goes on stage.
The thing about this weekend — I’ve never been on board about a major storm happening here. There probably will be a very wound up low-pressure somewhere — maybe offshore, maybe more toward the Northeast coast.
What still MAY happen is that the shortwave that eventually helps trigger that storm comes rolling across the South and kicks up an overrunning wave of moisture. Models may not pick that up very consistently til 48 hours out IF it happens.
And of course, as Brandon mentions, the whole storm could rematerialize when better data gets fed into the models later this week.
Next week appears to have a couple of storm systems in it. One or both, particularly the second, may encounter some wedged-in cold air.
This map on the 18Z NAM for the pre-dawn hours is why I have some concern about an early burst of snow/sleet tomorrow that could catch some people off-guard reading forecasts that are primarily rain.
http://tinyurl.com/bdou9me
The blue 0C line at 850 millibars (about a mile up) slips all the way to the NC line, and there’s quite a bit of green north of it, showing precip in the preceding 6 hours. Under typical mid-winter circumstances, that would all be snow north of the that blue line, but the low-level cold may be so weak there is enough melting for rain nearer the surface. Still, if this solution is close to what happens, I would think at least 2,000+ elevations would see snow or snow/sleet mix in the morning, and there might be some dynamic or evaporational cooling to get the level lower.
The GFS is much weaker with the moisture, much slower with its arrival and much warmer.
What signs are DT and Cosgrove and perhaps others pointing to for the reasons for an “end to winter,” or at least a prolonged lull, after the 22nd or so? I see nothing special about the teleconnections that supports that (although there is nothing to support a cold snap, either). The two changes in the polar view that I could quickly see are that the vortex on the Canadian side of the pole got stronger, but it also moved quite a bit further NNW, so that it is much closer to the North Pole, no longer even close to Hudson’s Bay.
The main two are the development of a west coast low-pressure trough (shows up as slightly PNA- on the index you look at, Doug) and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (dealing with southern hemisphere movement or rain/storm areas) moving into phases that correlate with a milder pattern in the East.
We don’t need this.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/index.php
And the 8-14 day outlook is even worse……although it is good that most of the country especially the high plains is getting in on some wet.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/index.php
The CPC multi-day outlooks definitely show the influence of the PNA negative, or at least a western trough, because there are huge blobs of blue centered in the American Rockies on both of them. But I just looked at the GFS PNA outlooks, and none of them are showing any kind of move to negative ….. but are probably wrong, I guess. Or something else, like MJO, is causing the western trough.
Yeah, now I see what you are talking about, KM. The PNA ensembles show an entirely different look. Most of the red spaghetti strands go negative next week, which means that the GFS is in the minority.
Thanks, in fact TYVM Rick, for posting them! I cannot resist, as a bona fide snow-hater {ahem! :>)} in replying to your comment “We don’t need this.” Who is this “we,” Kemo Sabey?? They are both warm and wet …… they look great to Sam Oakey and me.
Well at least the 12Z Euro Ensembles and its mean still gives hope for the weekend. Mr. Griggs is correct in #45 above.
Rick, that moisture might look good come July/August.
I just looked again at the TWC Weekly Planner for Saturday to see an updated version (it was updated at 4 PM EST and E.C.T.). The look has changed. Now there is a dry hole in parts of Virginia west of I-95 and east of I-81. You folks in Bedford and Greene Counties don’t want to know the details ….
By the way, who is this guy “Mr. Griggs?” Please call me Doug G. or Griggsy or even COLC. Thank you. Now back to your regularly scheduled weather blog. :>)
DC, I stirred coals all day yesterday til the wind started kicking up, then chunked it again. Have kept it going today also, not hot and heavy, but enough to maintain temp. Currently 50.4*, so doubt any ice around tonight.
Doug, I just don’t want another flood. The ground is saturated and I’d just as soon not see a drop or flake until March.
Doug G. but I guess I will have t but I guess I will have to wait if are margina are marginal for snow I know I will get all rain I hope I chose my words more wisely this time haha
Doug G. I would reall I would really like some snow are margina I know I will be all I know I will be all rain I hope I
One thing Greene and Bedford have in common, they are east of the dreaded Blue Ridge! Just about need a storm to move parellel to the coast from the Carolinas to New England for us to get any snow. Guess that is a hard setup to come by and that’s why we have one good winter out of every ten.
Hey, kevin of turkeycock, does your “compuker” have the hiccups?
We have a difference in moisture levels, Rick. The ground is somewhat soft here, but no way is it saturated.
We’ve dropped from 51 to 44 in the last hour or so in Buchanan. Kids are hoping for a day off but know it isn’t probable. Love seeing all the maps and posts!