(From Patreon, 2 day delay)
I have to make this short and sweet so pardon any errors.
It’s not everyday we see a gulf storm move in with clouds like today (it looked like snow didn’t it?) but miss the area just to the SE. Snow from Mobile to Florida to the east coast is the restul.
I call this a Southern Slider and I’ve seen it before… reminds me of 2001 when South Boston got snow but Danville didn’t.
Almost I remember chasing heavy snow several years ago in Greenville, NC while the rest of the area saw nothing. South Boston, however did get 1-2″ with that event January 3-4, 2018! I shot this video of 7-10 imches of snow falling in ECU country down in eastern NC with Palm Trees blowing in the snow! It was a neat experience.
Not that windy this time but similar impacts and a similar accumulation path. We get these southern systems when the northern branch of the jet stream doesn’t link up with the southern jet stream to form a big classic storm. It’s about the timing, see.
In both tonight’s snow and the snow of Jan 2018 the southern jet stream did all of the work. That means it snows, but without help from a northern jet stream ripple in the right place at the right time, the moisture gets shunted east, still along the coast and not out of to sea – but just close enough for heavy snow in the east, just confined to the immeadiate coast.
The coast makes low pressure ride the coast because inland you have cold temps usually and just offshore theres LOTS of moisture at the surface and water that’s still “warm” compared to the teens we have in place.
So it’s kind of true that it can be too cold for snow. But thats not true all the time, just in this case. See, the water from the ocean rises and heats the air even more as the low moves in. That normally would give us a west trend with snow and is has before. Only this time due to the very cold air and the dryness of the air, the temperature contrast is STILL THERE, it’s just about 100-200 miles east of the shoreline and therefore the snow swath follows it into Wednesday.
It’s possible that the jet stream, seen here, can pull some upper level snow up and over us in our area of Virginia.
Just look at the trajectory and placement.
Also look at the GFS cloud forecast.
BUT its the bone dry air below the jet stream at the surface that’s the problem.
See the very low dewpoints? That’s evaporating what little snow the jet stream will try to crank out locally tonight. Still some of you may see some light snow at times. but not much.
Here’s the main image again, showing the system as a whole. Again, note how far south the snow is but also note the dry air cutting off the northern edge of the snow as well.
Now let’s analyze that.
The dry air is coming from the NW in Orange. That’s a NW wind and it downslopes off the mountains, dring the air even more than it was already. A snow killer.
The yellow is the jet stream and it’s moist and strong. So again some areas of light snow can’t be ruled out, mainly the further SE you go, as I noted in the drawing.
The temperature contrast is just east of the coast and it’ll be the road the moisture takes into Wednesday… where the warm meets the cold. Again, normally, this contrast sets up right on the coast. But this is an exception.
With deep moisture near the front and temp contrast, two waves will track NE along the front and throw heavy snow back into the cold air right along the beaches and inland a bit.
The best area for heavy snow is where I marked it, that’s where I’m about to travel!
I will be doing live reports on the road as I stop due to the system moving so fast I don’t want to wait too long and only have a few hours of snow before ending. So you’ll get some updates tonight every hour or so… and I’ll be careful for sure!
Finally, some models maps. I just don’t have time to label them or elaborate. You get the picture.
Let’s look at the Exclusive VIPIR model snow forecast. I zoomed into various areas for you to get a good look.
SE VIRGINIA
SE North Carolina to thte Grand Strand. Imagine going to Myrtle Beach to see 6 inches of snow lol
Georgia, South Carolina and SE North Carolinan Wide View
Now the random models with no commentary…
HRRR in motion at 15 min intervals. I’ve got to go soon to catch this system!
Okay, I’ll note the GFS above has a little snow in gray for us…. the EURO does too…
