Ice And Rain Tapering Down Saturday Morning
After a night of rain, freezing rain, sleet, and some snow, the storm will begin to come to an end in ENC. There are still some areas that will see some snow showers, freezing rain, and rain (near the coast) for the next couple of hours but I do not expect that they will amount to much.
Here at my location in Greenville, NC, I was able to measure 1/8″ of ice accumulation with a trace of snow. Most snow forecasts for the area were an obvious bust including my forecast map from earlier (2-4″). I do take pride that I didn’t go down the same road as some in the media (talking about you Weather Channel) of forecasting snowfall totals in excess of 8″. Yesterday I mentioned that the low was beginning to track closer to the coast. Both the GFS and the Euro started trending to the earlier NAM which I had originally discounted due to know bias in those situations. So while this doesn’t win back my confidence that it will get it right from here on out, I have a little better respect for it now.
While going over the data in real time last night, I observed the warm nose shifting further inland than I expected. This shift reduced overall snow totals to the west significantly. I am still waiting on final accumulation reports to confirm how much of an impact this did have further inland.
This was a difficult storm to forecast which is typically difficult for this area. It requires knowledge and what to look for when evaluating the models and actually applying that knowledge into your forecast as opposed to letting the model determine that for you.
Looking forward after the storm, very cold air is going to dive south behind this storm creating near record low temperatures over then next three nights. Tonight we will see temperatures drop into the mid teens inland and low 20s along the coast. High temperatures tomorrow won’t even make it above freezing. Tomorrow night will be by far the coldest night we have had in a long time. Temperature could drop into the high single digits which could tie or beat the 9 degree record set in 1970.
The next chance of rain is expected on Wednesday of next week. Temperatures will be well above freezing at that time so there is no threat of frozen precipitation.
Hope everyone has a good weekend and stay safe if you have to be on the roads.
