northgawx

Have I told you lately how badly models do outside of a couple days? 

After coming around the glorious solutions of snow for our area, the Euro/GFS both decided to lose the idea for about 36 hours, only to bring the idea back again last night (well, the GFS anyways). Ultimately, we won’t really know anything for certain until at LEAST Wednesday/Thursday if we are lucky, but here’s the breakdown of what we need to see happen. 

First off, the current weather system is currently working on clearing the area while the next one is on its way in. This next low pressure system is very important as to what occurs later on this week. So, lets take a look at what the individual models do with this system. 

First, the Euro (no maps, they only come from paid sites). Up until last night, the Euro was showing us the most hope for the weekend, because it was setting up the trough farther west than the GFS. It accomplished this by running this weekend’s system up the eastern seaboard and using it as a temporary “block” to keep the weekend system from coming too far north. Its latest run swapped spots with the GFS and sets up our trough too far east, keeping the weekend system moving too quickly to either phase (get energized by the jet stream) or tap a good moisture source.

The GFS, however, did just that. The GFS runs the Wednesday system up the coast which allows the weekend storm to stay farther south as well as phase. The NAM (a short range model) agrees with a stronger V-day storm that cuts up the Appalachians acting as a block to keep the pattern both slowed and suppressed   As you can see in the two images below, a partial phase occurs just as the weekend system (the strip of yellow/orange towards the bottom) is moving out, allowing it to drop a few inches of snow across mostly NC. 

Then, to give you some idea of the inconsistency going on here, it phased all the way back in Oklahoma:

A phase this far west allows the storm to cut north too early, giving TN a good thumping of snow but only dropping light snow/flurries here. Don’t be depressed because the models don’t show snow, because the potential here is huge. And, for those wondering, the first model to show the blizzard didn’t occur until 5 days prior, and it was longer before they all agreed.

As I said above, the models are still quite inconsistent between runs but one thing is for certain: the potential is there for some significant snow somewhere in the southeast this weekend. 

And, as if this weren’t enough, the pattern looks to remain active a cool through late next week so we could see 1-2 more chances at snow before things begin to warm up. Even if we do warm, with how active the pattern is, it is difficult to call off all snow even headed into March.

I will update again either tonight or tomorrow with more model runs and updated data.