Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Mostly rain event for central NC, but a few snow flakes possible at the end.

Well as the title says this will be a mostly rain event for most of NC, all but the mountains. Now I want to focus on the potential for some snow on the back side of this as the upper level low swings by over head tomorrow evening. To help me I have a few images here from the latest forecast models. 
First heres the GFS valid tomorrow evening as the main surface low pulls away showing some possible snow to end the event.
That blue line is roughly the rain snow line and most of the time anything falling on the left side of the blue line could be some snow.
Next is the Euro and Canadian models.
That area outlined in white is area where snow is possible as the system pulls away.
Now after looking at the 3 main globe models lets take a closer look at the regional models with a bit higher resolution. And first up is the NAM




Valid tomorrow evening and that red line is the freezing line at about 5000ft good place to look for rain vs snow. Also the NAM precip type would indicate a few flakes to end as you can see painted by the blue over the Triad of NC.



Heres what the NAM puts out for snow accumulations (although I dont expect much UNLESS it snows hard enough)



Again this I believe would only happen if it were to snow hard and overcome the warm surface.
Now to go down the our real Hi Res model the WRF model and it does pretty good although it can sometimes be way off but its always worth giving a look.

 

the WRF also shows this ending as rain mixed with snow. One last map I want to show from Matthew East from News14 Carolina this is his snowfall map he put out today and not expecting much for the Triad BUT still snow is possible to fall tomorrow evening.
Now after showing all the models and such, This will be a mostly rain event for most of NC outside the mountains. But as the upper level low comes by overhead tomorrow evening I believe the chance is there for some snow to fall over the area, But if this upper low were to shift from this forecast track then that could mean the difference between seeing snow or not so this is really a down to the min forecast and tricky at that but we will see as tomorrow draws closer.

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