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January 23-25th Winter Wx

TVILLE96 said:
Good advice. I'm just south of you and intentionally used my lunch hour to run to Publix and grab some things before the after work crowd cleans it out. It was already busy and I expect after work hours will be hectic. They still had plenty of bread but I expect it to be empty by closing time tonight. Anything winter related in stores will be gone by tonight or tomorrow. You stand a better chance to find high dollar items ,such as generators, but these will be gone also.
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I stand corrected. Went by the same Publix and another store tonight and plenty of bread and milk and place empty of people. I cannot believe this. Is the B'ham area not under the gun for bad weather ?
 
Ars4ua said:
What would need to happen to prevent the warm nose ?
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Smarter people than me please correct anything I oversimplify or get wrong.

Cold air streaming (CAA, or Cold Air Advection) in from the CAD cold air dam (literally cold air damming up on the east side of the Appalachian mountains and wind blowing west),

OR

CAA from the NW as the high pushes in.

Not matter what, there will be warm moist air streaming up out of the gulf, in a counterclockwise way around a low pressure that moves along or just north of the coast. Alabama, where it sits, is just about the prime spot for a low pressure to pull moisture up out of the gulf. We ARE the warm nose often, because we are at the spot where the most moisture can be pulled up. Where the low in a winter storm moves for us moves is often VERY important. Further north, more warm air pulled up and around, more warm nose. The further south the low tracks, the more winter impacts in north Alabama - counterclockwise flow pulls gulf moisture up and in to the cold air, and it dumps snow. The low in 93 tracked the northern gulf, and most of our major winter storms feature a strong low near the gulf. 93 was a VERY strong gulf low. Most of the warm nose "busts" have happened when that low tracks further north. This whole system is different - this is more of a clash of very different air masses but in a less... violent? ... way than 93 - this is a BIG area of very cold air meeting a BIG area of very warm moist air, and not as much low pressure driving the situation as much as a weaker impulse riding along a HUGE boundary, squeezing all that moisture out of the air as the cold moves in.

Now here's the REAL kicker - that warm nose can come in well above the surface, warming everything up into rain that then falls into cold air at the surface, causing an ice storm. That cold air damming up behind the mountains? Those same anticyclonic winds will push cold back west underneath the warm moist air. If it's cold enough, that's when we get an ice storm in North Alabama, a nasty one.

Here's the thing though - I don't care how big your computers are, we're still trying to tell a 3 degree difference in a layer of air thousands of feet up, and get that EXACT temperature right, and get that right 100 hours into the future. You can imagine the margin of error there. Stay tuned.

(Edit - that would have made more sense the first time if I wouldn't type east when I meant west.)
 
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JPWX said:
I don't know what the Euro AI Ensemble is smoking, but I like it. Has 30% to 70% probabilities of seeing equal to or greater than 12 inches of snow for North MS and 20% probability of seeing equal to or greater than 18 inches. LOL!
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It's smoking the fact that there is 3-4 inches of liquid precip equivalent coming, and saying it will be a heavy wet snow and not a 10-1 ratio fluffy stuff, more like 5-1. Seriously, think how much a 10-1 ratio with that much QPF would be! Regardless, looks right now like N MS is going to get buried, my friend.
 
Appears we have a legit Miller A on this run. Man central AL is going to be bad news.

Pray for a sleet fest over …even half of this freezing rain total would be very bad news
 
00z GFS has a Total Snow Depth greater than 10 inches over the northern sections of MS, AL, GA. It isn't snow though, its sleet. I've never seen anything like this. I don't even know what that much sleet would look like (at that point, it'd just be hard, crunchy snow).

I don't think that there will be THAT much sleet, but with those numbers and ridiculous amounts of ice accumulation, I'm starting to get really concerned.
 
In looking at the gfs, seems to me that some of the low level warming say for Bham Saturday evening is coming from the higher precipitation rates, could be a function of just raindrops passing through warmer air aloft and those warmer raindrop counteract the slow oozing of surface cold air, but it could be also the higher precipitation rates rates is releasing latent heat as it freezes causing temps to go up… very complicated processes making a difference of 3 or 4 degrees over several hours.
 
TVILLE96 said:
I stand corrected. Went by the same Publix and another store tonight and plenty of bread and milk and place empty of people. I cannot believe this. Is the B'ham area not under the gun for bad weather ?
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the worst of it looks to be modeled 25-50 miles north of bham, though i’m sure that’ll fluctuate quite a bit heading into the weekend.
 
Atomz said:
Euro is hellbent on giving ATL a monster ice storm, lmao.

Honestly, with how consistent these ice teens have been, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were under a watch by tomorrow afternoon.
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So I am in Lee county Alabama. I am a huge weather dude. I am pulling HARD for the GFS over the Euro !!!
 
Pretty easy to see the warm nose on this one - and a perfect example image for my post above.
1768969887013.png
 
44 in Birmingham? oof. total non event for I-20 in AL if that pans out.

Edit: Latest UKMet also shifted north.

Bummer if you are hoping for winter precip. But hey... 5 days to go, so only about 10 more flip flops to go.
 
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