Flour snow this weekend?
This will not be a sticky wet snow.
Just a day away yet we still have some significant model disagreement.
This will be a dry, fluffy, powdery snow like flour.
Where it actually does snow, in the strong wind gusts it will blow around easily. And it’s not good for making a snowman or a snowball (if you even get enough on the ground to even think about it).
It wil not snow area wide at the same time, instead there will be bursts of snow showers and gusty wind squalls while at the very same time very nearaby nothing, this is what will lead to jackpot winners and losers in amounts close to eachother. So those pecip bands and pop up showers especially near the precip edges away from SC and toward AL have the greatest chance of going broke or getting lucky with amount.
This is AN EXAMPLE of what I mean. IGNORE the locations and amounts this is just an example not a forecast. Illustration purposes only:
We also have the risk, especially near and West of I-75 of being “dry slotted” with mid-level dry air wrapping into and around the storm. See the moisture fields at 700mb ~10,000 feet up:
The tilt of the upper low, when it happens, and the exact track of it, in relationship to the base of the Southern Apps all have major ramifications. Hence the difficulty drawing a confident map with mesoscale pockets of hit and miss totals and zeros.
It’s easy to make an argument in many areas to cut the amount in half or double the number.
Where the storm maxes out I expect THUNDERSNOW in parts of NC and VA.
MY CUSTOM DRAWN ACCUMULATION BEST ESTIMATE:
(A) 2–6"
Get Kirk Mellish’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
(B) Most get a dusting to 1" Isolated 2" possible
(C) Dusting/coating or less
(D) Little or nothing
Confidence is medium to low near and West of a line from Dalton to Canton to downtown Atlanta Dekalb county to Macon and higher East of that line and toward SC.
FRIDAY EVENING activities look safe for Metro Atlanta, Precip start time is early Saturday morning around here, precip diminishing during Saturday afternoon from NW to East.
The LOW END amount (shown below) that is on the table would leave a lot of us off the hook, but the HIGH END amount (not shown) would impact roads/travel for all of us.
The Arctic Blast is not just a drink flavor, the air mass is coming special delivery straight from the North Pole:
- **On snow accumulation maps, they are usually wrong mainly around the edges, the periphery, I’ll be off base. Around Athens and east side of Atlanta is suspect because if the lower tracking RGEM is correct, then that opens the door to more Georgia snow, than I’ve put on my map. Plus, I already know that when an upper low closes off in north Georgia and rolls east across the Midlands of SC, the downslope immediate behind it does strange things. Those narrow bands and almost summer-like pop-up showers only this time in cold air are unpredictable like the hit and miss thundershowers in July.
So there will be a sharp “gradient or sharp cut-off between someplace with nice snow in your county and someplace nearby with little or nothing to show for it all.
EXAMPLE OF A TIGHT GRADIENT (NOT A FORECAST) BELOW. Note where it goes from colors to grays over a short distance. Each different shade of color or gray is a significant change in snow amount. Scientifically impossible to get those precise in any storm that has the tight gradient situation not just this one. Illustration purposes ONLY:
