While the next major East Coast Snowstorm will grab the headlines in the coming days, the storm following has the potential to bring snow from Texas to South Carolina from Wednesday night through Friday. 

The storm will not have a tremendous amount of moisture associated with it, so it’s not going to produce a monster snowstorm; however, any snow in the Deep South is a major weather story–not that Deep South snow has been that unusual this winter. 

The storm is already visible on the eastern Pacific satellite image; it’s the small curl just to the west of the Pacific Northwest on the following map. It is NOT the large area of clouds with the tail of moisture extending to the north of Hawaii. 

NOAA Eastern Pacific satellite image from Feb 8, 2010

California Storm First 

The storm will first  southward through California from Tuesday through early Wednesday, producing showers and perhaps a couple of thundershowers. Snow levels will be quite low, so its first snow-related problems might be related to California travel, especially through the Grapevine that connects the Los Angeles Basin with the Central Valley. Snow might also fall in the elevated deserts, which doesn’t happen every winter. 

Plains to South Carolina Snow 

Although the storm will be fairly slow to leave California, it will scoot eastward fairly quickly once it arrives in the southern Plains on Wednesday night, departing South Carolina by late Friday night. Its quick eastward progression will give it little time to pick up moisture, so precipitation amounts will remain fairly light. 

Its quick progression will also give it too little time to develop a warm southerly flow in advance of its arrival, ensuring that the precipitation will fall as snow on its northern flank, from the Texas panhandle and north-central Texas through Oklahoma, northern Mississippi, northern Alabama, northern Georgia, and South Carolina. 

Some snow is also likely in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee, but I didn’t highlight those areas since they’ll also have snow from the current storm–most likely more than they’ll have with the second one. 

–Paul Yeager

Most Recent Storm

Just a quick post to show the snow depths in the Mid-Atlantic region following the most recent storm compared to the December storm…

The snow depth as of this morning (Feb 7, 2010):

Snow depth as of February 7, 2010

December Storm

Snow depth on Decmeber 20, 2009 (following the first major storm):

Snow depth on December 20, 2009

Comparison

The main difference that I see is that the second storm had a larger area of very heavy snow, which is indicated by the dark blue color on the map. The dark blue area shows areas that had 20 or more inches of snow on the ground.

In addition, the very heavy snow from the second storm extended a little farther to the north into Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

–Paul Yeager

In a storm that’s being labeled ”snowmageddon” by some, which is not my name even though I co-wrote the article  (DC, Mid-Atlantic Bracing for ‘Snowmageddon’). Even though I usually rail against making up words randomly (languageandgrammar.com), I don’t mind as much when they’re funny names like this one!

Anyway, as I often do since I can’t give forecast details, I’ll link to some of my blog friends for their updates on the massive snow storm:

• Capital Weather Gang
• Maryland Weather
• PhillyWeather.Net
• WeatherTalk
• The Weather Front (Fox News)
• WeatherMatrix

Oh, and for a Super Bowl-related laugh, take a look at Erik Proseus’s blog (MemphisWeather.Net), Hurricane WhoDat?

–Paul  Yeager

I know that I haven’t been posting much lately, but did you ever think that it might be because no one has sent me any cards for National Weatherman’s Day, which is tomorrow? Meteorologists have feelings, too, you know. 

Actually, I’ve been busy working on other projects lately, but I wanted to briefly post about what I’m calling (every storm seems to require a name these days) the Massive Mid-Atlantic Mauler. 

It appears as this storm will be fairly similar to the massive snowstorm that occurred in December, with parts of the Mid-Atlantic region receiving as much as two feet of snow. Having one of these storms in this region is impressive, but two such storms is remarkable. 

Here is NOAA’s warnings map as of around noon on Thursday–click on the map for the latest warning map: 

Eastern U.S. weather warnings on February 4, 2010; image courtesy of NOAA

I’ll try to post more regularly–even if I don’t get any cards… 

–Paul

Mount Washington, New Hampshire, has been the proud home of the world’s strongest wind gust from April 12, 1934 until April 10, 1996, but it’s new news since the announcement of the record was just made recently.

For more, see my article on aol news: New World Record Wind Speed Announced.

–Paul Yeager

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that the tremendous California rain might end the drought (California Drought–Ending Before Our Eyes?). Well, so far, it hasn’t ended the drought, but it has improve the situation considerably. 

Here is a the drought monitor map from January 26: 

California drought monitor map for the West; January 26, 2010

Here is the map from January 12, before the storms arrived: 

Western drought map for Januar 12, 2010; courtesy of NOAA and friends

While the drought situation has improved dramatically, there remain a few areas listed as abnormally dry and even moderately dry based on long-term rainfall. 

With more storms on the way in the coming weeks, perhaps even these areas will be erased. 

–Paul Yeager

Maybe I have too much time on my hands, but I recently came to the conclusion that the widely held belief that “no two snowflakes are identical” is most likely a weather myth. (I write about many popular weather myths in Weather Whys.)

For me, the belief that it’s a myth is based on two reasons: the number of snowflakes and the way they’re created.

Snowcrystals.com snow flakes and snow crystal images

Number of Flakes: Near Infinity

A chacha.com article tries to quantify the number of flakes in a 5-ft snowman. Based on average snowflake size of 1/2 inch-diameter and 1/20 inch-thickness (seems a little big to me), the article states that there would be 1.5 million snow flakes in a 5-foot snowman.

Math is not my strong point, but logic is–and those numbers are not even close. Let’s just say that the estimate of 1.5 million flakes would be correct if the flakes were gently placed in the shape of a snowman, which I don’t know if it is. Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong, but a bunch of flakes gently placed in snowman formation would fall to the ground. That’s what snow flakes do.

The flakes inside of a snowman are packed and smashed and smooshed together–they must be compacted to 1/5 or even 1/10 their original size, meaning that there must be 5 or 10 times as many flakes as the above article indicates. In other words, each 5-foot snowman has between 7.5 million and 15 million snowflakes. That’s in just one little snowman.

While I know that anything that can be counted is not infinite in number, the number of snowflakes that has fallen has to be nearly infinite.

How Snow Forms

All snowflakes form through an identical, albeit complicated, process, which can be seen in The Crystal Chemistry of Snowflakes article from the American Chemical Society. Not all snow flakes make it through the complicated 9-step process; many can’t wait to fall on your driveway, so they leave before the process is done.

Conclusion: No Two Snow Flakes Are Identical

A nearly infinite number of flakes has fallen, all of which have gone through the same process. What are the odds that the same process was completed nearly an infinite number of times and not yielded the same result, at least once–especially when a large number of these flakes have not completed the entire process?

It’s virtually impossible that no two have been identical.

Now that that’s been settled, let’s move on to whether there really is a Great Pumpkin….

–Paul Yeager

Although it’s been a couple of weeks, the overall pattern of winter storms tracking fairly far to the south is in the process of returning. And I only have one thing to say about it: check out the local experts, some of whom happen to be my friends!

• Memphis (as of this writing) is in a winter storm watch, and Erik Proseus at MemphisWeather.Net will be the source for updates.
• The storm will most likely pass to the north of AlabamaWx.com, but the excellent team will be talking about the storm since they have followers all over the state.
• The storm will be a major story for the Mid-Atlantic region, so check out the Capital Weather Gang (Washington D.C.) Maryland Weather, and PhillyWeather.Net.
• Although they may not talk about the storm directly, both Steve at WxTalk and Jesse Ferrell at WeatherMatrix usually talk about big weather stories.

–Paul Yeager

The cold air, as indicated by the following NOAA forecast map for Tuesday’s high temperatures, is beginning to make inroads back into the northern part of the United States. The question many of us have is whether it will return to the intensely cold pattern of December into the first half of January, or whether this new shot of cold air will be a glancing blow in our march toward spring. 

NOAA high temperature forecast map for January 25, 2010

Cold to Return for East and South 

According to the coupled forecast system (NOAA long-range computer forecast model), it will be somewhere in between–cold in the South and East, but the cold will not be as extensive across the country or as intense. (Note: The February 2010 forecast is indicated on the map in the upper-left in the following image.)

February 2010 temperature anomaly forecast (CFS model)

–Paul Yeager

It was just over a week ago when I mentioned that the developing pattern in California could produce in excess of 20 inches of rain and over 10 feet of snow to parts of California (Storms to Blast California), so let’s take a look at precipitation across the state for the last seven days.

Rain or Liquid Equivalent

Data from NOAA Precipitation Analysis Web site shows the amount of rain and rainfall equivalent for the areas where the precipitation was snow for the week ending at 7 a.m. P.S.T.

Many areas had in excess of eight inches, with quite a few locations in the mountains in the north, the coastal range, and the mountains to the east of Los Angeles having received between 10 and 15 inches. There seems to be a spot to the north of Redding (northern mountains) that reported 20 inches of rain.

I haven’t had time to research the amount of snow that’s fallen in the mountains, but Mammoth Mountain is reporting 92 inches of snow in the last 7 days, which is a nice, round 8 feet of snow. It’s certainly impressive.

The belief that the weather is always boring in California (and always easy to forecast) is widespread, which is something I wrote about in Weather Whys. This is why it’s not!

–Paul Yeager