We only got a dusting of snow in the Carolinas this week compared to some folks way to the south of us. I’m talking with NC Assistant Climatologist Corey Davis, and it was a surprising path for this storm.
“That’s right, Mike, a really unusual storm system and just overall setup. First off, we got that very cold air that was diving unusually far south, they were getting below freezing temperatures in places like Jacksonville, Florida. I’m sure a lot of the citrus farmers down there were having to cover their crops and cross their fingers, because they don’t get nights that cold very often. But while they had that cold air in place, we started seeing a storm system develop over the Gulf. It tracked up the coastline, because it was tracking further offshore around the fringes of that high that meant that we did not get those inland snow totals like we did a couple weeks ago, but instead, more that snow was right along the coastline, and you’re right, we saw some record setting snow even down in places like New Orleans, North Florida, and then across parts of eastern North and South Carolina. No records set there, but this was the sort of snow that they don’t see that often in places that hadn’t seen snow in three or four years. Now we’re seeing some pretty decent amounts with this storm event.”
Where were some of the larger snow totals?
“Well, across South Carolina, the sweet spot was probably about 30 to 40 miles inland, as you got closer to the coast, like in the Charleston area, they did get some sleet that was mixing in during that event, so that cut down on the overall totals. But places like Florence, especially, they were in the three to four inch range. Again, this is a part of the state that only averages a couple inches per year, so that’s a pretty sizable storm. And then across eastern North Carolina we saw a nice swath of four to six inch totals really everywhere from the Wilmington area up through New Bern and then getting toward Elizabeth City. The highest totals in eastern North Carolina were really right along the outer banks. We saw eight inches down in Ocracoke, nine inches up near Kitty Hawk. Again. These are places that do not expect to get big snows like that very often. So that was definitely a big event. And anytime there’s snow on the beach, that just makes for a cool sight.”
It really, really does. And I was talking with a friend of mine from Pensacola, and he was describing that same sight down there, which is very, very unusual. Now, ironically enough, we’re coming up on the 25th anniversary of the snow event in Raleigh. Tell us about that.
“Well, you’re right, Mike. You know this is that time of the year where the days are the shortest, the temperatures tend to be the coldest. It’s never too surprising to see some snowfall. And that was really the case back in January of 2000 we had had several other wintry events that month, and as we’re getting toward the 24th and the 25th there was another winter storm in the forecast, but it didn’t look like it was going to be anything out of the ordinary. The forecast, even on the morning of the 24th when the storm was going to hit, was calling for one to three inches of snow in the Raleigh area. And as folks who were who were around that area at the time will remember, this ballooned into an absolute monster storm. By the next morning, we woke up with more than 20 inches on the ground in Raleigh, more than a foot across the Piedmont of North Carolina. So for the 25 year anniversary of this storm, on our climate blog, we’re looking at that event. Why did it become such a monster, and how did the forecast miss that much snow that ended up falling?”
Yeah, I was not in the state. In fact, I was on a tropical island for a couple of years when that occurred. So quite a contrast there. But I remember it still. Of course, we talk about that every winter, the folks that were here and went through that, how what was, what was the forecast like? I understand, nobody expected to see this.
“That’s right, and the forecast for that storm was it was mainly going to stay offshore, not unlike this event that we saw earlier in the week, with most of that moisture across eastern North Carolina, they were expecting to get a little bit of snow, but it didn’t look like that moisture would make it all that far inland. That’s why they only expected maybe a few hours of light snow in Raleigh, with just a couple inches at the most. But what happened, especially on the morning of January 24 was that there was a cluster of thunderstorms down along the Gulf Coast. Those storms were not captured by the forecast computer models at the time, those supplied a lot of extra moisture to the system. Eventually, that system wrapped up into the main low pressure, and that’s what created such a powerful storm that ended up bringing that moisture farther west, really, it lined up exactly right with the Raleigh area. So we saw that bullseye 18 to 24 inches of snow across Wake County, but even across the broader Piedmont, totals that were far beyond anything that folks had expected, even the forecasters in that storm.”
So you mentioned at the time that was not picked up by forecasters. What did we learn from that? I’m hoping we’re better at guessing these things today.
“We definitely are. Mike, you know, the forecasts have come a long way. One thing we can look at is just the resolution that those models had. At the time they were working on something like a 30 kilometer grid. So every grid cell in the model was about 20 miles wide. Nowadays we’re looking at a very fine one or two mile grid. So that has certainly helped us be able to resolve some of those features, whether it’s a thunderstorm or a snow cell. The other thing we’ve learned, especially from the forecasting side, is just picking up things like that, whether there’s thunderstorms forming, and the impacts that those can have downstream on supplying more energy to these weather systems. I talked to one of the meteorology professors at NC State, Dr. Gary Lackman. I asked him, if a system like that was coming today, how far ahead of time would we know? He said he thought the grocery stores will be depleted two or three days before a storm like that, because the model should be able to capture such a powerful and potent weather pattern.”