Friday 7am Wind Gusts (knots) |
Things will be quiet during the day on Friday with temperatures getting above freezing for everyone outside the highest elevations of western Virginia. A clipper coming out of western Canada into the northern plains today will swing southeast across the Missouri and Tennessee Valleys and eventually across our area late Friday night into Saturday.
4pm radar showing departing coastal storm and developing clipper |
Clippers are usually very hit and miss. Sometimes they bust. Sometimes they over-perform. You can usually count on them at least producing decent snows along the western slopes of the mountains where upslope flow enhances precipitation. East of there, there's usually too much downsloping to produce anything more significant than a few snow flurries and snow showers with up to a coating in spots. One thing that can throw some surprises is when the energy at 500mb passes south of us. Most of the lift with clippers is usually right along and to the north of wherever this vort.max. passes. You can see that this one is likely to swing all the way into North Carolina.
500 mb map for Saturday AM |
The 12z European model snowfall depiction seems to be the closest to my thoughts right now. I think there will be 2-4" amounts for the higher elevations of of western North Carolina and far southwestern Virginia. Areas across the Blue Ridge Mountains north of Charlottesville may also have a shot at these amounts. Outside of that, I think we are generally looking at anywhere from a coating to 2" for the New River/Roanoke/Shenandoah Valleys and the northern piedmont area of central Virginia.
I hope snow lovers enjoyed this active week of winter weather because long range guidance is pointing towards more of a Great Lakes' Cutter pattern setting up over the next 10 days, which would put us on the warm side of storms. I wouldn't be surprised to see widespread 50s and maybe even a few 60s for south east Virginia next week.
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