Fantastic weekend weather...

Above is today's edition of the Carolina Weather Video. Give it a watch.

It has been a wild stretch of weather around here. Soaking, even flooding rains last weekend preceded a significant bout of snow in the western Carolinas Sunday night into Monday morning. Extremely cold air followed the snow with highs 20 degrees below average Monday and Tuesday.

Now, we have seen a radical flip in the upper air pattern that is allowing very mild air to flood into our region. Highs today will be in the mid to upper 60s with mid to upper 70s over the weekend. The weekend will also be dry, so get out and enjoy!

As you might expect, changes will take place with time next week. A cold front will drop into the region late Monday and then lift back northward as a warm front Tuesday. I can't rule out a shower either day, although the best shower chances will likely hold off until Wednesday when a more significant cold front plows through.

Behind that front, we return to relatively chilly weather for the end of the week. And yes, I see some modeling continuing to advertise a nice cold air damming scenario as our next system, around next Friday, moves in. I am certainly not ready to commit to any type of winter weather scenario, but it is something I will watch in the coming days.

Upgrades continue here at the big 14. New monitors just went up here in the Triad weather office yesterday. We will be doing major systems overhauls in the coming weeks and months. There might be some hiccups along the way, but the end result will be an even better News 14 Carolina.

I am looking forward to a quieter weekend ahead. Last weekend, snow preps dominated the weekend with numerous conference calls, forecast, blog posts, etc... I am looking forward to a little down time this weekend.

Tomorrow afternoon, my wife has a baby shower, and then we have church Sunday. But outside of that, I am looking forward to just spending time with my family and relaxing. So, unless something changes, I will see you here Monday morning.

Enjoy the weekend!

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Continuing to warm up...

Above is today's edition of the Carolina Weather Video...in it, I talk about the weather through next week and take a peek at the rest of March.

Chilly again this morning, but you can tell the warming trend has settled in. No teens out there this morning with the coldest Piedmont temps registering in the 20s.

The weather today will be nice with sunshine and some high cirrus clouds with highs in the mid to upper 50s. We remain above freezing tonight and then head up into the mid to upper 60s tomorrow.

The weekend weather continues to look wonderful with highs in the 70s and a good bit of sunshine.

Next week, a cold front pushes through later Monday. I will mention some shower chances at times Monday night through Wednesday. By late Wednesday, a more substantial cold front should swing through and bring our temps down to near or slightly below average for the end of next week.

Down the line, most of the teleconnections I use are suggesting a trend back to some colder weather for portions of the second half of the month.

We got one more morning in yesterday of some sledding and playing in the snow. The sun put a significant dent in our remaining snow cover yesterday afternoon. There was still tons of snow lying around at church last night. So we had another small snowball fight as we went to the car to head home. Good stuff.

Lots of new equipment and upgrades going on here at News 14 Carolina. Looks like our Charlotte studio got the new TV monitors installed at the chroma key yesterday.

Enjoy the day...

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Big warm-up on our doorstep...

Above is today's edition of the video....back in my regular routine this morning. I have some accumulation maps from our snow event right at the beginning of the video.

I sure have had a blast playing with the kids in the snow the past couple of days. They ALL like sledding, and we have done that a ton. I think we will get in a tad bit more sledding today before we lose too much of the snow cover. Also, several snowmen have been constructed. Fun times....I am sad to see the snow go....

However, if we are going to lose our snow (in the spots that still have it), we might as well enjoy some nice weather. And boy do we have that coming. Highs will get progressively warmer each afternoon into the weekend. Highs could hit 70 as soon as Friday, but certainly we will be well up into the 70s over the coming weekend.

So, we go from highs 20 degrees below average early this week to highs 15-20 degrees above normal this weekend....March in the Carolinas.

Talking with Jayden (oldest daughter) yesterday, it all of the sudden occurred to me....our baby's due date is now only 3.5 weeks away! Wow, amazing how that can sneak up on you (in my mind, it still seemed about 5 weeks away)! So, we need to get into our mode of getting everything prepared for having a baby in the house again.

Below are a couple of the pics of the snow around our house.

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Brrr....

Couple if nice visible sat shots of our band of snow.



All right....getting back into a regular routine after all of the snow preps and work last week and this weekend. What weekend? I love the snow no doubt, but I am looking forward to some down time this upcoming weekend.

My microphone I use to produce my videos is still at home, so no new video today. I hope to have those churning again tomorrow morning.

One final note about the snow event. I posted a long response to a comment that was made in the blog post below this one involving how I thought my forecast unfolded. Give it a look if you wish. I won't rehash all of that here, but I will say that I thought overall the original forecast ideas I put out on Saturday morning turned out fairly well. The overall 3-7" forecast with isolated higher and lower amounts was pretty accurate. The only thing that was a bit off was my placement of the thin axis of heaviest snows. In my original forecast, I had that axis drawn from near the CLT area up into portions of the Triad region. Turns out it was 30-50 miles west of there, from Cleveland county up toward Surry county. I gave the warning that that band of heaviest snows could go either way by 50-100 miles from my original ideas....picking up on such a small scale feature like that is next to impossible 36 hours prior to an event.

At any rate, with good forecasts and with bad, there is no spinning of it or twisting it here. Everything is all put out there in black and white, and you can dig into the archives of my forecasts dating back to 2006 at the bottom of the right hand column. I always try to consider this blog a behind the scenes look at what goes on in the forecasting process. I sincerely thank all of you for continuing to stop by!

At any rate, as always with snow events, some people are happy and some are disappointed. But I think the guidance from me personally as well as the whole News 14 team was not too shabby.

Moving on, wow is it cold! Lows this morning were in the low to mid teens here in the Piedmont, and highs today will struggle to break the freezing mark.

I think tonight will be just as cold, if not colder than this morning. In fact, the GFS 2-meter temps continue to be extraordinarily cold (low of 1 in GSO, for example). I have not gone that low with my forecast, but I will say another night of low to mid teens, even some single digits in some spots, appears on the way.

We will begin a warming trend tomorrow that lasts through the weekend. Highs will get progressively milder each day, and it still appears some 70s are on tap this weekend.

One final word....I do not think we are at all finished with cold weather. I am working on my ideas for the rest of March, and I will say that preliminarily, I am thinking from mid-month on might trend fairly cold again. Still working on these ideas though...

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Reports...

Snow event winding down. Here are some selected snow totals as of 5am...

Kings Mountain - 9"
Cherryville - 6"
High Point - 6"
Mount Holly - 4"
Winston-Salem - 5"
Thomasville - 5.5"
Shoals (Surry County) - 7"
PTI Airport - 5"
Burlington - 4.5"
Sheffield - 6.2"
Mocksville - 5"
Charlotte - 6"
Statesville - 4.5"
Salisbury - 4"
Yadkinville - 4"
Wadesboro - 1"
Albemarle - 2.5"
Troy - 3"

Power outages are also a problem. According to Duke Energy, Gaston has over 13k without power, Meck over 12k, Forsyth 7k, Guilford 6k, Cleveland 7500.

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Entering crunch time....

The upper level low pressure has made the pivot down in Georgia and is beginning its trek northeastward. You can already see the deformation zone (band of heavy precip) setting up from Georgia into SC, and that band should park itself over the foothills and western Piedmont this evening into tonight.

Underneath that band, I still fully expect quite a few hours of moderate to heavy snow. Also, thundersnow will be possible, and some thunder and lightning has already occurred this afternoon.

I have no changes on my thoughts about how this system will unfold. I see no need to change my accumulation ideas. Anyone in the Charlotte and Triad viewing areas are fair game for 3-7", and I fully expect a strip where numerous 6-10" amounts could occur.

Amounts should be lighter toward the Triangle, but I will think some decent accumulations could occur.

The ground is wet and relatively warm, so it will take some good snow rates to get accumulation going. But I think it will.

I will be heading into town to get a hotel room this evening. I have to be on the air for the Triad market at 2am, and I cannot chance the roads being impassible. So, unless I get my hands on a laptop, this will likely be my last blog post until the pre-dawn hours.

Speaking of roads, if all goes the way I envision it, travel will be VERY difficult by late this evening, and the morning commute would be unbelievably tough. School systems will be making their calls as normal prior to dawn, and as always, I urge them to err on the side of caution.

Some power outages look possible. The winds have really been whipping around, and if we get that blanket of heavy wet snow in place, trees could very well come down.

We have all of the stops pulled out on News 14 Carolina. Tune us in...you will not find the level and scope of coverage we can provide anywhere else.

I have temporarily turned the comment moderation off....so fire away those reports, and be sure and give us your reports and photos at weather@news14.com

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Sunday morning...

All right, slug of precip moving up from SC this morning. This morning, looks like rain maybe mixed with sleet for much of the CLT area. Up in the Triad, some freezing rain, sleet, and rain for a while this morning. Some icing is possible on elevated surfaces.

Big question is when do we kick over to snow? The sounding data for CLT is right on the line between a rain and heavy snow sounding this afternoon. When that changeover will impact total snow amounts.

I will not make any huge changes to my forecast. I still favor the corridor of portions of the Charlotte metro up into the Traid as the zone that sees the heaviest totals. But again, anyone in the Piedmont is fair game to get a decent snow out of this.

Looks like a general 3 to 8 inch snow, but in the band where the heaviest snow occurs overnight, 6-10" and even more is possible some spots.

Some thundersnow is also possible if everything sets up right, and if that develops, some really intense snow rates could occur.

As is always the case in winter weather events around here, it is tough to have a ton of confidence ahead of time. But that is how it looks right now.

By the way, incredible snow back around Memphis....10-20"!

Will head off to church this morning, then see how we are looking after that.....

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