Snowed in Raleigh. Over an Inch... Sunshine and Snow Beautiful Tho It's a Cold 21 Degrees as I Post this Blog. Can We Get Another Snowfall? I Believe So!
A writer and a tropical muse. A funky Lubavitcher who enjoys watching the weather, hurricanes, listening to music while enjoying life with a sense of humor and trying to make sense of it all!
A look at the WV for the USA
Shows the dip from the North...
...and the constant FLOW... East.
Where these meet up is everything.
I have a small bit of snow in my very shaded, backyard that'll probably melt away today. We are back to watching models and weather apps and in the long range they are about as reliable.
Reliability in forecasting is one part gift, one part knowing the lay of the land geographically and also knowing which models to trust and when to trust them. Anyone can go on Tic Toc and scream in a scared voice how it's going to snow so much they may get 15 feet and yeah perhaps for many it's entertainment as the more bizarre someone is on social media, the more clicks they get..... but do you really trust them? I have a brother who sends me the most bizarre scatological humor that he seems to find funny, and while I've known people with scatalogical humor they usually are funny but some of the stuff found online is just bizarrely strange. You watch someone dressed like Carmen Miranda promising someone like my brother that Miami will get snow and personally if she could do the Merengue while giving her forecast I might find her amusing too.........but no...........Miami is not getting a blizzard and the Panhandle isn't really forecast to get 15 feet of snow. But a good part of Florida may freeze, get some snow and how but how far South will that go? It has snowed in Miami before, but it was just snowflakes melting in the Florida sunshine on their way down.
As we say in Miami "yeah... NO!" but hey social media is often all about entertainment!
Many on X like to complain about weather apps as they almost always promise you snow on the 10th day, every day in the same way the GFS often hits New Orleans with a Cat 5 at the end of it's very long run. After a few days of slamming Nola with a Cat 5 the same model hits Miami with a Cat 5 Hurricane, before going back to Nola again. Note neither New Orleans nor Miami were hit by a hurricane directly, let alone a Category 5 in 2024. But hey long range models party on........giving you promises and more promises and each time you click on the link like Charlie Brown kicking Lucy's football.
So it snowed! To be fair ...first there was sleet that was net, little balls of sleet the size of poppy seeds (really) then bigger sleet then sleet had a beat and was dancing on the top of the car just before sundown on Friday. I got a few pics and some video and then.........it was Shabbos (something I do from Friday at Sundown to Saturday after the sun goes down) and by then it was dark so no pics! My backyard had snow, with a layer of crusty ice on top of it but not so bad that we lost power or much happened before the sun came out and melted most of it all!
Saturday morning the trees glittered like they had diamonds in them as the sun came out and fast moving clouds chased the front down to the beach and for a few hours Raleigh had the illusion of a beautiful Ice Storm, a Crystal Palace and then as my neighbor's child said "the trees were raining on us" and there was a waterfall of rain pouring down from the huge Oak Tree :)
Loved it. I still have some snow in the back as it's shady and faces the North and there's snow still at sunset while much of Raleigh has only memories of the first winter weather in almost 3 years.
Now that our big winter weather event is in the books, models are racing on down the road in search of the next big snowstorm promising over 20 inches (yeah really.......no don't bet on it) as the GFS is always in Dreamland ready for the next party.
Understand for Raleigh to get snow (real snow) with this sort of set up the white arrows have to be in the perfect spot to direct the moisture (snow) to us with the diving cold, icy air. This is like doing a tango and ballet step while on ice skates. It's not easy. Brad Panovitch is extremely good, cautious and this is in the category of "watching the pattern" vs believing anything this far out will verify. If this was a hurricane, the tropical wave has not left Africa but still the Islands would be nervously watching. Okay, many in Miami would be watching in the tropical weather world.
This may be an old fashioned BobbiStorm Blog filled with thoughts and honesty and less images as at this point the models are not important and only the radar and satellite imagery tells the story. That blue line is moving in on RDU rapidly, as I thought it might, and I prepared earlier to get things done so I could stop and write and dump my thoughts as this storm system has been a fast mover and has overproduced in cities along the way where it stopped and delivered winter weather stronger and earlier than expected.
Weather evolves in real time, models are only so good and give a good indication of what may happen, but when it begins to snow or sleet then we really finally know.
Raleigh is a beautiful place to experience Spring in the South and Fall is awesome. Summer is hot, humid, there is absolutely no air movement and so beastly that I actually I go to Miami for Summer... says a lot! But Winter is beautiful for someone who loves green pines intermixed with bare branches interwoven reaching out in all directions while ths sun sets and through them you see a colorful sunset in shades of coral and orchid that only shows up in the Winter. The sky only shows up in the Winter as otherwise it's a green, verdant city heavily forested and sky is cloaked in all the green. I love the Winter here. I also love snow and snow rarely shows when it's supposed to but when it does it's awesome!
Some people hate it, it's inconvenient and I suppose shows they are not in charge just because they want to be. The power of weather aka Mother Nature is in control and may snow on your party. Or not.
I moved here during several snowy years when silly me I thought it always delivered messy "lasagna storms" with both snow, sleet and sometimes freezing rain all mixed together so that when you walk outside your boots sink down into the various layers with a crunchy sound as if you're eating the world's largest potato chip! Maybe a corn chip, they make more noise when eating them and I used to eat BBQ Corn Chips but now I rarely eat chips unless it's a holiday! I bought Terra Chips in case it does snow and I get the munchies! I get high from snow! I get high from weather!
I love weather!
Never stop chasing.
But sometimes I want the weather to chase me.
Snow in Colorado was incredibly beautiful. But it's supposed to snow in Colorado! Loved it!
I finally got to see Colorado State University, go figure, and yes the Aspen is oh my gosh incredible in the snow and I'm sure it is indeed beautiful in the Fall as I've been told so maybe next Fall I'll go and see for myself!
Today I just want to see snow falling in my backyard. It's that simple. I'm not a hater, I'm a lover.
And, I love snow so I'm giddy like a school girl about to see snow for the first time after I moved up North and I'm still in awe of it all.
So check back Sunday to see what exactly happened and what if anything we really got. Mother Nature can be a heartbreaker in Raleigh even when you see snow moving in on the radar. Sometimes there's a Virga Monster :(
Sweet Snowy Dreams,
BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on X
Prayers for everyone in California, a place I lived and loved ...tho it was a bit stingy with the snow in it never rains in Southern California.
I woke up at 3 AM checked my phone and well you know the way that goes. So I sit here listening to KTLA Live trying to follow or just keep up with the fires burning in the LA Basin and it's associated canyons and basically anywhere a spark from one fire has landed onto another starting a new fire. I spent years of my life getting my news from KTLA and it's my go to sources for LA news especially when there's breaking news.
It's complicated. Fires have jumped Topanga Canyon and are moving into Malibu as well as further North up into the hills, all of the hills it seems. There are fires in the Valley and far to the East just North of Pasadena. A single burning ember can travel way more than a mile in wild, whipped up winds near hurricane force and immediately land on dry chapparel starting a new fire. It's hard to comprehend as it's not your regular forest fire.
You can't really understand how bad this is unless you know and if you know you know.
1) If you have lived there you know.
2) You need to understand topography.
3) You need to understand the geography.
4) You need to understand botany and how chaparrel explodes in a fire and gets caught in the wind!
5) You need to understand meteorolog.
The list goes on and on ... as it's very complicated.
Power lines are down and people are unable to get calls out to 911 when they call to report a new fire. Fire dances along power lines, did you know that? Well sometimes and video of that earlier this evening dances in my mind.
This is very much like what happened in Western NC except this was fire and that was flooding. Either way the fires follow the brush and ride the canyons up and down beginning new fires that cannot be put out in winds of over 70 MPH and gusting as high as a 100 MPH if reports are accurate. Homes up in the mountains are beautiful, but a worst case scenario in fires or floods. And, in the case of LA proper there are and will be more fires far from the canyons or the Palisades that sit regally above parts of Santa Monica; an architectual treasure trove of Mid Century Modern homes that teeter at the edge and have or had views of the Pacific Ocean you can't imagine. Hard to fight a fire if you can't go up and drop water onto it as you cannot fly in these winds nor these conditions. Winds are not expected to die down until Wednesday late in the day and by then we may have a realistic damage report as well as how many people may have died while trapped in burning buildings or on the roads trying to escape.