Hurricane Harbor: Winter Ice Cream Storm in Raleigh? Stay off the roads...hunker down.. eat Ice Cream ... stay off the roads.......

There's the frontal boundary... the moisture will ride up and along the boundary.

Here's the satellite imagery so you can watch the flow while reading my thoughts.

See the tropical moisture from the GOM merging with the frontal system moving East...

East along I40... snow to the north, freezing rain to the south..

So I was out and about in Raleigh today watching the locals stock up for a Winter Weather "EVENT" which means a Winter Storm but they like to say "event" vs a STORM. It's an odd place.

For instance there is some sort of run on frozen food for what is forecast to be a significant icing event. I get it.. if the power goes out you can throw the frozen vegetables out onto the deck and carefully skate out there and grab some frozen peas to throw into your frozen curry entrée..

The clouds are lowering slowly. There is VIRGA up there meaning the radar shows there is snow nearby but it's not falling. Sort of anal version of "I'm not ready yet.... I'm holding it in" if you ever had a small child who wanted to sit on the potty all afternoon but refused to go you'll know what I mean ;)

Note it's so dark some people have their lights on and it feels like it's 5PM not 2PM.

At the store I noticed people have bought most of the special produce. Special as in fancier brands, organic, special food yet the potatoes are sitting there on the shelf. Now, I'm pretty sure Russia has winter weather and potato and beets are a big item there but here the Spring Greens and Spinach were whoosh wiped off the shelf. No one was buying the Glory Collards :( Bananas are moving... along with watermelon ?? and other cut up fruit in containers a long with lettuce which has left the store.

Note people obviously want salad for their Amy's dinners.

All of the "healthy frozen food" was going fast...

as was the frozen vegetables.....

Moving along to the health food area it's good to know that people who drink plant milk watch the weather as it's also getting sparse. By the time I was done shopping I noticed it was almost all gone.

The MILK has hit the road Jack and is gone, gone, gone unless you like the green fat free stuff..

Even in a hurricane warning I've never seen the milk wiped out...gone.

Then again... here you just throw it out on the deck if the power goes out so... okay makes sense.

A nice lady was shopping for her daughter and mother.

Lactic Free for her mother, plant milk for her daughter.

The wine and milk was for her...

That's logical... covering all her bases like the weathermen.

Here's where it gets odd..

Eggs are usually a BIG commodity in a snow storm in Raleigh yet...

...no one is buying eggs.

I asked them if they had recently restocked the eggs and they said ... No.

Note the eggs are on sale and no one is buying them.

Last snow storm I asked people WHY they buy eggs...

They jokingly said to make French toast with all the bread you have leftover when here is no snow.

So..............why are people here freaking on milk and passing on the eggs?

There is so much bread here they are marking it down yet no one is buying...

Obviously there will be no French Toast after this Winter Weather Event.

Boggles my mind...

Even further boggling my mind is the Ice Cream is almost sold out.

Note the grocery has a man RE-STOCKING THE ICE CREAM ROUND THE CLOCK...

He said he has never seen ice cream sell out so fast and that store sells a lot of ice cream.

Explain it?

Milk, water, ice cream all at high demand...

....but they aren't buying eggs and bread.

Does this foretell a liquid precipitation event VS a snow event?

Do people want to drink water, milk and eat ice cream in an ICE event?

Correct me if I'm wrong but 2 inches of snow is not going to do Raleigh in..

But.......half an inch of ice might.

Strange place.

Gets stranger..........at Fresh Market there was plenty of produce but...no cake.

The cake was sold out.

GONE.

There was bread, eggs and sushi... and a run on Take Out Food.

Long lines like it was Thanksgiving.

So, what's a Miami girl living in Raleigh to do?

I bought ice cream... I ate the ice cream.

Okay..........I bought Ice Cream. No cake..Just Ice Cream.

Why is Raleigh preparing for a possible Ice event as if it was New Years Eve?

As for weather analysis I'll just say this .... this could seriously be all about the ICE

And I do not mean Ice Cream (though it was incredible by the way...)

Raleigh sits in the danger zone of enough ice to cause disruptions of every day life.

(think power outtages and being stuck home eating melting ice cream)

This system is traveling along Interstate 40...

Watch the flow of moisture on the last few frames feed into Texas and up into the Winter Storm.

Everything spins up and around towards the gyre in the North Atlantic.

Look at that spin off of NE...

Note the convection moving across the South...

Everything flows in the atmosphere.

Nashville got slammed... NC is Eastern Tennessee if you ask me...

The radar roll shows the story...

The stage is set.

The script has been written.

I like Vincent... he does a good job

Very complicated forecast with lots of questions left to be answered.

Not so simple to me...

Remember these bench marks... I40 and 85.

Same as further West...

North of I40 SNOW..

South of I40 freezing rain and ice...

The ground is cold. I mean frozen solid.

Days of temperatures with wind chills in the single digits and teens.

What ever forms... will freeze on contact.

The firewood is inside.

The roads are salted.

The ice cream is gone, gone, gone...

I'll be updating later and we will see what Octavia (rolling eyes) will bring.

Right now we have VIRGA...

It's there on the radar but we aren't getting any....

Virga - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirgaCached

In meteorology, virga is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates or sublimes before reaching the ground.

Down the road we may have several days of worrying on the after effects of this winter storm.

5 Day Snow Ground Cover (or ice) shows this taking a bite out of the South.