Hurricane Harbor: Tricky Forecast For New Year's Eve. Snow Is a No Snow in Most of the South. Up North Where It Belongs I guess..

So you think it's cold by you?

This is a picture from Postville, Iowa.

My daughter-in-law's way of saying..

"Just why" while visiting "home"

Seattle is balmy compared to Postville.

It's all relative.

I'm watching TWC do their coverage of the current Arctic Blast and two things hit me. One ... why was a tourist surprised it was cold in Chicago and some lady said she was snowed in and "desperate for salad" ....

It's often freezing in Chicago in late December; it's common for the wind to come in off the Lake and make you run into the closest store or apartment building to take cover and catch your breath. I have never in my life been "desperate for salad" so I'll pass that onto my husband who likes to have a salad every day (I know it's supposed to be very healthy) but really? Desperate for salad? I've been desperate for a steak or some turkey with all the trimmings including a pumpkin pie. I've been desperate for good vegetables or some flan and definitely desperate for coffee but "salad" ??? Interesting.

So let's talk how cold it may or may not get. Most people are talking about it unless they live in Key West and in Key West the lows are in the 60s and the highs in the 70s so that's down right chilly for people in the Conch Nation. I'm officially a Conch, by the way, but that's a discussion for another blog. It's so cold here in Raleigh today that when I asked my husband who is from "upstate NY" how cold it was he said definitively "COLD" so that's a statement trust me. Not "nippy" or "chilly" or "frosty" but COLD. It may be cold, but it's awfully pretty this time of year in Raleigh. You can see the sunset through the trees and that means ... well you can SEE the sunset as in the summer it's a wall of green round these parts.

This is why I like winter in Raleigh.

I also get a "chance" of winter weather.

One of the better things about following meteorologists online is you get a wide array of advice and thoughts as people live everywhere yet have the same basic question. That question being "will it snow?" Very much like people talking on Mike's Facebook Page and worrying on whether a hurricane will make landfall from every point across the Gulf Coast and parts of Florida.

Whether it snows or doesn't snow...

...it's going to be COLD.

Truth is winter weather is complex.

AKA "It's complicated"

There is snow above me up in the clouds not making it down to the surface as the surface is too warm (38 degrees but feels colder) and very dry. There are many dry layers of the atmosphere here. We need a "more wet" storm system coming through to get Carolina snow and that system may be the caboose of this Winter Weather Train set up that takes us into the first week of January. In 2010 we had a heavy snow in Raleigh. I mean a picture perfect snow that lasted for days and days. School was cancelled for I believe a week at least. Being a weather lover living in Raleigh is a bit sadistic. The snow line is to the North almost always and the freezing rain line is the South ... almost always. Once in a while it snows!