Hurricane Harbor: Last Day of January -What Will February Bring? Depends Where You Live.... Tourists to Florida Looking For Sunshine. Snow to the Mtns in the West. What Do You Want For February? Weather Wise or Otherwise? Stubborn SE Ridge.

Link below to Mitch West Weather.

One of the things about the weather community online that has always been a constant is that most of us support eachother and share the links and the love to other sites, storm chasers and bloggers. You gotta give credit where it's due and though generally I watch Mitch during Hurricane Season ...Winter Weather is what he loves the most. We actually love all weather, sometimes it's a tie breaker which type we enjoy the most or maybe we just love the season we got :) or got stuck with :( and it's winter and I love winter weather but come April or May I start looking for early westbound tropical waves and coastal lows.

This winter is been filled with the SE Ridge....

...vs Coastal Lows.

No snow in the Carolinas ...

..flurries in the mountains.

Today in Raleigh....

I have winter fog... meteorologically not emotionally.

Cold nights and cool days.

I really do enjoy that.

So why am I Carolina Blue today?

Because the SE Ridge is keeping the snow away.

Many in this region love that!!

They move here from Ohio, Minnesotta and Michigan.

To them it's tropical and no snow to shovel.

But often the Carolinas, especially North Carolina...

...gets snow.

Not this year.

Right...yes I did see snowlakes at 1 AM one night.

Won't lie it was wonderful.

But I prefer daytime snow, falling, silently, beautifully.

Oklahoma may get some ... ice.

Models showing a wider ice footprint now.

Dallas getting near that quarter of an inch danger zone.

Lines go down, power goes out.

Most people hate ice storms.

Most...

How I see the world.

New Madrid Fault Zone getting Ice/sleet/snow

I'm not making this up....see?

After meteorology I love geology though my main game is geography and the weather that Planet Earth gets as all of our weather comes from somewhere else. Think Global, Act Local. It's interesting to see what's happening in Santa Cruz but you better pay attention to what's happening in Denver if that's where you live!

So here in North Carolina I look to see what Tennessee is getting as sometimes the cold air is stronger than expected and it dips down and flirts with North Carolina/VA/Maryland. VA/Maryland has a way better chance than here as we are just forecast to get spotty, cold rain.

I'm listening to Mitch talk while I type because I'm in a mood and it's a funny mood. Trying hard not to live and die by models as models can be unfaithful like the incostant moon ... that's a quote by Juliet... swear not by the moon and swear not by the models. Generally they are good, but the snow they promise they also take away and the near term models are way better than long term models. My Drama/English right brain background collides always with my left brain analytical side.

See those yellow, gold autumn/summer colors? That's the Southeast Ridge, the grinch that is stealing Winter from those of us in the Carolinas and Georgia. When I looked at the Satellite Imagery today and the forecast I saw the winter weather staying North of Atlanta and that pretty much says it all.

When Atlanta gets winter weather....

...Raleigh/Charlotte have a chance.

It's called the Piedmont Crescent. I85 Corridor!

When Atlanta gets snow it usually impacts the Charlotte area then moves up the I-85 corridor like a car bound for Raleigh/Durham (tho Durham has better chances than Raleigh obviously) and Greensboro usually gets snow and with every inch it moves East the chances go down but there's a chance. When they stay North of Atlanta.... the mountains get snow and this becomes more of an inland event vs a coastal event further up the coast. This year each system steers up towards the mountains staying mostly to the West of them as the SE Ridge holds tight and Arctic Air doesn't even want to fight with that tough ridge.

So yes, I know the lay of the land. That and fifty cents won't get me snow.

I decided yesterday while in bed sipping tea and taking herbal supplements and sinus meds to stop obsessing on the models, stop obsessing on snow and know that it is what it is and to remember I really LOVE Winter in the Carolinas. The bright/deep tall green Carolina Pines punctuate an otherwise gray, brown landscape making it both picturesque and beautiful. Magnoila Trees are one of my true loves as the scent of the flower is hard to copy even though every perfumer tries but misses the target in some way as it's a heavenly, ethereal scent that is divine. And the Magnoila tree stays green all winter and provides us a measure of green beauty that places further to the North don't always have and therefore I don't really get Winter Blues (unless snow is hiding from me) and you can see the sky through the beautiful silhouette of the unique structure that every tree showing off it's bones much like a naked swirl on a weak but stubborn tropical storm shows us structural beauty when it stubbornly fighting off shear. I may have mixed tenses, but who is reading this in January? Hoping y'all forgive me.

Silhouette, love that word but it's sure hard to spell. I had a boyfriend in highschool...okay not really a boyfriend just an annoying close friend who teased me a lot who would complain about how weird the english language is and why words can't be phonetically spelled properly. I mean how would you spell silhouette if you didn't know how and there was no Google to double check because you're typing a blog for others to read. Silowet? Few people actually say the "i" in Magnoila it's totally illogical that it's not spelled Magnola. See what I mean? He was right about a lot, wrong about some things and he's still a bit annoying but lovable. I digress....

Love the weather you got is the key to happiness, especially in the winter.

There's two types of people in the winter...

1.... The ones all day praying for snow and depressed it's not falling, waiting, hoping, praying.

2.... SAD sufferers of seasonal something definciency missing the sunlight.

I love the light we get in the Carolinas that turns our skies that odd shade of Carolina Blue, specifically because it's winter and the hardwood trees drops their leaves and go into silent slumber allowing me to see the most magical colors at dusk just before the sunsets. What one person loves is what another person hates. And, then any day now I'll take a walk up the hill and notice a few early daylillies pushing up through the ground or a Redbud that is blooming early because it thinks it's March but it's only February. The promise of Spring, change, renewal and something different happening because I'm a restless person who gets bored easily.

So stay tuned.... odd things are out in the Atlantic, way too early which makes me wonder a lot on preseason activity. Gotta spinner ... a low... upper level low...who knows what kind of low out there spinning. Always watching the MIMIC in every season.