Friday, January 9, 2009
Update on Next Week's Cold...and Snow Chances...
A quick update on the model runs for next week...the extreme cold may be delayed by a day or two, due to a series of disturbances in a very fast flow aloft. The lead system comes through on Tuesday with a few rain/snow showers, with a second one following later Wednesday into Thursday. This is the one I was looking at for snow chances, although it appears most of the moisture with this will be just north of us. The track and evolution of the upper level features will be key as to whether we see anything in Virginia. At this point, I'm not calling for anything more than flurries, but it bears watching. The deep chill will follow later Thursday into Friday. Stay tuned...
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2 comments:
I' am fairly new to you and your blog. I enjoy reading you daily updates, keep up the good work! I live in Culpeper va, and I was wondering if you had insight to why it has become so hard to get snow in virginia? Weather is a hobby of mine and I have a gut feeling that all of the cold air next week will likely go to waste. Also, is the saying "its to cold to snow" true?
Hi Robert,
Thanks for reading and welcome to the blog! Snow in central Virginia depends on a lot of ingredients coming together at just the right time. Often when we experience our coldest days, the air is very dry and there's no moisture to work with. Ideally for a significant snowfall, we would have a strong Arctic high pressure to the north of us locking in cold air down the East Coast and a storm passing just south and east of us.
As for the coming week, there certainly won't be a big storm, but several disturbances passing by or just to our north with much colder air gradually taking over. If we can squeeze out some moisture, we'll likely see at least a little bit of snow...just don't be looking for anything big!
Regarding the question "it's too cold to snow," that is never true here. I think the saying came about because cold air masses contain very little moisture and the colder the air, the more unlikely precipitation becomes. Think about it, an Arctic air mass contains little moisture compared to a summertime air mass. However, there is a point when snow crystals virtually can not form due to basically no available moisture. This is true with frigid Arctic temperatures like -40 Celsius and below.
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