Live Blog: Snow Day!

In the history of the DCV, there have only been two occasions momentous enough to warrant the "Live Blog" treatment. One of these ("My Night at O'Hare") wasn't even a truly live blog since I didn't have internet connection through a lot of it ... it was more of a tape-delay. The other was the Louisville - West Virginia football game of 2006. (This was back when both Louisville and WVU had football programs.) It was a BIG game as you may recall and the DCV "Live Blog" treatment brought enough luck to the Cards to pull them through.

It is, in part, this desire for a little additional input from Lady Fortune that the live blogging procedures have been cranked up here at the DCV, because we want to see some snow and the atmosphere may not have it in it w/o some additional blog-generated providence.

9:39a: The Dolberry Winter Weather Prediction Centre is lowering its original snow prediction of 4.7" back down to 4.2". Uncertainty is high with this event and thus we are suspending our usual procedure of predicting snow to 3 decimal places w/in 24 hours of the event. We apologize for any inconvenience.

9:42a: Last fall, Relient K came out w/ a Christmas album and while most of the songs had been previously released, it did come with a shiny new, typically-clever RK title ... Let It Snow Baby, Let It Rein Deer. Well, at present in Apex, it is 37.0 F and raining. Normally, if it's 37 in Raleigh, you're not anywhere close to snow, but cold air is on its way. Needs to hurry before the precip leaves. It has dropped 0.6 degrees in the last 30 minutes. Let it SNOW, baby!

9:59a: Part of the reason I want it to snow so badly is that we bought a sled yesterday. According to the cashier, half the town of Cary bought sleds yesterday. (I think we'll have to view that as an unofficial tally.) Anyway, me and the beautiful KMD were out shopping for sleds. We tried Dick's first and all they had were lousy snow intertubes and they were like 20 bucks. "Give me a break!" stormed Dolberry out of the store w/ the beautiful KMD in tow. Then, the beautiful KMD (shortened to bKMD for the rest of the "Live Blog") said sometimes Linens and Things sells sleds. Dolberry smelled a rat here. "I'm not going to Linens and Things!" stormed Dolberry. But since we were right by a Sled, Bath, and Beyond we went into that one. Whoa! What a zoo. A new shipment of sleds had just come in and there was a frenzy of maybe 3-4 shoppers looking over the limited inventory. They had some plastic orange contraption that looked like it would maybe be strong enough to carry MoJo down a slope that was $9.99. bKMD suggested that one would be fine, but the Sled, Bath, and Beyond saleslady asked Dolberry how old the child using the sled would be. "Ten." I lied. ('Cause you know it's a 41 year old heading down the hill first ... for testing purposes ya know.) With the smooth skill of a car salesman she steered the gullible Dolberry over to the plastic discs that were running for $14.99. bKMD thought Dolberry was being taken for a snow ride and said so when the saleslady had walked away. Meanwhile, the Lexus of sleds had caught Dolberry's eye. A shiny new, half-sled / half boogie board device. Dolberry was entranced ... and sought the saleslady out. "How much is this one?" he timidly inquired. "29.99". Oh my. We then spent more time debating the purchase of this sled than we did purchasing our car. In the end, w/ a severe case of buyer's remorse setting in, we went with the fancy model, but when the cashier rang it up, she said that'll be $16. SWEET! So, I need it to snow.

10:08: Update from the bKMD, in this case the "b" stands for "brave" who has ventured out into the storm and reports it is still raining, but that some of the raindrops look "flaky" when they hit the windshield.

10:14: Had to take a break from "Snow Day: Live Blog" to buy our Spring Training Reds tix. We're down the first base line. 4th row for the Yankees game on Thursday. 6th row for the Pirates game on Friday. We're seeing the Marlins @ Red Sox in Fort Myers on Saturday. And then we're eating cheesesteaks on Sunday (while the Phils play the Blue Jays). Buying Reds tix was about 50x easier than buying Red Sox tickets. When I observed this to bKMD, she said "That's a good thing about not winning the World Series."

10:28: The Admiral (NOAA) does a whole bunch of model simulations (21 to be exact) every 6 hours as part of an exercise he calls the short-range ensemble forecast. Then he takes the average of all those runs and bases a snowfall estimate based on that. Here's a plot of what the Admiral expects in the three hour period between 1-4p.


10:29: So that would be a solid 1.25" of snow in that three-hour period. Plus, they have us getting snow in other periods as well, for a total of about 2". Or just enough to sled on.

10:32: The Admiral then taunts snow lovers everywhere by cherry-picking the highest of the 21 ensemble members and plotting that one. Here it is, the most optimistic of the 21 is still prediction a whole bunch of snow. Here it is.


10:35: So that'd be a good 3" inches in a 3-hour period this afternoon, w/ other 3-hour periods having snow as well tallying up to about 7". So the mean is 2", the max is 7", and the min is presumably the usual bupkis (zero).

10:40: Watching the Weather Channel. They are on full alert for the snow in Atlanta. Snow far they've shown a closeup of Jim Cantore's sleeve which had a few sleet particles on it. Then they showed a sky cam of Atlanta where a few flakes were falling. The funny Bill Kennely said, "Hey, I see one! Wait there's two! (pause) Three!"

10:43: As seen in the comments section, but I'll put it up here as well, BK Weather has also lowered there forecast accumulation, but are still calling for a solid 4".

10:44: Temperature update: It is now 38.1 in Apex. That is most disappointing. Realistically, it looks like the switchover will be between 12p and 2p.

10:51: Here's what the radar looks like now. There will be a brief gap in the precip here between 11a -1p. Then we have to hope the main bulk of precip doesn't slide too far to the SE.


10:52: Snowing pretty good in Atlanta now.

11:03: The new RDU forecast discussion is out! It's very long. And very thorough. I think they may have brought the Admiral into write this one. Bottom line is that, they're growing increasingly skeptical about much snow in the western part of the forecast area. They're thinking there will be a sweet spot of higher snow (2"-3", they imply) from eastern Wake Co up to Louisburg and Roanoke Rapids.

11:14: The Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model ... the one that the Admiral runs most often (every hour! don't know when the guy sleeps) and only runs out to 12 hours ... seems to be on board for some snow. Two inches between 2p and 8p.


11:28: Has officially stopped raining in Apex. Gap shouldn't last too long according to radar trends. More rain around 12:15p?

11:59: It's not raining and the temperature's warming (38.7F).

12:01: I'm glad the BK forecasters are still onboard here. Atlanta has picked up a quick quarter inch, and that precip mass is still coming this way. Tentative sledding time is projected to be 5:15pm. We're going to the Apex Comm Park if the BK forecasters are interested.

12:07: Where IS it snowing at present? Alabama (Birmingham, Aniston, Montgomery) and Georgia (Atlanta, Marietta, Gainesville), and Andrews North Carolina. I don't think any of these places are w/in a 6 hour drive of here.

12:13: Where IS the cold air? The wind direction has changed in Winston-Salem from E to N over the past two hours and the dew point has dropped 10 degrees. When the next batch of precip hits this air, there will be more evaporative cooling and we should see temps drop to 32-33 very quickly. The front (as evidenced by windshift and dew point drop) is through Greensboro where the dewpoint is 20 and approaching Raleigh, where the dew point is still 34.

12:16: Where IS the precipitation? It's coming back. Radar trends would say by 12:35 we should be back into the rain and then it should precipitate for sometime ... 'til about 8p. Need that front to hurry up!

12:18: The bKMD wanted me to mention she whupped me in a Sudoku match in the "Snow Day: Live Blog" lag between 11:28 and 11:59. Duly noted.

12:20: Good news! The dew point is dropping quickly at Chapel Hill ... down to 25. Sharp dew point gradient between there and the 34 at RDU. Usually once the cold dry air gets over the Appalachians it rolls down the Piedmont pretty quickly.

12:32: First sign of snow? Statesville NC is reporting "unknown precipitation". It's an automated monitor, so it's probably some rain/snow mix. Temp is still 41 there, so it's not much snow.

12:50: DCV Programming Update: Dolberry has to run IM and APD up to their Heroclix tournament at 1pm. I will provide an eyewitness account of the weather when I return. After that we have a 1:45 lunch appt. So updates may be sporadic over the next few hours. Hopefully the loyal DCV readers will manage.

12:53: Light drizzle in East Apex. 39.2 degrees.

1:11: Update. Big crowd @ Heroclix tournament. Maybe 8-10 kids. Oh, wrong update. Drizzle and dropping temps ... down to 38.7F.

1:16: Winds have shifted to N at RDU and dew point is starting to drop.

1:40: The best thing we have going for us is the radar. Still a lot of precip to our SW heading NE. I still think we should see snow before 3p.

1:43: FLAKES! ACTUAL SNOW FLAKES IN EAST APEX. Mixed in w/ rain. Will be late for 1:45 mtg. Report back later.

3:21: It is snowing in east Apex, but this snow is snow only in the strictest sense of the word. It is snow that has adhered to the letter of the law, but not to the spirit of the law. One failing of this snow, in particular, is its reluctance to accumulate on the ground. Instead it is melting immediately, which is not good for sledding purposes. It's been snowing for about 1 hour in East Apex and our accumulation is up to 0.000" so far. I'm a little underwhelmed to this point.

3:54: Snow now sticking in East Apex as well. Approximate accumulation 0.05" and still coming down.

4:05: Picture of us in snow.


4:29: Still snowing. Temps are down to 32.2F. All snow to this point should be accumulating, on the grass anyway. Sledding at 5:30 looks less and less likely. Maybe 7p sledding? Dolberry is down 14-3 at halftime in our snow football. Footing is nonexistent.

4:57: Still snowing lightly. Radar trends show increasing precip to our west. Still expect a good 1-1.5" to come down between 5:15 and 7:30p. Temp is down to 31.6 in east Apex.


5:28p: Still snowing. Maybe up to 0.2" of snow in east Apex.

6:36: Filing under lesson learned ... 0.5" of snow is not really enough to go sledding. We managed about 5 runs down the hill at the softball fields. At $16 for the sled, that works out to $3.20 per ride ... or about State Fair prices. The beautiful KMD said it was worth $16 to see my ride which ended up w/ me caterpaulting sideways into the big mud puddle at the bottom of the hill. I don't know why she's like that sometimes. Anyway, we got to slide around some and the anticipation is most of the fun part anyway.