Hello skiers! The cold and snow sure has been a welcome return for those who love to ski. Many areas have seen ideal snow making conditions for almost a complete week now and we’ve been blessed with about 6” of the natural stuff through that same period. Well if the cold and the light snow wasn’t enough then get ready for the mother load. The first huge snowstorm of the season for the Southeast and mid-Atlantic is on the way.
Here’s how things unfold… we can already see the two areas of low pressure coming together. One for the Northern branch of the jet stream and one from the southern branch. This is the set-up that produces major snowstorms…the one people talk about for winters to come. The area of low pressure forms over Texas and then moves Northeast. The newest data coming in suggests snow and some sleet will begin to fall across the North Carolina mountains by midnight Friday. Then as we head into Saturday morning moderate to heavy snow will over take all the mountains, foothills and even the piedmont of North Carolina and the Virginias. The amount in the mountains will be prolific, due to both the Synoptic snows and then very prolific Northwest flow snows as the storm pulls away. It looks like those northwest flows snows could last into Monday. So how much? I’ll say right now North Carolina Mountains 6-10” with the highest amounts near the Tennessee line, and the valley will be close to 6”. The Virginias will see 6-12”, but Snowshoe as always benefits from it’s great topography and will get 12-16” by Tuesday morning. Wind and cold will also move in with this storm Arctic air spills in on the back side and depending how deep the low gets wind could be 30-35mph so near blizzard conditions are not out of the question.
More to come tomorrow!
Good skiing!
Brad