Not the "Last Train To Kitty Hawk"

The song done by the bluegrass band "Balsam Range" appears to not be an accurate depiction of our weather for the coming weeks.  As you know, many of our winter storms tend to track south of us and off the Carolina Coast.  The song, signifies the end of the steam engine era in the United States and more particularly the railroads that crossed the Southern Appalachians en route to the Atlantic Ocean, or Kitty Hawk.

It does not appear that we have seen our last train to Kitty Hawk for the winter.  In fact, it appears that the train may just be getting started.  

We saw the first passage earlier this week, as a low pressure ejected out of the Gulf and up the Eastern Seaboard, dropping 3-5" (Thanks to Kevin Myatt of the Roanoke Times for the correction) of snow surprisingly over the Roanoke Valley.  This was a classic winter storm track for area, except there was an area of low pressure crossing the great lakes.  These two features combined off the coast of New England dropping 1-3' of snow, crippling much of the Northeast.

The 2nd piece of energy appears to impact the Southern/Eastern United States in the Wednesday time frame. 

Here we can see what we call a shortwave trough rolling through the South Central US.  This will allow snow to break out on the Northwest flank of this low across the lower Mississippi River Valley and the Red River Valley.  At the same time, a cold front (Monday's Rain) will stall out along the Gulf Coast.  A separate area of low pressure will ride out along this along from New Orleans to somewhere over the Carolina's.  Eventually, these two pieces of energy will merge and phase, likely throwing back heavy snow when this happens.  Right now it appears the best chance for this to happen appears to be over TN/WV/Eastern Kentucky/ Western Third of Virginia/ Northwest North Carolina/ DC Metro Area/ Maryland/ Delaware.  

We even have a 50/50 low in place - - highlighted here. (you can see the low highlighted as well).  The presence of this low over the Canadian Mari times will do two things.

1)  It should prevent this thing from really heading NE along the coast.  Meaning I do not think at this time areas east of I 95 north of the Mason Dixon Line should worry about this.  Those in Delaware Jersey/Philly could very well see snow out of this.  However this WON'T turn up the coast and become a major Noreaster.  

2)  It *should* allow more colder air than currently being modeled to filter down.   Generally the EURO doesn't tend to catch on to cold air draining down the east side of the Apps until 48 hours to the event.  Generally also, in marginal situations in this type of situation - - models tend to get under play the cold air.  A great example of this is this past week -- most all models showed plain rain until the morning of Thursday.  They then showed a light wintry mix.  Well Roanoke and many areas North of there saw several inches of snow.  

This isn't a forecast yet.  Rather an idea of what we expect to fold towards midweek.   There is model consensus that there will be a storm somewhere in the lower Ohio Valley/ Mid Atlantic regions.  The fine details (exact track, temperature profiles, etc.) are yet to be known with confidence.  Can say with fair confidence that this won't be a complete miss.  Meaning someone somewhere in the highlighted area of blue will see significant snow.  Just a matter of fine tuning the details.  After this the pattern appears to stay loaded for a while.  Also important to note that this appears to be coming in the perfect "window".  In between fairly mild days.  Lots of our snows around here don't necessarily have to happen in a cold pattern.  I would even argue that they are more likely in a milder pattern.  

Will publicly say I do believe this to be NOVA's best shot at seeing significant snow so far yet this winter.  It appears promising.