Best bet-all snow, but how much? UPDATE

Update to below post:  Looking better for snow fans. Should be ready for preliminary call on snow totals by later Wednesday.

OK gang, time for a quick update on the coming storm.

It appears that we’ll be in for mainly snow, beginning later Friday, then continuing through much of Saturday. The temperatures aloft will be cratering, as will the surface temps, Friday night, and will fall even more later Saturday. So as I speculated previously here, precip type doesn’t appear to be the issue, but storm-track suppression does.

The connection between the polar jet stream and southern jet stream, critical for a runner up the coast, won’t be ideal. Assuming this, heaviest snow will fall south of central Virginia. We should still get our fair share around Richmond, but I’m a bit concerned that one of the more reliable computer models we look at keeps us on the northern fringe (lower totals).

Bottom-line, I’m not ready to go out on a limb with precise numbers on this one yet, since this scenario could affect snow amounts. The focus for heaviest totals will most likely be from southern Virginia south into northern North Carolina.  I’ll post another update Wednesday.

*Jim Duncan