Weekly Weather Report...A snowstorm in Virginia?

Well my bat signal came up and I honestly should have gotten around to this sooner. The track on the snow storm this weekend has been really tricky to track and I've been on little to no wifi for almost a month (writing a thesis on this has been....frustrating) making weather forecasts tricky. Its really easy to visualize the systems when the model can play at full speed, much harder at 1/20th speed. I also apologize for a lack of a report for the belk bowl, hope you guys enjoyed the wind and the butt whooping!

that moment eshiben5 sees his APB

This weekend we're presented with a very interesting system, the tracks for most of the models. Most of the models earlier this week had the system pushing itself out to sea before making landfall. However as the rest models of once again play catch-up to the Euro composite the system has tracked further and further north with the brunt of the system hitting Virginia Beach. The system is taking a nor'easter track which is really synonymous with heavy snowfall. Nor'easters pick up tons of moisture from the gulf and trend northeastward up the coast (or sometimes in the mountains of blacksburg IE 2014) dropping all of that moisture in the mid atlantic hugging up the coast. Basically all you need are cool enough temperatures for snow flakes to form and you are much more prone to gaining lots of snowfall in these scenarios. Nor'easters can form during spring and summer months too, however they're much more dangerous in winter months as snowflakes build up much easier. Every once in a while you'll here about a "liquid equivalent ratio" when discussing snowflakes...or more likely wet and heavy or dry snow. Basically what this means is how much moisture is in the snowflakes as they freeze, in some scenarios 1" of rain could be equivalent to easily a foot of snow or more.

this weekend we're staring down the barrels of a nor'easter that like i mentioned before will be trending north, giving us quite the storm on our hands for the Virginia beach area. That region and the northeastern region of North Carolina should see the most snowfall along with some heavy winds as the system pushes up the shoreline with snowfall totals reaching around 8.5" of snow in the region. The cutoff is pretty steep however with richmond seeing possibly 4" of snow. Gusts should be hitting around 30 mph as well easily creating white-out conditions. I expect it to start as rainfall tomorrow evening before switching over to snow around midnight or 1 that should continue to ~6 PM saturday the heaviest being around 6 AM and noon. Be careful beach hokies! Keep an eye on some precipitation around the Louisiana region it should start popping up in the next few hours.

PS if you have any questions about specific areas please do not hesitate to ask I'll try to frequent the site more tonight and tomorrow!