Forecast: A couple cold days follow icy storm

We have about 2" of snow over ice in Laytonsville, MD. The sleet/rain lasted longer than expected.

So far 66 is just wet except a small stretch of sleety stuff west of the Blue Ridge. Salt trucks creating backups here and there. There was about 1/8 inch glaze on the van with an inch of sleety snow on horizontal surfaces. Although we didn't get the predicted depth of snow, we still ended up with a mess. Amendment: slush between lanes and some slush on the left lane at the Plains.

I hope you snow fans are finally happy.

Ultimately, the longer duration mixed precipitation really ate away at the snow expectations. Precipitation-type is always one of the most challenging aspects of winter forecasting.

In Catonsville, MD, the sleet changed to snow at approximately 8:00 PM. 4 inches total.

Barely a dusting at the 310 Bridge.

I just want to say that I am very appreciative of what you guys do. You're about forecasting without the hype. And in a very difficult winter to forecast storms, you "busted" on one while the others have been all in the ballpark. Thank you guys and get 'em next time.

about 1 inch in rockville. Can still see the grass thru the snow in some stops.

Looks like the late NAM won.

Centreville VA So it was mostly a sleetstorm. Less than an inch of ice/snow accumulation. Dreadful stuff that pleases no one.

Grass showing here in Fair Oaks, so about half an inch of snow I'd say.

even though there was very little snow there are plenty of closings..... except forfairfaix

The crust on hubby's windshield was nasty. Clearly, we had plenty of sleet before a dusting of snow on top.

Great forecast!

4-6 inches in moco.

we got a half inch in moco.

WHAT HAPPENED!!!???

No more than 0.75" of snow in Ashburn. I swept it off the driveway and made it to work basically on time.

All the snow must have dumped on my house in Frederick as I got 5 inches over a coating of icy sleet.

Spot on here in East Columbia. About 2.5" on top of some ice.

Thanks for the local totals, everyone. You can tell that folks from Frederick and along areas north of DC clearly did better- while the immediate DC area had just too much sleet mixed in, which does not accumulate like fluffy snow.

Looks like ~0.5" of sleet/snow combo here in Lake Ridge.

"Did better" is a subjective term. In my view, here in Fairfax we did better with our 1/2 inch of snow.

Today's forecast ...
>the storm leaves behind cloudy skies and very chilly temperatures.
So the bright sun and blue sky I see through the window is going to go away?

About an inch and a half to two inches of snow on top of maybe an inch of sleet in Columbia. HoCo still hasn't come back from the long weekend, none of the roads are treated, 29/32/95 were still a mess on my way in today. As soon as 95 crosses into PG county, nothing but wet pavement as opposed to the ice covered mess it was to the north.

I always wondered why some people put their windshield wipers up before snow. Today I learned. That snow/ice was like super glue.

Haha, excellent point FH59312. And to clarify that my "did better" was in conjunction with our forecast- not so much whether we like snow or sleet better.

Another bust from LWX. What's with them this year? Only a few hours before the storm they were calling for 4-8" in MoCo and northern MoCo only ended up with about 2".

angelicat, you said,
"I hope you snow fans are finally happy."

uh... NO! what are you talking about? i can safely say snow fans are decidedly NOT happy. it DID NOT snow in falls church last night! ok, maaaaybe 1/8" on top of some pointless awful sleet. sleet! i'd say that's beyond "the low end" of the "2-4 w/sleet" we were forecast to get. we got about 1/16 of the minimum amount of snow shown for my house in the CWG accumulation map.... to say nothing of the higher-end amounts i heard mentioned (as predictions) here and reported as predictions from NWS, OCMs etc.... boy oh boy...

definitely NOT happy. it's definitely NOT as advertised out there. definitely NOT what i expected to wake up to. this is probably more disappointing than all the other busts this season in that this storm actually did start out how it was supposed to. everything was trending good and the cold "over-performed". precip started on time, as rain, as predicted. changed to sleet, exactly on time - everything was going according to schedule. i'm sure later today we'll hear all the reasons everything unraveled after that... but man do i feel like charlie brown.

i even vociferously defended the gang's forecast to naysayers last night saying things like, "it's playing out just as planned" and "the change-over's coming"....

i guess it's nice for frederick - 50 miles from the capital - that the forecast was within the low end of the range predicted for them....

signed,
grumpy old man.

Another pathetic "storm" in our boring, underperforming winter. Perhaps 1/2" here in Michigan Park.

Now I can pin my hopes on CWG's forecast calling for "heavy" rain on Friday! Let's hope so, as National Airport only received .21" of precip last night.

Just about 4" here in Baltimore City.

@Murre

Indeed skies are already clearing. We've tweaked the forecast to better communicate that.

TominMichiganParkDC, I noticed that too. And 0.3 inches of precip at Dulles. I think the main reason this was a bust is that the storm weakened and the precip didn't fall, frozen or not.

@snowluver

We predicted 2-4" for most of Montgomery County. -Dan, CWG

@ Jason, thanks.

I shoveled my barely-half-an-inch of snow-and-sleet at a leisurely place in the most welcome sunlight.

But Walter, I remember you weren't completely happy last winter either, with record, once- in-a-lifetime snow amounts...

CWG did have most of Montgomery Co. in the 2-4 inch range; however they did post the response below late yesterday afternoon. Just curious how many inches Northern Mont. Co. received.

@dcneedssnow

"Remember, Montgomery County is a big county, and 4-8" is a big range. If you look at the NWS snow map - http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/winterstorm/ - the 6"+ totals they're predicting are once you get toward the northern part of they county, which I'd agree with. -Dan, CWG"

Looks like PEPCO dodged a bullet!!!!!!!

I'm hearing tales at work of courts left unplowed, no ice melt down, side roads left unplowed, I think some folks didn't take this one as seriously either but thankfully the timing of this one saved us from Commutergeddon Part Deux.

Interesting to see about the same amount of snow/frozen stuff in Fairfax City as in Alexandria...

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Last night, before going to bed I got out a bottle of wine and my snuggie, like I normally do when snow looms; however, when I woke up there was just less than two inches here in Laurel.

Bummed that I wouldn't have one last snow day, I went in to work, only to discover that my agency is CLOSED. Not just delayed, but closed. I'm reading here that most places under-performed so I'm not sure of the reason for closure. I suspect that it may have been a fear of another Commutergeddon.

I'm just depressed that my bottle of wine and my snuggie are at home without me.

Now, I may be crazy, but I dare say that I heard some thunder late last night. Around 3AM I woke up with a jolt with one really loud crack, then there was another one about 15 minutes later as I was dozing back off. Maybe it was just some trees out back cracking under the ice but it sounded a lot like thunder to me. Anyone else up in the northern suburbs hear anything?

LOL wow this storm was super hyped up by every met in town. As we got closer to the event there was talks of up to 4"+. I live a mile outside of DC, i can still see the grass!

We were never destined to get much snow in DC from this imo.
Say hello to my little TREND!

weatherdude,
not sure what you're remembering.

there's a big difference btwn complaining over getting 16" when forecast 16-24" (and hearing 30" from my sister in ashburn), and complaining about 1/8" when forecast 2-4". we only got a tiny fraction of what was predicted. how i wish we'd gotten even the low end of the predictions.

something went seriously wrong with this forecast.

Walter,

You only got 16" from snowmageddon? How much did you get from snoverkill?

We got 31.8" here in NE Loudoun during snowmageddon and 10.5" from snoverkill.

We got probably 6-8" at the MD/PA line near the Frederick/Washington County border.
They nailed it up here...almost exactly what was forcast.

@Brian

I heard one solitary rumble of thunder around 10 or 11 last night - can't remember exactly - here in Linthicum. I'm very near BWI, and thought for a moment it had to be a plane but, no, definitely thunder.

Also, snow total here is 3.5"

What were the final totals at DCA, IAD, BWI, etc?

Re: forecasting, Bob Ryan started to back off at 11 p.m. last night, calling for about 1" in the immediate DCA area. But by then a sleety fox had snatched the snow chickens.

Here's how difficult it is to predict what schools will do. Yesterday night I commented that I'd be surprised if Montgomery County opened today. Turns out they only delayed, but with seemingly similar or even better conditions P.G. County closed. Go figure. -Dan, CWG

We got probably 6-8" at the MD/PA line near the Frederick/Washington County border.
They nailed it up here...almost exactly what was forcast.

Since when is Washington County considered part of the DC metro area? Maybe a reason some of these forecasts aren't as accurate as they could be is that the CWG is trying to cover too big of an area?

I was in the 2-4 inches on CWG's snow map. There is 1 inch outside (barely).

As far as the DC metro goes, no met anywhere got this storm right. This was all waaaay overhyped here in the DC metro. No one got the amounts forecasted. Of course far north and west of DC got their amounts, they always do. Those totals maps will show the epic failure that is DC mets!

KRUZ, the trend is your friend till it invariably breaks. Tricky storm, we needed lift down here around D.C. and we mostly did not get it.

@Weatherdude, I wasn't happy with last winter's totals, either. 56.1" at DCA was lame when practically everyone else around here had 70-plus inches (and if you read the "Snowageddon" book, some places in our immediate region had more than 100").

You think DCA could have at least made it to 60" last winter, which NYC has already done in 2010-11.

I'm snoooow unhappy with this event.

@Axel2

We wouldn't consider Washington County part of the metro area (and I don't think the poster was implying that either). But our snow maps, as do those from most other area forecast outlets, do include up to north of the MD line. Still our primary focus is always the greater metro area (which does include the southern part of Frederick County). -Dan, CWG

lots of snowfanity (h/t Walter) out there this morning, be careful!

Storm played out just as I thought, a little ice here in NW Spotsy. & 1" or less of snow over most of the local DC area. By watching radar last night you could tell that the prec. was moving very fast & that the change over wasn't occurring as expected. I learned a long time ago, it's best to expect the least & hope 4 the best when it snows. More times than not the snow totals r over predicted.
Off to the 301 Bridge for some striper fishing.

Ian hits the nail on the head with not getting the lift. The upper level energy needed to get good vertical motion - and thus heavy enough precip to really cool the atmosphere and give us more snow than sleet - never looked that great on the models for this storm. That's one reason why our forecast hedged lower than most, but wasn't low enough. -Dan, CWG

I thought you guys did a great job for the most part. It sleet/snowed as much as you guys thought, just didn't accumulate well in some areas. Gave us a day off anyway in Loudoun. What happens with school districts, though, has a lot to do with how many snow days they have built in the system. Loudoun has tons. Fairfax is out. Not sure what Montgomery has, so maybe they've run out and didn't want to have to make up days if they didn't really, really have to.

Anyone else receive 8"? Axel2 up in Washington Co MD (on PA border) may win the prize!

bob,
yeah, as i recall we got about 16-18" for feb5/6 and about 10" more for feb 9/10. people complain about national not being representative, but my personal snow totals in my yard seem to track those pretty closely. i remember for sure that we were under 30" as a combined total.

dan, re school closings:
i wonder if that has anything to do with how many snow days they have left w/o having to make up any? the cynic in me says of course it does - though i don't know the snow-day facts here...so maybe i'm just being grumpy.

Ian

no lift in DC, that is the trend has been all year.

Way under forecast...in fact so much so that we STILL need nearly six inches to get to average.

Looks as though my grade for meteorological winter will be no higher than a "C". The cold weather performed well, but snow and precipitation of any type grossly underperformed.

"single digits are possible in the far suburbs with teens in the more immediate DC suburbs to near 20 in the city"

Why does the NWS graphic at the top have a low of 31 for Wednesday. Shouldnt it be closer to 20 as you have in your forecast?

I think CWG is great, but ditching the NWS 6 day forecast graphics is something I would consider changing. I realize it would prob take a bit of effort/programming/graphics to do so.

Apeirond, I agree, that graphic is a bit off. The 31 is referring to tomorrow nights (Wednesday night/Thursday Morning's) low temperature. Looking at it, it's really not set up well at all.

I see, thanks. Yeah, I was reading as the first temperature would be the low in the morning, which it often is, but understand not always (as was the case Monday I think the low was just before midnight).

IF you get rid of that graphic, please replace it with another similar (CWG-generated?) one. that at-a-glance is an invaluable tool for getting a quick general sense of what the next week has in store.