Crazy Weather in Washington!
We interrupt this blog for a special announcement! The weather forecast for the Washington, DC and surrounding region is primed for historic snowfall (“Snowmageddon” or “Snowpocalypse II,” to some). Snow has been falling since 10am EST today (Friday) and is forecasted to extend through 10pm EST Saturday, with overnight rates of 2-3″/hour possible. This is possibly a once-in-a-lifetime event, especially for people from this area. It is both exciting and somewhat alarming to know just how quickly even marginal local travel can become impossible without a sled and team of dogs.
This picture is a representation of forecasted snow accumulations based on the NAM, a popular short-range prediction model. Washington is clearly smack in the middle of this huge thing:
I am including some links so you can follow along as this storm unfolds. These are links that I have frequented through the week leading up to this event:
Capital Weather Gang (CWG) storm coverage and blog is a Washington Post-hosted resource written and maintained by a collection of meteorologists and weather enthusiasts in the Greater Washington area. They have provided excellent and relatively un-hyped coverage of all winter storms this season, along with commentary and travel analysis.
The Haven, long-time friend and winter-weather-obsessed casual blogger Puneet who has followed these events closely, and has provided regional estimates for totals and timing.
Earl Barker’s Models page contains links to the up-to-date model images for various outputs from GFS and NAM variants, along with others. A pretty exhaustive site (and the source of the image above)! This is just the page for regional snowfall predictions.
National Weather Service (NWS) forecast and tracking information is our local NWS station (Sterling, VA) which provides radar and issues watches and warnings. This is the closest station to DC, and has steadily increased predictions for the storm all the way up to 20-30+” at present. This is for sure the highest total I have seen for a single storm living in the area for almost 30 years.
NWS National Radar links to the newest experimental radar overlay. It is on top of the Google Maps engine and is pretty self-explanatory.
