Monday, December 21, 7AM
Last week’s storm gave BWI 1.6″ of snow, which although isn’t a whopping number, it was enough for Kristin Taylor to win the Snow Contest. She picked December 16, at noon, and the first inch fell between noon and 1PM easily giving her the best guess. Had this been The Price is Right, she would have won both showcases for making her guess within an hour. Congratulations, Kristin!
Here’s the entire list of entries for comparison.
As far as last week’s storm was concerned, it ended up playing out pretty much like the models suggested. Eastern areas started as snow and changed to all rain, while western areas eventually changed over to something other than snow. Most areas to the west and north also got some help late when the precipitation changed back to snow, and total accumulations varied from one to as much as eight inches from southeast to northwest, with northern Carroll county doing the best (Parr’s Ridge is always the winner in snow accumulations). Surprisingly, the areas that had snow on the ground as the storm ended, continue to have snow cover even today. Cloudy and cold days since the storm, combined with the sleet that fell made for a condensed, mini glacier in many areas making it feel and look like winter for the first time in December in a long time. As a matter of fact, even as winter is just officially starting today (thank you Carnival King for the reminder!), many of us have already exceeded last winter’s total accumulation, although that’s not saying much.
Looking ahead, there’s a small disturbance passing through the area tonight that will bring some showers, and then as a cold front approaches mid week, temperatures will rise ahead of the front in a southerly flow, but crash back to below normal for Christmas day and next weekend. Showers associated with that front are expected on Thursday, but snow showers are possible late Christmas Eve and early Christmas Day. We don’t usually do very well with getting snow from cold front passages, but some of the models have been showing it consistently, so maybe some areas get lucky and see enough snow to call it a White Christmas.
Beyond the weekend, there is growing model consensus for an advertised blocking pattern that has the potential to bring several opportunities for wintry precipitation across the area beginning next week. As far as I am concerned, it’s a little early to buy into some of the chatter I’m hearing, but if it comes to fruition, it may be a busy end of the year.
The Weather Mill 