Two models show white Christmas!

Brace yourselves!

Abruptly, two runs of two different models popped up with a Christmas Day snowstorm for the Carolinas.

Here is a sequence of maps from the early morning run of the GFS model, the main model used by American forecasters:

Wee hours Christmas morning
Dawn Christmas morning
Early Christmas afternoon
Christmas night

That's about 1 inch of liquid precip, which would equate to 10 inches of snow.

As you can see, temps are marginal, but would be mostly or all snow to the N.C./S.C. line.

The European model -- which most consider the best medium range model -- shows a slightly later developing system that doesn't really become potent until it gets to our east -- bringing us much less precip, but with colder temps -- still, some sort of wintry precip. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, because the model trends this year have been to bring systems north and west as the event draws nearer.

Caveats:
1) This is not in a model "sweet spot" -- 7 days out is still a LONG way meteorologically and MUCH could change (in fact, one could argue that the last thing you want 7 days out is to see a storm for your area)
2) The models have not been performing well in the medium range in the last few weeks. The big storm for the interior northeast last week was originally projected to pass hundreds of miles south and east of where it eventually tracked
3) It never snows on Christmas.

I would give this a 1 in 25 chance of verifying, but that's better than 0 out of 25, right? It will be fun to track over the coming days.

Now, a couple of things -- if you would like to receive e-mail alerts ON JUST WINTER WEATHER, I will be offering that for free. So, you'll receive an e-mail whenever I make a signficant update to my blog that is weather related. If you would like this, please e-mail our Webmaster Erik Regans at erikregans@shelbystar.com. Put WEATHER UPDATES in the extent line.

Stay tuned!