As you may recall from my last Weather Beat column, we were discussing two storms; one on Feb. 5, which obviously didn’t happen, and another one on Feb. 9. Coincidentally, tomorrow just happens to be February 9.
As of Tuesday evening, all eyes are on the GFS model which is the model telling us that it could possibly “thump” over the Northern Virginia region. Clearly, we are not calling for a major blizzard, but at this point, I think we can all agree that a solid 3 inches would please a lot of us.
I know what you may be thinking. Wasn’t it just 72 degrees outside? Don’t worry about that because we have had occasions in the past where temperatures literally went from 70 degrees to 2 feet of snow in just 48 hours.
In terms of snow totals, areas along the I-81 corridor and even portions of I-66 will likely see 3-6 inches of snow out of this storm. Areas of eastern Prince William County will see around an inch of snow. Locally in the Bristow area, I am expecting 1-3 inches of snow. If you’re inside the Capital Beltway, I expect maybe a dusting as temperatures will likely stay above freezing all night. Areas south of Stafford will likely see no snow at all.
For your timing, I expect precipitation to begin falling as rain Wednesday evening around 9 p.m. By 2 a.m. Thursday morning, I expect precipitation to switch over to sleet, quickly followed by rain. What this means is that all pretreatment will likely get washed away, so roads could become very slick in a hurry depending on snowfall intensity and temperature. All precipitation is expected to move out of our region and into the northeast by Thursday evening. Parts of the Boston area could end up with over a foot of snow when all is said and done.
I do expect it to snow on Thursday. Most areas locally will average about 2 inches of snow, with areas north and west averaging about 6 inches of snow. The important things to watch are temperature and when is the actually change to snow. Those two factors could determine the amount of snow we actually receive.
My favorite thing to do is study the weather. It is truly fascinating. Nothing beats a good thunderstorm. I became very interested in weather when I lived in Okinawa, Japan for four years and was actually inside a super typhoon.
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