Winter Storm Jonas - Big Snow - PREPARE!

In a nutshell, you guy's are in or downwind of a deepfreeze. Crazy: how far south you're getting white stuff.

Plus 6C here and cloudy. Might rain.

 

sure, rub it in. just started here an hour ago.

 

Sitting here, ready with my snow tires on. Cargo cult.

 

at least it's 26 degrees here.

 

not bad, considering 80 million were affected.

 

I think this storm is turning out worse than they thought. They were originally forecasting up to 18" in my area, and I'd say I'm past that now... and it's not supposed to stop until 6am tomorrow. I already have drifts against my 1st floor windows.

 

...sending him your way, not intentionally ...just no one can stop him (or her maybe):

 

this storm could bring washington to a halt. is that redundant?

 

Physics question:
Why are the snow and pavement wet at the pavement surface under the 1-ft of snow?
It's been below 25F here all week.


I got two theories: (1) snow giving off heat as it freezes (2) the snow acting as insulator whereas at some distance below the driveway the ground could be above freezing

 

Any previous salt residue in the pavement.

 

Good thought but
No I rarely use salt and as far as I know, I don't have any.

...caution- we can arrange another storm for your FL trip

Good move FL, you'd have been here a week...

 

even though the air has been cold, perhaps the ground is still warm from underneath.

 

Certainly not for DC. The traffic mayhem of Wednesday was due to the ground being well frozen over the previous weeks with highs of 20 or so. It did not get any warmer before the big one this weekend.

 

That depends on whether or not anyone notices.

 

There is also the pressure of the snow above the bottom layer applying pressure.

 

OK but (according to CNN) the snow is brushed off every time you measure , right? So it is the non-compacted measurement that is quoted for weatherman purposes.

We gotta be close to 24-inch compacted

 

2+ feet of very dry powder snow here. So dry it picked up the melt water from the solar warmed surface of my sidewalk. Just needed to broom away the snow dust after shoveling. No permafrost this year, usually 18 to 24 inches by this time. This year only as deep as the sod. Didn't unplug the sump pump till last Thursday because of frozen discharge line. It was still in use because the ground wasn't frozen. Hope the pipe thaws as it rains on all this snow Tuesday.

 

I agree seems like ground is warmer, even though it was cold this week.

Best guess we are snowed in on the side streets until at least Tuesday.

By the way, Reagan National was measuring snow wrong, so everyone had 29-30 inches except DC was reporting 18-inches. They were taking readings of the compacted total snow, which is not the way. DC lost chance to set their record snow.

Here in NoVA we had 29 vs. 30-inch in 2010. Probably worse with drifts this time.

 

4-6", we finally caught a break. i didn't need advil after shoveling. still consuming the cabernet though.