Why is it going to snow more on the beach than here?

In a strange twist of events, it appears that places like New Orleans, Houston, Destin, etc. will go from sandy to snowy.

Meanwhile, snow in the Triangle will total less than an inch Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

It goes without saying that this is a fairly atypical snowstorm, so let’s talk about why the coast is getting more snow than we are this time around.

What limits our snow potential?

It’s worth noting that even a quarter or half inch of snow on our cold ground could cause road problems Tuesday night and early Wednesday.

Here’s a look at the forecast timeline and totals for our chance of light snow.

Still, that pales in comparison to what they have to deal with along the Gulf and East Coast.

So what gives?

This is where we dive deep into meteorological dynamics and how storms behave.

This first map shows the air pattern at the 15,000 foot level.

See that dip in the pattern? It’s known as a trough, which I’ve outlined with the dashed brown line.

This trough is tilted to the east (or “positive”), meaning it’s not pulling a ton of moisture back toward us.

Instead, that moisture is more abundant along the coast. Very dry arctic air from the west continues to push into our area and limit our snowfall amounts.

In addition, we look towards the jet stream.

It is located at the aircraft’s cruising altitude (about 30,000 feet above us). There is a very specific part of the jet stream – the right entrance – in which the air rises more.

More rising air means more precipitation. This is also why the coast is favored to see more snow than we are this far inland.