Those Storms Detouring Around Us Are Dusting South With Snow

Image via Twitter of fresh snow this morning
in Roan Mountain, Tennessee

 In this here blog thingamajig, I've been noting over the past few days that storms are taking a big detour around us.    

There's still a big traffic jam for weather systems in the Atlantic Ocean and much of North America gumming up the normal general east to west flow of storms and breaks in the weather across the nation. 

Meanwhile, storms and disturbances coming off the Pacific Ocean have to go somewhere. So, instead of getting up in the traffic jam in the northern and Northeast United States, these storms are diving toward the south, around the mentioned traffic jam. 

That means it's snowing pretty far south. 

The air over the United States in general isn't that cold for this time of year. But it's January,so there's enough of it for snow. Plus, storms can generate their own cold air, especially in the upper atmosphere. 

Thus, if you're on the north side of a storm, it can snow, even if you're pretty far south. 

Since these detouring storms are really taking a southern route,  it's easy to be north of them. Which means you get southern snows. 

There's one this morning depositing snow in eastern Tennessee, western and central North Carolina and the northern tip of Georgia. Most of the snow is coming in the mid and high elevations, where a general four to eight inches of snow is forecast by the time it all ends later today. 

Then, another storm is taking that southern detour. This next one is forecast to dump more snow, possibly heavy, in northern and central Texas toward Sunday and Monday. 

Now, it's not super unusual to get snow in the locations I've mentioned.  Snow doesn't happen every day there, but it's an occasional issue. It's just odd because we up in snow country are not getting affected by these systems. No new snow here to speak of.

Both these storms will become nor'easters off the East Coast, but they will develop much too far off the East Coast to have any effect here in Vermont.  The two storms will follow each other way up into the North Atlantic, then eventually curve back northwestward toward Greenland.

The traffic jam weather pattern is showing signs of getting unstuck toward the end of next week, so the weather here might finally become a little more active.