Beaufort County has a 25 percent chance to see some snow flakes Tuesday, with a dusting of snow that would cover cars and grassy areas, according to the National Weather Service.
The last time Hilton Head Island saw snow stick was in 1989, said meteorologist Steve Rowley with the Nation Weather Service in Charleston.
Snow was sweeping across the Carolinas on Monday as a combination of chilly northern air and southern moisture prepared to dump several inches from the mountains to the beaches.
A disturbance was arriving in a rush, diving from Canada to the Carolinas to mix with a surprising system that was building and moving up the coast.
The National Weather Service predicted as much as 6 inches in parts of central North Carolina, but almost all the Carolinas were expected to get at least an inch.
"All the evidence suggests from the model forecasts that we've seen that there's going to be decent snows across the area," said Darin Figurskey, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Raleigh. "Most of it should stick."
Forecasters said they expect a wintry mix before the precipitation turns to snow overnight as temperatures cross the freezing mark and continue falling.
Winter storm warnings, watches or advisories covered almost all of the Carolinas, but forecasters said a heavier band of snow would fall on the corridor from north of Columbia, S.C., to Norfolk, Va., which could get 2 to 6 inches.
Other areas, including the coast and southern parts of South Carolina, will see about 1 to 3 inches.
Governments across the region prepared for the weather, a task made harder because snow only entered forecasts after most people went to bed Sunday night, and the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. made it harder to get public works crews back to prepare roads.
In York County, S.C., just south of Charlotte, N.C., workers planned to head out late and dump a salt mixture to keep major roads and bridges from freezing. Workers also attached blades to the front of some trucks to try and scrape away any snow that does fall, county Emergency Management Director Cotton Howell said.
"I don't think there's a true snow plow in South Carolina," Howell said.
VEGAS AND NEW ORLEANS AND GOT RARE SNOWSTORMS THIS WINTER, TOO.
WHAT COULD IT MEAN!?
IT MEANS THAT AGW = BS.
I remember when, as a young boy, I visited relatives in Orlando, Florida for the first time around 1950... it was Christmas time [dates are a little vague]. We had left a heavy blanket of snow in Wisconsin and were looking forward to the "sunny South."
ReplyDeleteImagine my dismay when the weather turned out to be similar to what we had left behind. But my cousin was thrilled to see snow fall for the first time in his life.
For the curious, here are the updates of the monthly, statewide maximum and minimum records by year and by month of occurrence.
Annual summary:
http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2009/01/where-is-global-warming-extreme_19.html
Monthly records:
http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2009/01/extreme-temperature-graphics.html
It has been cooler than usual so this will probably be the "11th warmest January since 1999" in the Midwest and Northeast. In our locality [SE Michigan] we are tracking 9.3° below "normal" for the month... "about normal" in NOAA parlance.
oy!
ReplyDeletefirst of all there are only two carolinas so say both and not "all".
second the title would be correct if it said snow for the first time in twenty years (expected) in a South Carolina city, or
on a south carolina island
or in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
It snowed a few inches less than ten years ago in Myrtle Beach south Carolina!!
IT WAS FUN