GREENSBORO, N.C. — Tuesday was a brutally cold day of weather in the Triad, and a bit blustery too. But, it was bone dry in the Triad, so how did the mountains and the Outer Banks get snow?
WFMY News 2's Christian Morgan said it's quite an interesting scenario, especially for our Outer Banks.
For our mountains, it's a setup that's not uncommon in the winter. As a cold front crosses the Piedmont, many times the arctic air masses that follow the front can have a very shallow layer of moisture in them. When the cold air blows in from the Northwest with a low level wind and hits the western side of the mountains, the mountains force the air to rise, form clouds, and precipitate. With the air at the freezing mark or below, the precip falls as snow.
Places like Boone just got a dusting of snow while the higher elevations saw more.
It was a different setup along the Outer Banks but one that works similarly.
It doesn't happen often and the conditions have to be just right, but our Outer Banks saw a period of snow today too, also from a North/Northwesterly wind. As cold air blew from the Northwest across the much more mild waters in the Chesapeake Bay and over the NC coast, the air rose, forming clouds to the point of precipitation, in this case, snow because the air was cold enough in the upper levels of the atmosphere. It works in the same way that big lake-effect snows happen in areas along the Great Lakes quite often.
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