Icy

West central Georgia won't get any wintry weather on Sunday. Instead severe thunderstorms are the main threat between 2 PM and 8 PM. #gawx #Georgia. https://x.com/NWSAtlanta/status/2015182956881715260

Congresswoman, have you had a chat with @warnock.senate.gov and @ossoff.senate.gov? We want unequivocal statements from them, too!

Growing doubtful this will be a major impact inside the perimeter. Only looking at 8-12 hours below freezing with questionable precip amounts. Low spots may be icy Monday AM but travel in most of the city looks fine. Atlanta’s north and east suburbs/exurbs are another story.

ICE killed another Minnesotan. there is video and it is very bad. www.facebook.com/share/r/1aPB...

Emergency declarations for the winter storm are pouring in… Again cannot emphasize enough how massive the geographic scope of this storm is and how that alone will complicate response efforts.

Growing doubtful this will be a major impact inside the perimeter. Only looking at 8-12 hours below freezing with questionable precip amounts. Low spots may be icy Monday AM but travel in most of the city looks fine. Atlanta’s north and east suburbs/exurbs are another story.

enjoying the salty NWS atlanta area forecast discussion this morning

00Z HRRR forecasted flat ice accumulations are downright scary. Maximum ice corridor from TX to TN and another maximum in N GA through S Appalachia look to be areas that will see the worst of it with extensive tree & power grid damage. These areas also tend to have high socioeconomic vulnerability.

Shoutout to our friends up in @NWSChicago for this graphic on measuring Ice Accretion. Once icing begins, YOU become our eyes and ears on the ground. If you notice ice accumulation on Sunday, send in your observation (with your general location)... https://x.com/NWSAtlanta/status/2014859109447651328

We elected the worst people in the country and they're acting like the worst people in the country. Go figure.

The grocery stores created the ice storm to sell out of items.

142+ million people are currently under a Winter Storm Warning stretching from New Mexico/Texas all the way to New England This Winter Storm Warning covers 2,213,250 square kilometers, which is larger than the February 2021 Winter Storm Warning (2,151,716 square kilometers)

Meanwhile, where it should be snowing but very isn’t.

Well, my database now computes 1,431 counties/zones for Sunday and 1,281 max on Saturday, that's wildly above the previous max value denoted below

My official job title is Fire Meteorologist but disruptions to federal lands end up being huge - basically anything that knocks down a bunch of trees requires saw team response. This storm will also add to wildfire concerns where ice damage is worst, compounding Helene’s impacts as early as spring.

Gonna be losing a lot more sleep I guess. Never thought I’d be up all night looking at winter storms and potential storms when moving from Chicago to Atlanta.

Brace yourselves, "It's colder in [insert city here] than it is in Alaska" takes are coming. I have news for you, it is not uncommon. See this plot for Atlanta. In January, their low is colder than Anchorage's low 5%-10% of the time.

The combination of ~0.5-1.5” of freezing rain this weekend followed by strong downslope winds Sunday night and Monday may lead to catastrophic impacts in areas of the Appalachians most severely impacted by Helene.

Do you appreciate @nws.noaa.gov's posts on Bluesky? Did you know that this account is a pilot program that may or may not be continued and even expanded to NWS field offices? NWS is soliciting comments here! www.surveymonkey.com/r/PrototypeN... Press release: www.weather.gov/media/notifi...

If you didn't understand that, don't worry. What matters for forecasters is that models tend to be 1) too warm in the CAD, and 2) try to get rid of the CAD far too quickly. As a forecaster, I am typically going to lean towards colder solutions in the CAD, especially if precipitation is occurring.

Let's talk about Cold Air Damming (CAD), specifically in reference to the southern Appalachians. Let's also talk about some struggles models have with simulating both the strength and the erosion of CAD. You will commonly read/hear CAD referred to as "the Wedge" in the south. Long chain incoming.

They posted a winter and summer side-by-side and pretended like they did something.

⚠️ WINTER STORM – 1/22/2026 | 2PM Update ⚠️ We are monitoring the potential for a dangerous ice storm across portions of North & Central GA this weekend as a system moves across the Eastern U.S. The Winter Storm Watch has been expanded... https://x.com/NWSAtlanta/status/2014420380367069429

Why is the human penis so big? Scientists probed the evolution of penis size through sexual selection and mate competition in a first-of-its-kind study

Drought developed rather quickly across the southeastern quarter of the US over the past four weeks. Note the two and three category changes. #drought #DroughtMonitor 🧪 droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/ChangeM...

Probably a bad sign that emergency management experts are fleeing an impending disaster.

In a warming climate, extreme cold can still occur. The occurrence of an extreme cold event does not mean that climate change caused it, nor does it mean climate change isn't real. But on sufficiently long timescales, extreme cold events are occurring less often. doi.org/10.1126/scia...

Flights nationwide will be affected due to the downstream effects of not having planes and people in the right places. Airlines try to plan for this but often fail.

The combination of ~0.5-1.5” of freezing rain this weekend followed by strong downslope winds Sunday night and Monday may lead to catastrophic impacts in areas of the Appalachians most severely impacted by Helene.

EMC GEFS Plumes hits were up 300% today! It's almost like there's a storm coming or something... 😉 Thanks, all! www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/users/meg/ge...

Here were the latest WPC Key Messages regarding the impending winter storm and extreme cold. Each time I post these, the probabilities for Moderate Impacts keep going up.

It should be noted that some of the highest risk areas for a significant ice storm this weekend have very high social vulnerability -- the Mississippi River Delta below Memphis and southern Appalachia. Some people are likely to be without power for an extended period of time.

Great call to hold off in the metro. Shortwave ridging will delay precipitation onset in the Atlanta metro, and the sub-freezing wedge likely doesn’t surge in until Saturday night after rain begins.

The Air Force will be doing recon into the upper low off the CA coast (1) later today. Models are showing some degree of phasing with energy (2 & 3) farther north, but polar energy currently over Russia or the Arctic will also have a say in surface low tracks, warm air and resulting precip types.

Those Chinese wind farms are quite well hidden, tbf.

One painful lesson I’ve repeated learned from my years of forecasting in the Southeast: Never bet against the wedge.

I get why it’s there (mixed/changing/uncertain precipitation type), but not sure the gap in risks from north TX into AR, TN, NC, etc is the best way to communicate the outcomes.

Hard to buy into the warmer solutions here in the Piedmont given typical model biases in displacing the CAD/wedge. Some of it comes to shortwave phasing and the track of the surface lows, but…

Absolutely unreal.

This is one of my favorite plots to convey relative forecast uncertainty for heavy snow — think of it as “1-5 inches is a more significant spread than 8-12 inches, even if both have a 4 inch spread”. Relative confidence is highest from OK into VA/MD & is low near the north/south gradients.

The Silver Lake Fire on the Appalachicola NF started Saturday, observed over an inch of rain Sunday and grew by thousands of acres in marginal fire weather today. That drought will mean business come spring. #FLwx 🔥

Shutdown odds just dropped sharply as House and Senate negotiators reached a bipartisan funding deal that would fund every federal agency for FY2026 and give lawmakers time to send the bills to President Trump before the Jan 30 deadline. via Eric Katz buff.ly/0DhegSa

Gonna blow through this after the weekend storm

The thing I noticed in GSP the last couple of Christmases is that there are millions of very weak trees up there. It wouldn't take much ice to create a catastrophe in the post-Helene forests.

Catastrophic ice storm potential for metro Atlanta to the Carolinas on the reasonable worst case scenario from the 06Z Euro ensembles. Potential outcomes still include a cold rain or less severe but impactful wintry mix this weekend. Good time to prepare for long-term power outages.

Good morning! Here were the latest Key Messages issued eqrly this morning. Increasing area of at least 50% chances for Moderate Impacts (hazardous travel & to some infrastructure) from the Southern Plains to the Mid-Atlantic & Carolinas.

Catastrophic ice storm potential for metro Atlanta to the Carolinas on the reasonable worst case scenario from the 06Z Euro ensembles. Potential outcomes still include a cold rain or less severe but impactful wintry mix this weekend. Good time to prepare for long-term power outages.

Awesome @usa-npn.bsky.social partners Toby Ault and Carlos Carillo at @cornelluniversity.bsky.social released their long-lead forecast for spring; they are predicting a pretty early start to springtime activity in much of the U.S. six-ecrl-24.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html #phenology