When given a choice, take both!

- Rule # 2 from Peter's Laws

6:00 AM Wednesday 12-9-09 Last night, some truly wild weather was going on while you slept, as evidenced by observations from our comment community. Many thanks go out to all the students, parents and teachers who took the time to report in. A number of diehard observers stretching from Frederick, Carroll, Baltimore, Howard, Anne Arundel and Harford Counties in Maryland all reported heavy wet snow, changing to sleet and freezing rain. A long-time reader in Reisterstown, MD observed 2.5" of thick heavy snow before it changed to rain. The Sterling, VA NWS Office has a roundup of other unofficial reports from the region. Also of note were the surface earthquakes USGS reported as occuring in the areas where snow had unexpectedly begun to fall. Known as "snow dance quakes" these generally range on around 1 or 2 on the richter scale.

Additional reporters in Pennsylvania, including York and Centre Counties chimed in with amazing observations of snow falling at an inch per hour, yielding 3 to 5" across those regions by 12:40 AM. It would appear that despite the humans making proclamations about "100% chance of rain" or "100% chance of freezing rain," Mother Nature decided to take both choices and deliver a smorgasbord only she can cook. Just take a look at the explosion of warnings, watches and advisories on deck for this morning to see just how hard being a meteorologist is in times like this. I'll bet there's lots of coffee in tummies over there at the NWS office in Sterling, VA.

Further kudos go out to the ever-ready student panel of climate researchers. Students at our three reporting schools in the Baltimore metro area believed the conditions were unstable enough to deliver some ice (which, ahem... that did happen. Mark a point in the win column for the kids, please.) But to prove that students didn't just take the bait on the school call, they remained skeptical that enough icing would develop to cause delays. Though none are in the news for today, commuters and buses alike will have quite a time navigating flooded streets and wind-swept, rainy highways.

As for choices, the short-term climate pattern remains favorable for snow in the Mid-Atlantic over the next 10 days. The student climate teams will no doubt be investigating the standard indicators and correlating with recent changes in snowcover as well as a steaming El Nino. Computer models are trying to brew something sizable for early and middle of next week, and hints of that have already showed up in the indicator data. So when given the choice between snow or more snow, which is it for you?