WRAL.com: Raleigh, Durham, Fayetteville

The most direct way to find your question is to search for the name you used when you submitted it (first name, last name or both). If you did not include a name, then you can search using keywords from your question. Of course, since many weather-related terms are common to a lot of the questions we receive, this may turn up a number of others in addition to your own.

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Answer: This was a new piece of weather folklore to us, but we did find just a couple of isolated mentions of something along these lines in a quick web search. On the other hand, we also turned up an old English rhyme that stated "If a cat washes her face over her ear, 'Tis a sign the weather will be fine and clear," showing that the same feline behavior seems to have been interpreted to have opposite meanings. We can't think of any reason why either of those would successfully predict rain, or a lack thereof. There are a few of the old weather "wives tales" that have an underlying grain of truth or physical reasoning behind them, but many do not and it can be difficult to understand how they initially came to exist.
Apr. 14, 2013 | Tags: folklore, rain

Answer: We had especially steep temperature lapse rates that day from the ground up to around 1800 feet or so, which meant that relatively mild air at the surface (many readings in the mid-upper 40s) fell off rapidly to below freezing for a couple thousand feet before warming again in an elevated temperature inversion. Snow that was forming around 15-20,000 feet above the ground mid-morning to early afternoon fell into a layer of air that was above freezing starting at about 8,000 feet up and melted into raindrops. These raindrops then fell into the sub-freezing layer from around 4000 feet down to 1800 feet, which caused some of them to freeze into sleet pellets which reached the ground at times. Variability in the elevation and depth of the layers of above and below-freezing air led to swings of precipitation type between sleet and rain, and at times a mix of both. In many cases, when surface temperatures are in the 40s to around 50 the layer of air near the ground is too deep for sleet to make it to the surface without melting again, but we do get an occasional set-up like Thursday that keeps that lowest layer of warmer air unusually shallow. We've seen occasions when temperatures up around 50 still allowed sleet to reach the surface due to strong lapse rates, but those instances are pretty few and far between.
Apr. 13, 2013 | Tags: general meteorology, past weather, winter weather

Answer: That is not only possible, but has happened many times in our area due to the fact that we are often on the borderline for transitions between different precipitation types. In addition to having rain and snow (and sometimes sleet and/or freezing rain as well) in the same day, it is occasionally the case that a mixture of rain and snow can fall at the very same time in the same location. Usually this only occurs for a fairly short time before changing to either all rain or all snow.
Apr. 12, 2013 | Tags: general meteorology, rain, snow, winter weather

Answer: It's easy to understand why you would ask the question, but March 2013 did not end up being a record cold month. However, it didn't miss by all that much, either! In 69 years of records from the Raleigh-Durham airport, this was the 5th coldest on record with an average monthly temperature of 44.9 degrees F (Note that 5 other years were colder, but two of those tied for 4th coldest). This year came in 6.2 degrees below the normal temperature for the month, and a full 15.5 degrees colder than last year (however, 2012 did set the record for warmest March at RDU). The coldest March out there was that of 1960, with an amazingly cold average temperature of 37.6, which was a rather large 4.4 degrees colder than the 2nd chilliest year of 1947. We also checked the records from a site on NCSU property that has a period of observations going back to 1892, and March 2013 was also the 5th coldest in that record, out of 118 years listed (and again, with two of the colder years tied for fourth place).
Apr. 11, 2013 | Tags: cold, past weather, records/extremes

Answer: It's unlikely we'll be able to show both units on maps or graphics as they would become rather busy and cluttered. We do, however, provide an option to display some of the readings on our site in metric units. To toggle this setting on, just go to the "Current Conditions" page and you'll see a link to "Use metric units" under the report from the WRAL studios. This will change the text units displayed on the current conditions page to metric, and this will remain the case each time you visit the site unless you return to the current conditions page and click "Use English units" instead. Note that this change only applies to the current conditions page, and doesn't affect graphic images like the 7-day forecast or temperature maps, which are only rendered and displayed in English units.
Apr. 10, 2013 | Tags: maps & codes, wral.com

Answer: The only weather-related names that we are aware of that are subject to official rules and managed by government agencies charged with weather forecast and warning responsibilities are those for tropical cyclones. Of course, Sandy is an example of such a storm and the name was applied to that storm by the National Hurricane Center, taken from a list of Atlantic Basin names that is compiled and managed by a subcommittee of the World Meteorological Organization. The list includes includes six years worth of names at any time, and those names are re-used every six years unless a storm produces a level of destruction and/or loss of life that would make such re-use insensitive to those who suffered the consequences. In that case, the name is retired from the list and another name starting with the same letter and having the same gender is chosen to take its place. We can be certain that Sandy will be retired from that list and never used again as the name for a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin.

The same kind of rules do not necessarily apply to unofficial or informal names that arise by way of social media, journalism, private businesses or popular use.

Apr. 9, 2013 | Tags: Floyd, hurricanes, maps & codes

Answer: You may be noticing mornings on which winds that blow through much of the night become calm in the hour or so before sunrise, or on which clouds diminish in that time frame. Typical behavior of temperature on a mostly clear, calm night would be for the temperature to fall most rapidly in the evening, then a little more slowly with time as the night goes on, finally leveling off within the hour or so after sunrise and then climbing quickly due to increasing sun angle. This pattern is very much subject to modification, though, by the passage of fronts, the development or dissipation of clouds or precipitation, and the increase or decrease of surface winds. Air at the surface generally cools due to conduction that transfers heat to the ground, and mixing that both spreads cooled air through the lower atmosphere and also brings additional air into contact with the ground. The ground itself (and other surface objects) cool principally due to radiative heat loss. If there are clouds that dissipate in the period a little before sunrise, then temperature can fall quickly due to an increase in this radiative cooling, since clouds otherwise offset some of that radiation loss and keep the surface warmer. In addition, if winds diminish just before sunrise, temperatures can also fall more quickly, since the wind otherwise continues to mix warmer air from above down to the surface to limit the rate of cooling. When the wind stops, this mixing diminishes, and the shallow layer of air close to the ground grows cooler more quickly due to the lack of mixing.
Apr. 8, 2013 | Tags: general meteorology

Answer: We've received reports about consecutive Wednesday snows in the early 1960s in March, but most of those have centered on March 1960, which was the coldest March on record for the RDU airport with an average monthly temperature of 37.6 degrees and a total snowfall for the month of 14.1 inches. On the other hand, in March 1963 no snow is reported in records for the same location, and the four Wednesdays for that month show daily low/high temperatures of 44/64, 55/79, 46/60 and 46/69, all of which are quite unfavorable for snow. It seems possible you were thinking of the earlier year. We also checked records for 1961, 1962, 1964 and 1965 and none of those appeared supportive of snow on multiple Wednesdays.
Apr. 7, 2013 | Tags: past weather, records/extremes, snow

Answer: The chances are fairly low to hear thunder with snow and it doesn't happen a lot - however, it certainly isn't unheard of either. The formation of lightning depends on strong upward and downward motions that are typically associated with unstable air. The instability is produced by a combination of temperatures that cool rapidly with increasing height, and by rather humid air in the lower atmosphere. During the warmer parts of the year, especially Spring and Summer, there tends to be warmer air near the surface due to strong solar heating, and also because of the warmer temperatures more water vapor tends to be present in the air near the surface due to higher evaporation rates from the ground, lakes, rivers and so on.

When we are in the winter months, the ground is frequently rather cool and the air near the surface is often rather dry, so that the air is more stable and much less prone to produce the updrafts that result in lightning. In addition, storms systems that produce significant snow in our area are often characterized by low pressure moving northeast across the region, with warmer air being drawn in from the south and east on the east side of the low (where rain often occurs, along with an occasional thunderstorm) and cold air being drawn southward on the north and west sides, where most of the snow occurs.

While all of this leads to lightning being much more common with rain than with snow, it is not an absolute distinction. On rare occasion, a very intense storm system, or one with a very cold pocket of air aloft, may induce strong convective updrafts while it is cold enough for snow to reach the ground, resulting in the formation of snow and some lightning at the same time, often called a "thunder snow." It can be an jarring juxtaposition, having the quiet beauty of the snowfall interrupted by the bright flashes of lightning and the crashes or rumbles of thunder that follow.
Apr. 6, 2013 | Tags: general meteorology, snow, thunderstorms

Answer: We couldn't turn up anything that fits your description for the evening of March 10th, 2013. However, there were numerous reports of a bright, fireball-class meteor moving south to north on the evening of March 9th, seen from several states including Kentucky. You can always look for reports of these events in the "fireball logs" section of the American Meter Society's web site, at www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/fireball-report/. The event from the evening of March 9th is documented at www.amsmeteors.org/fireball_event/2013/570.
Apr. 5, 2013 | Tags: astronomy, cool sites