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: It very likely was, as "snow pellets" is another common name for graupel, which is made up of snow crystals or snowflakes that have become sufficiently coated with rime ice (tiny supercooled droplets that freeze on contact) during their development or descent to take the form of white, rounded pellets. Graupel is not unusual in North Carolina, though it does often melt into rain before reaching the surface. Graupel is also known variously as "soft hail," the aforementioned "snow pellets," or "rice snow." We've even had some of our web visitors write to ask about it here, and suggest calling it "slow" or "sneet!"
Feb. 28, 2013 | Tags: snow, winter weather

Answer: We don't have much to go on regarding what information you'd like to have for your investigation, but you might find it helpful to look over the records page for that date that you can access through our "Almanac" page - a direct address for the information is www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KRDU/1984/12/7/DailyHistory.html. If it would help to have the information in the larger context of a weather map for that date or surrounding ones, you can retrieve such historical maps from the NOAA Central Library at docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/dwm/data_rescue_daily_weather_maps.html. Good luck!
Feb. 27, 2013 | Tags: maps & codes, past weather

Answer: In the years since 1987, we've had measurable snow and/or sleet at the Raleigh-Durham airport in thirteen other Februaries, the earliest being February 1989 and the most recent being this year (2013). The greatest amount for February during that span was in 1989, with 11.1 inches reported, followed by 10.2 inches for 1987 itself and 9.2 inches in 2004.
Feb. 26, 2013 | Tags: past weather, snow, winter weather

Answer: As you imply in your question, tornadoes fall very much into the category of very high impact, but very low probability for any individual location. When it comes to statistics, rare and sporadic events like tornadoes present a number of difficult questions to those attempting to quantify the risk in a meaningful way, and thus a range of efforts have yielded a range of estimates that depend on the specific techniques and on whether the probabilities relate to the likelihood of striking some part of a county, a city, an individual structure, etc, and in some cases weaker tornadoes that are likely to produce only cosmetic damage are excluded. All that being said, for central NC the estimates from a sampling of studies by personnel from NOAA,DOE and others point to probabilities of striking a particular point in a given year (for any strength tornado) ranged from about .2% to .03%, corresponding to one tornado striking a given property about every 500 to 3300 years. When these studies limit the tornadoes to the more destructive and injurious tornadoes having intensities of F2 and higher, the probabilities drop to .02% to .005%, yielding one strike of that magnitude on a particular site about once every 5000 to 18,000 years.
Feb. 25, 2013 | Tags: past weather, preparedness, tornadoes, weather & health

Answer: We can't directly project the summer temperatures based on how the winter turned out or vice versa, as the correlation between those two is rather weak historically, making the temperature anomalies of one season a poor predictor of how two seasons hence will turn out. There are occasionally some long-term climate signals that can provide climate forecasters with enough clues to make useful and reasonably confident projections - for example, the state of El Nino or La Nina, the expected sign of other long-term signals like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or unusually large or small amounts of precipitation that might influence temperatures months down the road.

The most recent projections for this summer from the Climate Prediction Center, however, are lacking strong indicators from any of those tools. Instead, there is nothing that stands out regarding precipitation for the summer and so the forecast is for an equal chance of above, below or near-normal precipitation then. As for temperatures, the one factor that provides some guidance is long-term trends, which is simply based on how the most recent 10-year period compares to the 30-year climatology. For much of the U.S., including our area, this has lead to a forecast that tilts the odds slightly toward a warmer than normal summer. Note that in the absence of any positive factor for being different from normal, we would have about a 33% chance of being warmer than normal, a 33% chance of being near-normal, and a 33% chance of running below normal. The forecast for summer at this point only nudges the chance of being warmer than normal up to about 35% over central NC, while lowering the chance of being below normal to 31%, so it is not exactly a projection that calls for high confidence!
Feb. 24, 2013 | Tags: general meteorology, heat

Answer: We appreciate the suggestion (and having you tune in each day!) - we'll consider adding those years to the on-air presentations, but in the meantime they are always available here on our website. Just click the "Almanac" link near the top of our main weather page, and you'll find a list of information for the day that includes the normal and record high and low for RDU, along with the years that those record values were set (the records database now actually extends back to previous "official" sites for the Raleigh area, so that you might find the record high was from 1912, for example, long before the RDU airport existed). There is also a "get historical data" function where you can check the observed conditions for any date, and when you go to one of those pages you will also see the records for that date and the years those occurred.
Feb. 23, 2013 | Tags: past weather, records/extremes

Answer: There hasn't been a significant shift in the tornado risk area, but there was a study done by a University of Akron student in which he used a gridded map of the United States to assess the frequency of strong to violent, long-track tornadoes (those staying on the ground for 20 miles or more, and having intensities of F3 to F5), and how that frequency varies geographically. He selected four groupings of enhanced tornado frequency relative to surrounding areas that resulted in four "alleys" covering the central and southeastern U.S. - from most active to least active, these were "Dixie Alley" (runs from northeast TX and AR to northwest GA), "Tornado Alley" (the traditional area running from OK north to NE and over into IA and WI), "Hoosier Alley" (centered around IN but also including parts of OH, KY and IL) and "Carolina Alley" (more or less along and between the US 1 and I-95 corridors in NC and northern SC, and having the lowest rate of tornado incidence among the named areas).

Tornadoes have always been possible over any part of our state, but more likely over central and eastern sections of the state than elsewhere, and everyone should be aware of tornado safety rules and responses, as well as alert for their occurrence when we are in potentially severe weather situations. That being said, it is also the case that for any particular location, even in "Carolina Alley," there is no reason to be overly anxious on an ongoing basis, as the great majority of us have never had our home or property struck by a twister (nor have our parents) and most will not in our lifetimes or that of our children. That is not intended to minimize or understate the impact on those places that have been struck and families that have been affected, because it can certainly be devastating, only to emphasize that while a strong or violent tornado strike is a very high-impact event, it is also a very low-likelihood one for any particular spot in our state. You can see a map and poster summarizing the results of the Akron study and outlining the "alleys" at www.uakron.edu/dotAsset/1085452.pdf.
Feb. 22, 2013 | Tags: cool sites, preparedness, severe weather, tornadoes

Answer: Following the snow that occurred on Saturday, February 16th, the total at the Raleigh-Durham airport for the 2012-13 season was up to 1.7 inches. Of course, snow totals often vary considerably from place to place across our viewing area, so depending on location, the seasonal total to this point ranges anywhere from just a trace to as much as 7 or 8 inches.
Feb. 21, 2013 | Tags: past weather, snow, winter weather

Answer: That event of Jan 25, 2013 brought a varying and rather messy mix of sleet, snow, freezing rain and a little rain. At the RDU airport, the final tally was total liquid equivalent precipitation of .32", which included .2" of combined sleet and snow, and .15" of glaze ice. The snow and sleet have a ratio of a little greater than 1:1 depth with respect to the liquid water amount, which is the reason the total ice and snow/sleet values add up to more than the liquid equivalent value.
Feb. 20, 2013 | Tags: past weather, winter weather

Answer: The complexity of the atmosphere and it's interactions with land and ocean surfaces, together with the heating and cooling effects of incoming solar and outgoing longwave radiation, all made even more interesting and varied by the rotation of the earth and the fact that one component of the atmosphere (water vapor) can exist as a gas, liquid or solid and can add or subtract sensible heat from the surroundings by changing from one of those phases to another. All that is a preface to noting that it really isn't at all unusual to see different low or high pressure center, or troughs of low pressure and ridges of high pressure, along with assorted frontal boundaries, move at different speeds and in varying directions, undergoing intensification and weakening, and at times merging or splitting, in a huge variety of ways. In this case an upper trough and surface low that were of moderate intensity moved up the southeast coast and then intensified as they pushed up toward the New England coast. At the same time, another upper trough and surface low moved east across the upper Midwest and then the Ohio Valley, combining with the intensifying system along the northeastern seaboard and then slowly drifting away to the northeast as a single (for a time) cutoff upper low and associated very deep surface cyclone.
Feb. 19, 2013 | Tags: general meteorology, past weather