Cold This Morning, But at Least It's Not 20" of Snow!

Temperatures dropped to the upper teens and low 20s this morning across our area. When you added in a light breeze, it felt even colder. In fact, the wind chill got as cold as 10 this morning in Chapel Hill.

It certainly was a cold start to the morning but at least it was dry. This is what the radar picture looked like about 8 years ago on the night of January 24 and early morning of January 25, 2000 --

Folks that lived in North Carolina 8 years ago will remember this one. That is a radar image from the winter storm that produce the greatest snowfall in Raleigh's history.

Snow began to fall late on the night of January 24, 2000 and did not end until late morning to midday January 25, 2000. Near blizzard conditions were reported during the middle of the night. When the snow was over, 20.3"of snow was reported at RDU. Other reports around the Triangle measured as high as 2 feet!

The storm was not a very well forecast storm due to some errors in computer models leading up to the storm. Meteorologists at the National Weather Service and North Carolina State University have done a lot of research on that January 2000 snowfall to improve future winter storm forecasts. You can read an in-depth review of the storm from the Raleigh office of the National Weather Service by clicking to http://www4.ncsu.edu/~nwsfo/storage/cases/20000125/

CNN.com also has an archived story on how the record snowfall affected Raleigh residents at http://edition.cnn.com/2000/WEATHER/01/26/winter.storm.05/index.html