"Carolinas Crusher", 10 years later

Ten years ago, during my junior year at UNC, North and South Carolina were surprised by a sudden, and very intense, low pressure system that ended up dropping 15+ inches of snow over a large area. The NWS-Raleigh office has a great write-up of the event, so I won't rehash all the details, but to summarize, convective activity the previous day over deep south AL/LA/GA contributed to amplification of a low-latitude shortwave trough, and 24 hrs later a broad baroclinic leaf of precip had developed over the mid-Atlantic states. The NWS offices were all caught off-guard; I remember them issuing the Winter Weather advisories & warnings post-facto, i.e., issuing them like they were severe warnings with 15 min lead-time instead of the normal 24+ hr lead for a winter event.

In Chapel Hill, we enjoyed sledding on the Bowles Dr. hill (that led down from Chase dining hall toward the Dean Dome), "snow wars" between Hinton James and Eringhaus dorms, and lots of traipsing around in the knee-deep snow. Adam Cline and I went out goofing around in his jeep about 11 p.m. and ended up helping a few guys push their cars out of ditches. While we were out driving around, I heard my first (and only, to date) instance of thunder snow. It was surreal. Classes were cancelled for 2.5 days and a great time was had by all. The official NWS total for Chapel Hill was 14", which was exceeded (for my personal-best highest event-total snowfall) this past December, when I measured 20.8" in Annapolis during our mammoth storm on 18-19 Dec.

Here's a satellite pic of the event from 25 Jan 2000, 10 years ago today.