Snow And Ice Continues In The East – National Weather Outlook for February 19, 2021

National Weather Forecast

Snow and ice will continue to impact areas of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states Friday, with storms across the Southeast. Rain and snow will be possible out west. Otherwise, areas that have been hard hit in the Southern U.S. with wintry weather the past week are finally going to get a break.

We’ll see the typical heavy mountain snow as we head through the next few days. Otherwise, portions of the Northeast could see over half a foot of snow Thursday into Friday. 1-3” of rain could fall across the Southeast. Meanwhile, from Thursday into Friday, up to half an inch of ice is possible across portions of the Mid-Atlantic.

By next Wednesday, the wintry weather the Southern Plains have observed will be long gone, with 70s possible across portions of Texas and Louisiana.

Through Wednesday, we have seen a lot of snow across portions of the Southern United States – particularly in the past several days. Little Rock, with 20.3” of snow through Wednesday, is already at its fourth snowiest snow season on record ever – the top place is 26.8” in the winter of 1917-1918.

_______________________________________________

No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas’ power outages

More from The Dallas Morning News: “Frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy. But in reality, the wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of what the state had planned for during the winter. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas projected that 80% of the grid’s winter capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy. By Wednesday, those numbers had changed as more operators struggled to operate in the cold: 45 gigawatts total were offline, with 28 gigawatts from thermal sources and 18 gigawatts from renewable sources, ERCOT officials said.”

Texas grid fails to weatherize, repeats mistake feds cited 10 years ago

More from the Houston Chronicle: “Ten years ago, plunging temperatures forced rolling blackouts across Texas, leaving more than 3 million people without power as the Super Bowl was played outside Dallas. Now, with a near identical scenario following another Texas cold snap, Texas power regulators are being forced to answer how the unusually cold temperatures forced so much of the state’s power generation offline when Texans were trying to keep warm. To start, experts say, power generators and regulators failed to heed the lessons of 2011 — or for that matter, 1989. In the aftermath of the Super Bowl Sunday blackout a decade ago, federal energy officials warned the grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT, that Texas power plants had failed to adequately weatherize facilities to protect against cold weather.”

Warmer California Winters May Fuel Grapevine-Killing Pierce’s Disease

More from Inside Climate News: “Sometime around 1990, an exotic winged menace arrived in Southern California. No one knows exactly when or how it got there. Most likely, it evaded agricultural inspectors as a clutch of eggs stuck to a plant shipped from its home turf in the Southeast United States. There, the glassy-winged sharpshooter is the primary carrier of Pierce’s disease, a grapevine killer that thrives in the mild southeastern climate, where it makes growing pinot noir, chardonnay and other European varietals nearly impossible. Within a decade of being spotted in California, the transplant had triggered a major Pierce’s disease outbreak that destroyed hundreds of acres of those prized varietals in the Temecula Valley, a winegrowing region between Los Angeles and San Diego.”

_______________________________________________

Thanks for checking in and have a great day! Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@dkayserwx) and like me on Facebook (Meteorologist D.J. Kayser).

– D.J. Kayser