In an odd twist of events, it looks as though places like New Orleans, Houston, Destin, etc. will go from sandy to snowy.
Meanwhile, in the Triangle, snow totals will amount to less than an inch Tuesday evening through Wednesday morning.
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It goes without saying that this is a pretty atypical snowstorm, so let's talk about why the coast gets more snow than we do this time around.
What's limiting our snow potential?
It's worth noting that even a quarter of an inch or half an inch of snow on our cold ground can cause road issues Tuesday night and early Wednesday.
Here's a look at the expected timeline and totals for our light snow chance.
Even still, that pales in comparison to what they'll have to deal with along the Gulf and East Coast.
So, what gives?
This is where we dive deep into meteorological dynamics and how storms behave.
This first map shows the air pattern at the 15,000-foot level.
You see that dip in the pattern? That's known as a trough, which I've outlined with that dashed brown line.
This trough is tilted eastward (or "positively"), which means it's not tugging a ton of moisture back toward us.
Instead, that moisture is more plentiful along the coastline. Very dry, arctic air from the west continues pushing into our area and limiting our snow totals.
In addition, we look toward the jet stream.
That's located at airplane cruising altitude (roughly 30,000 feet above us). There's a very specific part of the jet stream - the right entrance - in which air rises more.
More rising air means more precipitation. That's also why the coast is favored to see more snow than we are this far inland.