If you hope for snow, wish for a winter landscape, pray for the peace of drifting flakes — and you live in the area from Raleigh to the Sandhills — you may think you’re just not living right.
The dreaded doughnut hole has struck again. The dry slot. The pocket of paucity, where we watch the weather vicariously, looking at social media photos of our friends’ snow-covered porches while our back yards are frigid but parched.
Why is Raleigh the Charlie Brown of winter weather? Why does it seem that so often, areas to the east and west get treated to the meteorological equivalent of full-sized Snickers bars while we get a frozen rock?
A screenshot of National Weather Service radar at midday Saturday shows Raleigh between two areas of snowfall while the Capital City is a no-snow zone. Forecasters say we’ll get ours when the two incoming weather systems finally collide. National Weather Service
It’s our location. It sounds so nice in recruitment brochures to point out that Raleigh is more or less halfway between the mountains and the coast, but that placement, so perfect when you’re planning vacations, often leaves us in no man’s land when weather systems collide.
“It’s just where the systems set up,” Chrissy Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Raleigh, said Saturday morning as snow was flying in the mountains and in Charlotte and at the beach and decidedly not in Raleigh.
Diners at the Waffle House in Kenly watch the snow fall mid-morning in Johnston County. Scott Sharpe [email protected]
The optimum conditions for snow to happen in North Carolina, weather experts say, involve cold air coming down from the north and/or the west meeting moist air coming off the Atlantic or up from the Gulf. The bigger the two systems, the wider the spread of the snowfall.
People sled in Cordelia Park in Charlotte, N.C., on Saturday, January 31, 2026. KHADEJEH NIKOUYEH [email protected]
As of midday Saturday, the Triangle was the navel of North Carolina while the state tried to button a too-small shirt over a too-broad belly. The ends just couldn’t meet.
The upper-level low that is bringing the cold air in this storm was too far south and west, and lower-level low, the one bringing the moisture, was still developing along the coast. Until they meet, it’s too dry in Raleigh for the snow to fall.
“Unfortunately, we don’t get anything until they get closer together,” Anderson said.
Snow begins to accumulate on the edges of I-95 as drivers head south near Micro in Johnston County, Saturday morning. Scott Sharpe [email protected]
The good news, for snow-lovers at least, is that the collision still is expected to happen, just later than predicted. Anderson said the Triangle should begin to see snow by late Saturday afternoon or evening.
Having missed out on the morning snowfall, the area’s totals will be lower: 2 to 5 inches by the time the storm moves out on Sunday, Anderson said. So keep your fingers crossed and your newly purchased sleds at the ready.
This story is available free to all readers thanks to financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider a digital subscription, which you can get here.
This story was originally published January 31, 2026 at 12:46 PM.
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Martha Quillin
The News & Observer
Martha Quillin writes about climate change and the environment. She has covered North Carolina news, culture, religion and the military since joining The News & Observer in 1987.
