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Northern IL snow events


Thundersnow12

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Any chance we could have this be a catch-all thread for at least the Great Lakes? I'm thinking this in case I want to discuss past events in Southern Wisconsin, and others will no doubt want to discuss past snowstorms in their respective areas. Therefore, instead of there being a thread for every region where people want to discuss, we could have one catch-all "Great Lakes Snow Events" thread where anyone can post info and analysis on a past snowstorm.

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1/31/08-2/1/08

my favorite northwest trend event from a cutter that helped me here...We were only under a WWA until late in the evening after we picked up 5" of WAA snow and the sfc low continued to track northwest of the fcst track through the afternoon and into the evening. I believe the RUC did pick up on that IIRC. It was clear by evening that it was going northwest and LOT finally put the western suburbs under WSW's for 6-8"+ and I ended up with 11.5". It snowed all night and into the morning.

very impressive upper level jet with this one..

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moisture advection into the circulation was great with 60kt winds at 850mb

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I remember it was snowing very heavily in the afternoon as I was leaving physical therapy for my pitching arm and it was thanks to these heavy WAA bands moving northward across the area. The sfc low was still back in AR at this point.

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and then later in the evening as the system continued northeast we continued to get heavy on/off bands

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and finally once the sfc low got southwest IN near the IL border, the defo band really took over and dumped another 6" or so.

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some sat images I pulled off the Plymouth site

21z on the 31st

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7z during the overnight hours as the defo band was getting going.

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Nice analysis/report of the 1/31-2/1/08 storm. Frustrating storm here, if you can call a 7" storm that. As the radar grabs you posted shows, it was a choppy/banded-type storm down here. Good rates one hour, not so great the next.

I also concur with Hoosier about 12/8/05. Fun snowstorm. While relatively short in duration, it was a thumper.

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1/31/08-2/1/08

my favorite northwest trend event from a cutter that helped me here...We were only under a WWA until late in the evening after we picked up 5" of WAA snow and the sfc low continued to track northwest of the fcst track through the afternoon and into the evening. I believe the RUC did pick up on that IIRC. It was clear by evening that it was going northwest and LOT finally put the western suburbs under WSW's for 6-8"+ and I ended up with 11.5". It snowed all night and into the morning.

very impressive upper level jet with this one..

One of my favorite events, nice little bullseyes over both our places.

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11/24/04 Thanksgiving eve

This event is probably the furthest back event where I can remember where I was and what I was doing. Anything pre-2004 is hard to remember. I was only 13 years old then. Anyways, I'm sure most remember this one around here. This was a nice early season thumping and the first of the winter for this area. I believe I ended up with around 5" Although this was not a major snow producer, it still gave the NWS some forecast challenges and again...the nw trend won out.

Like the last one this was another cutter thanks to a digging wave from the four corners region that then moved out into the southern plains and induced cyclogenesis in parts of OK/AR and a pretty healthy sfc low did spin up due in part to this vigorious wave. As you can see by tuesday evening the ULL was centered over the TX PH slowing moving eastward and good amount of thunderstorms were already ongoing in parts of eastern TX/LA/MO. As this upper level trof was forecasted to swing northeastward, it was forecasted to weaken...but it didn't.

The models were in fairly decent agree in spinning up the sfc low in AR and having it run along either side of the Ohio River, but as you can see, it ended up verifying north of those forecasted tracks going from northeast AR to north of EVV on the IN/IL border to Indy and on into western OH.

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The warm lake waters did play a role in this one really cutting down on snow amounts the closer you got to the lake.

By the next morning at 12z, rain was falling over parts of northern IL with temps holding in the mid-upper 30's but dew points north of I-80 were in the 20's. Also a rather strong sfc low (995mb) was located in northeast AR.

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Northern IL was sitting in an area between two different upper level jets at the time. One located near Lake superior and the other entering the Ohio Valley. Between these two jets is an area of divergence which causes rising air/upward motion.

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As you can see here, a very impressive system taking shape and the center of the upper-level wave over eastern IL

By the afternoon mid-level cooling began to do its job and help change the rain over to snow across the area.

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By this time temps have now dropped into the low 30's across the area as the changeover occured and a really impressive band from the LaSalle area up into Cook County. It was also a help that we had a drier air mass to the north in WI.

IR image showing the cooling cloud tops across northern IL

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One of my favorite vis sat images as the sun was going down during the late afternoon showing the convection in IN and near the center of the sfc low.

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Here's my addition, December 10-12, 2000. Granted most of the action happened on December 11 for N IL, but NE IL was close to the bullseye with this storm. 14.5" at MDW which set a record for greatest 24 hour December snowfall there. Other locations in SE WI, N IN, and southern lower MI received 12"+ amounts as well. Blizzard warnings ended up going up for NE IL and NW IN. Of course this was the storm that started the great month that ended up being December 2000.

First up, a crude drawing I did of the snowfall totals with this storm.

Surface map on the 11th at 18z. Image from this site: http://www.greatlakes.salsite.com/

Watch and warnings map on the 11th.

Radar grabs from the storm.

Some observations from MDW throughout the day on the 11th.

METAR KMDW 111253Z 11006KT 3/4SM -SN BR OVC004 M02/M03 A2999 RMK AO2 CIG 003V008 SLP168 R31C/4500VP6000FT SNINCR 1/2 P0000 T10171028

METAR KMDW 111553Z 06015KT 1/4SM SN FG OVC004 00/M01 A2989 RMK AO2 SLP133 R31C/2200V2600FT SNINCR 1/6 P0000 T00001006

METAR KMDW 111953Z 05020G30KT 1/2SM SN FG BLSN BKN006 OVC011 M01/M01 A2967 RMK AO2 PK WND 06030/1948 SLP061 R04R/2800FT SNINCR 1/9 P0000 T10061011

METAR KMDW 112153Z 05019G28KT 1/4SM +SN FG BLSN BKN011 OVC017 M02/M03 A2963 RMK AO2 PK WND 06028/2147 SLP047 R04R/4000FT SNINCR 1/10 P0000 T10221028

METAR KMDW 120053Z COR 01019G24KT 1/4SM +TSSN FG BLSN BKN001CB OVC007 M02/M02 A2962 RMK AO2 TSB41 PRESRR SLP043 RVRNO SNINCR 1/13 OCNL LTGIC OHD TS OHD MOV E P0000 T10171022

METAR KMDW 120353Z COR 33020G31KT 1 1/2SM -SN BLSN BKN015 OVC033 M08/M08 A2983 RMK AO2 PK WND 34031/0349 PRESRR SLP115 SNINCR 1/15 P0000 T10781083 $

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January 21-22nd 2005 "The clipper on steriods". I was sadly still in band at this point in HS and we had a home basketball game this friday night and I can remember being picked up afterwards and it was already really starting to come down with a few inches already. Just was a textbook clipper system and also picked up 3-5" of LES on the backside the next afternoon. Another one of my 12"+ snowstorms.

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2/8-10/10...

Event:

This wasn't your typical winter storm, as you will see from the images below. The lake effect/enhancement really helped to boost totals in lakeside counties.

Upper Air Data:

020912.png

021003.png

Radar:

n0r_20100209_1200.png

n0r_20100209_1445.png

n0r_20100209_2330.png

n0r_20100210_0130.png

n0r_20100210_0430.png

Snowfall Totals:

Beach Park: 14.0" (High)

Melrose Park: 14.0" (High)

ORD: 12.9"

RFD: 6.9"

feb_10_totalsnow.gif

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1/30-2/1/02...

Event:

-This was mostly a front end hit.

-Southern areas recieved around 1/4" of ice accural.

Upper Air Maps:

013109.png

020100.png

020109.png

Radar:

n0r_20020131_0000.png

n0r_20020131_0345.png

n0r_20020131_0815.png

Snowfall Totals:

Downers Grove: 13.1" (High)

ORD: 12.0"

2002d.png

ORD had thundersnow and 4" in one hour in that event (I think early 1/31).

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