Hoosier

As bad as it has been for Indianapolis, they have experienced even worse. The record for latest 1" calendar day snow was... get ready for it... March 17, 1973. The latest that the seasonal total reached 1" was on January 28, 1971. IND is currently at 0.9", so they would have to go almost 4 more weeks without even a tenth of measurable snow to break that record, which seems unlikely.

When adding up the smaller snows, downtown is likely still under 6" for the season. Today is 37 days since the last calendar day 1" snow at ORD. That streak looks to continue for a while. Looking through the records, you'd be hard pressed to find such an early starting season shut off so abruptly.

How about a snap transition from winter to summer?

I notice it in January, especially later in the month. Obviously not like what you see in March.

Good points

Anything is possible. Looking back more recently to 2014-15, it was a crappy December. Things started to change in January and then it was the #1 or #2 coldest February in many areas. That was in an El Nino year... not only did that Nino not weaken, but it kept on strengthening through winter 2014-15 and grew into the super Nino in time for winter 2015-16. A 6-7 week stretch of consistent winter with no interruptions like what you mentioned is not easy to pull off in Chicago, nor is another February 2015. I would keep expectations lower, but hopefully we get a nice stretch.

Not satisfied with December?

GEM does something with the late week system. Even if that system produces snow for somebody, it's kind of useless if you're a fan of snowpack because of the warm up right on the heels.

Are there any correlations with lingering/late fading Ninos and severe activity, especially in the Plains? We could have that situation in 2019. Of course you can still get a good system/stretch in any year.

Euro is farther north with the energy that ejects late week.

Well, it's been nice knowing you.

I tried pulling up some temp/precip maps for a certain year and got this. The website you are trying to access is not available at this time due to a lapse in appropriation. NOAA.gov and specific NOAA websites necessary to protect lives and property are operational and will be maintained during this partial closure of the U.S. Government.

lol for sure. For some perspective, ORD could not see another flake until January 11 and still be in a surplus.

New Year's Eve is suddenly starting to look a little interesting for somebody.

Merry Christmas. Hopefully January treats us better than December lol

I could end up with 100" and I still wouldn't be able to give this winter a top grade. Losing December stinks.

This looks like it could be setting up to snow in a number of areas on Christmas, but miss out on technically being a white Christmas in some of those areas. Need 1 inch of snow on the ground when the depth is taken, which is usually in the morning.

Regarding the near-term system, I was reading the Florida afds and they were actually discussing minor storm surge. I recall surge happening in the Superstorm and probably some other non tropical systems, but just shows we are dealing with an unusually intense/windy system for so far south. Probably will get a changeover to wet snow around here tomorrow morning, with perhaps some lake effect component.

Hopefully late month doesn't pass without excitement. That is a nice looking pattern in the means with the trough positioning and cold air to play with, but sometimes you fail to produce in a good pattern and manage to get something out of a bad pattern.

I think you might be the first person in this subforum to say that time is running out... before we've reached the winter solstice lol

00Z Wed and to a greater extent 12z Wed model cycle will pretty much have everything we need into the RAOB network. Fairly sensitive setup though with the timing/degree of phasing and mild thermal profiles, so there may still be an unusual amount of disagreement/waffling in the fine details.

There are, though you can find plenty of trees in parts of southern Indiana.

Well, either the day 3 outlook issued on 1/20/2017 or sometime after that. Could have been something since then but it would take a while to search.

I wonder when was the last time that Miami was in a slight risk on day 3? The Keys too, lol

I am a little wary about the complexity of the setup and even convection affecting the surface low strength/track, but assuming the latest models are handling things pretty well, this has a shot to be a record/near record low pressure for December for parts of the Southeast into the mid-Atlantic.