michsnowfreak

To be fair we had a very cold week even last January.

Great synopsis. Very true about the torch being short-lived, especially compared to how it was hyped up for weeks. Jan 5-10 has been active on ensembles since it came into view, will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Weak ninos can be ok, but strong ninos have always, always sucked here. It's not even a contest. If it's not neutral, I'll take any kind/strength of Nina over a strong Nino.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

I forgot about the day-delayed extended gfs. Of course, you left out the bulk of the month with a colder look, so even the warmest model doesn't look warm.

There is nothing pointing to a pattern where west and east of the Great Lakes do well while the Lakes get rain

Neither models ensemble suite goes past the first week of Jan yet?

JFM 1978, 2013-14, & 2014-15 were as close to wall to wall winter as you'll ever get at this latitude (Detroit). 1978 had the upper hand with cold but 2013-14 killed it with cold + snow + snowdepth. I wasn't around in 1978 but 2014 was insane. I don't consider a brief day or two of 40° before the next arctic front, with tons of snow on the ground, a break in the wall to wall nature of it. But other than that, even the best winters have breaks/thaws, they always have. We literally can get snow from Oct to May but you'll never see it continuous. 1976-77 was bitter cold but also had an extremely cold Fall...by Feb it warmed up big time and March was warm. The fact the the two deepest snow seasons in the entire record were back to back, 2013-14 & 2014-15 is insane. And even more insane that 2014-15 was so cold it did it with just barely above avg snowfall.

Gaylord had a record low of -21° yesterday.

Actually the 80s were decent for snow here. Similar to the 1970s and 2000s in terms of average snowfall, but less big storms. I think it was a very clippery decade. They the 90s took a huge dip before going right back up in the 2000s.

Longer...and colder

They were my junior high and high school years. Like I said. Honestly. Going from 1990s winters to 2000s and 2010s winter was just like going from 1950s winters to 1970s winters.

Happy first official day of Winter everyone!

Officially at DTW, there were no 6"+ storms from Dec 8, 1994 to Jan 1, 1999 (closest being 5.8" on Mar 20, 1996).

The snow started re-sticking mid afternoon and I picked up another 0.6", so finished with 0.9" on the day. Sitting at 4.9" on the season. DTW had 1.1", season 4.8". I wouldn't miss metro detroit winters if I lived where you do either . Obviously yesterday had everything to do with track/confluence and what not. Have a friend on Long Island whos been dying for snow after several years of almost nothing, so im glad he could score a little snow outta this at our expense. Monday will probably just be another in what has already been multiple light meausurable snowfalls, wont be anything special down here. I'm never ready for a winter warmup, but knowing that one is coming and will be followed by a return to cold right after the New Year I'm really hoping the pattern gets a nice shake up and we are off to the races as we often are in January.