michsnowfreak

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.

Confluence screwed SE MI sure, tho the SE 2 counties were extra screwed. Hopefully we get one of those clippers that gets a lake boost to make up for it. Off to a smashing start. So far this season I've had two 1-2" type events that were forecast a dusting, and two forecast 1-2" events that were a dusting

Though the writing was on the wall, disgusted with this one here. A slushy 0.3 of snow imby which melted as it's hovering at 34°. Even though pretty much everyone N and W of me in SE MI had more, it was overall a let down event for most of light wet snow. 4.3" on the season.

Few highlights (1994 arctic outbreak, blizzard of 1999) but the 1990s winters sucked. They were VERY similar to the sucky 1950s winters in terms of both snow and temps. It's why I would laugh anyone's ear off who is our generation and uses the centuries old line "winters when I was a kid...". The 2000s and 2010s winters were like a different world...just leaps and bounds better winters.

27.6", and the best event was a surprise snowstorm March 20th that dropped around 6" with some thundersnow. Chicago was screwed too. It's one thing to be screwed because everything is going south or north, but in 1995-96 a narrow corridor from Chicago to Detroit (excluding the lake zones) was screwed because almost everyone N, S, E, & W had a good to great winter. Again, never seen anything like it. Fortunately in the years since, Detroit often made up for it being in the jackpot zone many times.

I've brought up that winter many times. In all my years following weather, never seen more of a screw zone than 1995-96.

This is a good reminder for the young winter. Even now cast models can be off by 50+ miles, to say nothing of so.ething 3, 5, 7 days out.

Weeklies continue the cold look starting Jan 6.

And its already changed to cold on todays run. Changes every 6 hours.

We saw a few good storms in SE MI thanks to that in 2022-23. We had the blizzard conditions and White Christmas that originally looked to be a big east coast storm. Then Jan 25 & Mar 3 were scenic paste jobs complete with thundersnow.

Haha you are going to run you're warm January call til you can't . The wxbell surface temps for that exact same timeframe you posted that wxbell 500mb map is for near to slightly below normal temps in the Lakes and northeast. And its the dead of winter no less. Ie: not warm at all. That said, most consider the weeklies a big gamble past week 2. So week 6? Total crapshoot.

The clipper loses some steam by the time it gets here so it looks like a widespread 1-3" snowfall. Imo that's more of a "special weather statement" where 2-4" is advisory. DTX is usually decent on advisory timing. GRR cracks me up bc everything is an advisory. Heavy synoptic snow coming with 5-7"? They'll issue an advisory instead of a warning. Lake squalls forecast to drop an inch with isolated higher totals? They also issue an advisory.

You want to see me lose my crap? I probably would've in 1978-79. DTW only had 35.6". While Chicago was buried. It was a cold winter but those storms that hit Chicago gave us brief rain/ice then back to cold.

It's been plenty cold this Dec. Not a favorable pattern. There have been periods in the climo record where DJF were equal. But recently it's been very heavily Jan-Feb dominated.