OHweather

What's fun is that the FAA's full time meteorologists are technically NWS employees, and the NWS has a whole national center (the Aviation Weather Center) dedicated to aviation weather because of how obviously important and impactful it is to public safety and the economy. It's not the FAA personnel at the 21 air traffic control centers who want to get rid of the meteorologists based there, it's higher ups at the FAA, and they were closer than they should have been to getting their wish recently.

So, as an NWS met who routinely sends out climate reports for first order sites, including snowfall, this exchange was fascinating to me. We have 6 first order climate sites in our CWA that all measure snow. 3 are FAA contract observers, with the observers measuring the snow for the site. The other 3 are snow paid observers. The snow paid observers are trained to report trace depth and do so. The 3 sites with FAA observers do not officially put the Trace in their obs, however, they do note it in their logs. We call them every 6 hours to verbally get the new snow and depth and they tell us the traces. So needless to say, while I knew the T depth did not show up in the METAR and doesn't get pulled into our system, I had no idea that it's technically not a valid ob based on FAA standards that sometimes isn't reported.

Nice overperforming, fluffy lake effect event. I'm nearing 6"!

Looking back at mesoanalysis, there are some hints that there was a thermal gradient and some weak convergence at 700mb (which was right in the DGZ), so maybe that was enough, but it was a small feature and not modeled well. There was also some banded snow that got into the Canton and Youngstown areas that produced a few 4-5" reports. Otherwise, pretty meh. 1.4" here. I had the forecast during the day yesterday and the 12z guidance generally trended down somewhat with the QPF from prior runs, which was ultimately the correct trend. The radar had somewhat of a banded appearance upstream with a lot of sites dropping to 3/4 mile or less visibility so I was apprehensive to lower our snow much (especially since we already had an advisory out for most of the CWA), and we did have those two small areas of banded snow that produced a few inches, but otherwise this was a very boring synoptic snow that came in on the low end of expectations...though it was widespread at least and freshened up the pack a bit.

Got another 3" of fluffy snow yesterday into last night, though it seems to finally be done for now until we get our quick hitting synoptic snow later Friday. I'm at over 20" of snow for the month of January so far (about 22" by my quick math). Satellite confirms that ice in the western basin...pretty much completely frozen west of the Islands, with a decent area of ice along the southern shore east of the islands. Most of the central and the entire eastern basins are open, but ice will continue gradually expanding for the foreseeable future.

It's been a snowy week...almost 3" here last night into this morning. Ice will be an issue going forward, though shouldn't be too prohibitive to LES yet next week. However, with no warm ups in site (what a thing to say in winter around here) the ice will continue growing the next few weeks. There should be some decent LES next week, though the flow direction is unclear as it may be more westerly. I will be out of town Monday-Friday next week so we'll probably get crushed.

Topped out at 11.8” storm total here. Thought we had a good chance to crack 12” here, but never got back under any great banding for a period of time yesterday afternoon or evening.

The flow being closer to 300 degrees over the lake might be just a bit too far northwesterly for your area to jackpot, but I think the bigger issue was a more dominant to Lake Michigan running along the western shoreline towards like Medina County for a good period of time late yesterday into this morning, forcing the more organized band down there. As the flow backs and as that Lake Michigan connection decreases your area should have a better chance to get under whatever banding is out there. Activity won't be as intense as it was yesterday into last night, but a few fluffy inches are still on the table wherever any bands can setup through this evening.

Was in and out of a better band all night. 5.1” new, 10.9” storm total. Band has settled south of me but should tack on at least a bit more today.

The snow squalls were very impressive today. It got noticeably dark as they moved in, visibility dropped to no better than 500 feet at times, and some graupel even mixed in at times. I had 0.4" last night into early this morning, then another 5.4" during the day today. Lake effect bands trying to align now.

Folks in this approximate circle have been promised a fair bit of snow that they haven’t seen with a couple of the LES events this season, so I get it lol. Luckily this is not the same type of setup as those ones.

That squall was intense when it came through Macedonia. Brief near zero visibility.

Yes communicating that local variability to the public is always a challenge because people do tend to gravitate towards the highest number they see. Totals will definitely vary based on where bands setup, but I think most of the area will get a good amount of snow. There’s a decent amount of synoptic support through this evening and then a decently prolonged period of lake effect tonight and tomorrow. We should be good, can see the band starting to push south over western Lake Erie as the wind shifts. The vort max NEOH pointed out will help force bands onshore and also will add a good amount of synoptic support.

We still are on the outside looking in for heavier snow, but there's at least half decent potential for lighter snow up here. Would like to see any model other than the GFS show a more northerly solution to get excited. There could be interesting LES potential around Wednesday next week. Ice won't be prohibitive by that point, but will be starting to expand, especially across the western basin.

Euro ensemble trended a bit stronger with upper level confluence over the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes ahead of the storm, and resulted in a bump south.