OHweather

Yeah, I was worried the forecast was F’d when I peeked at the radar at about 8pm and the band was sitting over eastern Lake and the chimney of Geauga with nothing to push it back south. Parts of Ashtabula, Erie and Crawford got a good amount into this morning but it’s yet another poorly forecasted event for Cleveland proper. My event total was 1.9”, which for down here isn’t too out of line with the expectations. Should be a much better setup for the Cleveland metro and inland Snowbelt tomorrow into Saturday still.

Happy New Year! At the office in a valley in Brooklyn Heights, it struggled to change to all snow and we barely had a slushy coating on our cars. Just east of the Valley View bridge on 480 probably had close to an inch. At home in Macedonia at just about 1000 feet in elevation I measured 1.6", and a hill a mile or so to my east had noticeably more (at least 2"). There should be a decent uptick in lake enhanced snow showers as a little vort max goes by late this afternoon into this evening, transitioning to lake effect tonight. The lake-enhanced activity should spread inland a bit with a north of due west flow, though the lake effect tonight into Thursday morning should focus a bit farther north, from northeastern Cuyahoga into southern Lake and northern Geauga. It's not the craziest lake effect setup, but ratios will be fairly good and it should be persistent enough for 6-10" type accumulations where the band is most persistent...with lighter accumulations elsewhere from the lake enhanced flareup later today. The WNW flow setup Friday into Saturday should produce moderate to locally heavy multi-bands of fluffy snow across the primary and secondary snowbelts. Inland locales and higher terrain locations should do well. Again not the craziest setup, but it looks fairly prolonged and persistent with fluffy snow, and some embedded heavier rates within bands that have upstream connections. We will need more lake effect snow warnings for that period and secondary snowbelt counties are very much in play too.

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There has been entirely too much to write about on these midnight shifts! Which is preferable to the other way around IMO

That type of setup CAN produce. The issue is there’s a lot that can go wrong. If the trough along the east coast is deeper or farther west, there’s less space for the storm in question to amplify and produce. Also, that kind of setup is quite dependent on the shortwave phasing and amplifying early enough for those who want more impactful snow farther west. So as Chicago Storm said, with that many moving parts at this distance it can easily fall apart.

Pretty good signal for periods of decent lake effect starting Wednesday or Wednesday night and lasting through Saturday with a west-northwest flow. It won't be a prodigious lake effect event, but the setup looks solid enough.

I've been terribly lazy about posting lately (something about working a lot of evening/night shifts during the holidays), but I still think we'll have plenty to track in January. The current torch is about as short-lived as one could've asked. We get into a lake effect pattern this week into the start of January, which I understand only benefits a select few. The January 6-10th period mainly favors the east coast with a couple potential storms, but there's some potential for both shortwaves to produce snow for the subforum if either can phase/amplify early enough. First one would be farther northwest than the second one: If we don't see a larger storm during that Jan 6-10th period, some clippers/lake effect should still continue. We probably need to get past the midpoint of January (so still 2+ weeks away as you said), but the storm track should shift farther west at some point with enough cold air still running around for it to be wintry.

Picked up another 2" yesterday and last night. So, 0.4" on Friday, 2.3" Friday night, 2" Saturday into Saturday night for a 4.7" event total. Fluffy snow. Geauga and inland Ashtabula Counties will be missed LES warnings due to the Huron connection

The physics background definitely helps I’m sure! I’ve considered it, but I do enjoy forecasting it full time (most days) and would likely need to go back and get a bit more education to do it. So I don’t have any current plans, but things change and who knows how long I’ll want to do these rotating shifts for.

Sort of kind of. The upcoming Pacific puke/warm up is definitely driven by a half-decent MJO passage out of the Indian Ocean into the western Pacific, which is adding a good bit of westerly momentum into the Pacific jet: What's also contributing to the upcoming strong Pacific jet and warm up is a strong high pressure dropping into eastern Asia, which puts a significant torque against the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau and also acts to speed up the Pacific jet: Into early January, the MJO will attempt to work across the Pacific and appears likely to weaken, allowing the warm waters over the western Pacific to become the primary source of tropical forcing. The east Asian mountain torque will also weaken somewhat, though won't completely reverse. All of this should give us a nice mix of allowing the Pacific jet to back off just enough to allow ridging to pop on the west coast (as opposed to the upcoming strong +EPO and strong Pacific jet into the west coast), while keeping the Pacific jet strong enough that the ridge doesn't slide back towards the north central Pacific (which would be a -PNA/SE ridge pattern).

Garbage pattern for the next 10 days or so, sure. But it's looking like January will feature plenty of wintry opportunities. Hopefully not too boring for some people though. Pacific puke in the short-medium term. However, good agreement that backs off quickly as we head into January. It will take a bit of time for truly cold air to start returning to the CONUS since the source region will be scoured so badly over the next 7-10 days. However, it should start trending colder during the first week of January with legitimate potential for notable cold to return by the second week of the month. The initial pattern, with a ridge on the west coast and trough axis over the eastern U.S., is not conducive to big snows in the region. However, it'd at least offer some potential for clippers and there could be a more notable low pressure of some sorts the beginning of January towards the beginning of the pattern change. Towards the end of the loop, the ridge axis shifts west towards Alaska and there are hints the sub-tropical jet becomes more active into the second week of January. Those trends should shift the trough axis farther west and could provide for some phasing opportunities over the Plains the 2nd-3rd week of January.

A bit over 2” here last night into this morning. Still seeing some off and on snow showers, but as expected the Huron band is well to my east. Maybe can squeak out another inch.

Feeling optimistic that we’ll at least need some advisories where the Lake Huron band sets up late Friday night and Saturday. The clipper still isn’t that impressive, but should bring light snow to much of northern Ohio on Friday at least.

Little clipper may graze us on Friday (though it seems like the swath of snow is targeting areas west/southwest of the Cleveland area the most), with some lake effect/enhanced snow Friday evening/night as the flow comes around to the north, with lingering lake effect in a north-northwest flow into the weekend. This doesn't look like a huge set-up, but probably will yield at least some light accumulations in areas impacted by the clipper and/or anything off the lake.

The idea of snow showers/squalls with the Arctic front was advertised decently well, but the localized amounts were predicted quite poorly, and the lack of a snow squall warning as that crap came in (which we can now issue without the burden of everyone’s wireless emergency alerts blowing up) probably didn’t help for anyone out and about. Luckily it didn’t happen 3-4 hours earlier. As it was, this “sub advisory” event in the Cleveland metro (between the squalls last evening and black ice this morning) was probably more impactful than about half of all winter weather advisory events actually are and was definitely way more impactful than the first LES Warning for Cuyahoga last week, and was more impactful than the LES warning for the inland portion of Ashtabula today.

Ended up with 6.5-7” here. Hopefully we have several more events like this on the way this season.

Your area looks to be doing quite well! It’ll be a mixed bag for this event, those near the lake haven’t gotten much snow but the inland Snowbelt is. I’m at work so won’t have an evening measurement, but I’m guessing my additional snow today and tonight will add at least a few inches for me. Not too bad!

Had a little over 3” this morning. After a few hours of not much happening snow is starting to pick up a bit again.

This is the first notable snow of the season for a lot of the area and it will blow around a good bit...but I agree the hype is likely a bit overblown due to the big dump over the weekend to the northeast. With that said, I think you'll still get several inches of snow by the time it winds down early Friday AM and it'll blow around a good bit. Up the lakeshore where there's a deeper snowpack and where they'll get much more wind this will be a big deal...the upgrade to a Blizzard Warning for Erie PA was not done likely, and I was close on (and slightly regret not pulling the trigger) Ashtabula and Crawford PA. Yeah, I could see how snow totals somewhat disappoint (we'll all get snow and it'll blow around, don't get me wrong) given the strong winds, though they do back off a bit Thursday afternoon and evening. The wind direction will be in the 290ish range a lot of Thursday and Thursday night, maybe briefly 300 or so. There are hints by several models of broad convergence in the Cleveland area points east-southeast, which could help focus snow through most of Thursday. That would be good for your area (and probably mine too), so fingers crossed. Truth be told it was somewhat marginal to issue, but once it hit Findlay and they gusted to 56 MPH with 1/4 mile visibility (and cameras on I-75 looked fairly decent), we went with it. Had quite a few reports of thundersnow, though I personally didn't see any. The Snow Squall Warning was the first ever for your area, and was only the second one ever issued by our office.

Interesting system incoming. It will be nice to get snow a lot farther inland with this event! Outside of a Lake Huron connection into NW PA I am skeptical of huggggge totals, but with the wind, falling temps, and occasional squalls it will be quite wintry for a larger area. I do not see how we avoid an all-out blizzard in Erie County PA tomorrow.

Unfortunately you may be correct here. Will be curious to see the morning snowfall reports. Snow finally pushed south overnight but activity weakened significantly just as quickly as it did that. Some signs now that it's trying to re-flare a bit, but it may also be trying to shift back north. I FINALLY have a forecast shift for this storm today and will have some annoying decisions to make with the Cuyahoga warning. Honestly all the OH warnings may be an annoying predicament by the end of the day shift (will need to try to figure out if it's worth keeping the warnings going for "impact" with some additional snow continuing through at least early tomorrow, or if it's better to downgrade to signal the worst is over if no one is getting more than another 4" tonight into tomorrow).

I think your area has a decent shot tonight through early Tuesday to get some snow, but the big winners will be around Lake County today. Already 13.9” of new snow in North Madison as of 9:15 AM!

Band is already ripping. Unfortunately, the American models have inched north. The focus for the crazy amounts will probably be northern Ashtabula into Erie and NW Crawford PA. Lake and northern Geauga will see accumulating snow at times (especially eastern Lake and northeastern Geauga), though after the rest of tonight those areas will probably largely be outside of the dominant mega band. I fully believe 3-4 foot totals are within reach in Ashtabula, Erie, and parts of Chautauqua Counties through Saturday.

It's nuanced and hard to say one model is definitively better...some certainly have their strengths and weaknesses. Out of the higher-res models available out there, here are some of my thoughts on them: The 3km/hi-res NAM is one of the better performing models for overall evolution of an event and amounts, though sometimes does not focus a single band enough (so has snow over too broad of an area with peak amounts that aren't high enough). The 3km NAM does have a bias to place bands a bit too far south in a westerly type flow The HRRR is better with nailing peak amounts in organized bands, though sometimes struggles to show enough snow when the fetch is shorter (struggles to depict weaker bands and upslope for whatever reason). The HRRR is better with single banded events like this. Like the NAM the HRRR has a habit of placing bands too far south with a longer fetch/westerly flow, and that bias seems to be worse in the longer term of the HRRR (more than 6-12 hours out) The ARW isn't too shabby either for lake effect, I've noticed it has a mix of strengths and weaknesses that the NAM/HRRR have. The ARW may be the worst in terms of placing bands a little too far south in this type of flow The RGEM/regional Canadian is better at keeping bands closer to the lakeshore with these types of events (long fetch with strong shoreline convergence), though sometimes places bands a little TOO far north. The RGEM looses skill once winds go more northwesterly. Overall, I've found that in events like this the band ends up somewhere between where the NAM/HRRR/ARW have it and where the RGEM has it, perhaps slightly closer to the RGEM a lot of the time. The global models (i.e. GFS, ECMWF, CMC) are best used to get an idea of the synoptic environment more so than actual snow amounts and placement.

It seems like there are two windows of WNW flow...Sunday/Sunday night into Monday (maybe an 18-24 hour window), a brief period where winds back more W or WSW ahead of the next shortwave later Monday, and then another good period of WNW flow later Monday night or early Tuesday through at least Tuesday evening. The environment for the first window will feature moderate and fairly deep instability with decent synoptic moisture and almost certainly an upstream connection to Lake Michigan...the second window appears to feature even stronger and deeper instability as we get a slightly deeper push of Arctic air behind the shortwave that goes by late Monday or Monday night. It's a little hard to pin down amounts this far out (need to see what the exact wind direction is, how consolidated/stationary the band will/won't be, etc.) but my impression is that both windows should support warning snow in the northern/eastern Cuyahoga into Geauga area. The second window may be a better opportunity for crazy amounts of over a foot, though parameters are pretty good Sunday into Monday too so if any band is consolidated enough and isn't drifting around too much someone could get a foot in that window too.