beavis1729

Grade of F- easily. Only 6 “wintry days” at ORD, defined as a day with a high temp in the 20s or colder AND 2”+ of snow cover. Only 53 SDDs so far. It is hard to overstate how bad that is. Max snow depth of 3”. Pathetic on all counts. Total snowfall has 0% weight in the grading, on a stand-alone basis. Of course, all else being equal, more total snowfall would imply more SDDs...but this winter has been so warm that the total snowfall metric is even less important than usual.

Right on...and then the subsequent meltdown, after realizing that this apparent “recovery” on the 0z NAM was just a mirage after all...after seeing today’s 12z NAM. This winter has invented about 10 new ways to fail. No cold air at all, no clippers, no phasing, Christmas which felt like summer, on and on and on and on. It’s a complete abomination.

The 12z 3km NAM still looks “ok” (it’s all relative) for NE IL, but the bleeding has to stop right now. If it doesn’t, it’s game over. Not the best thing to be hanging our hat on, but it’s all we got.

That bad?

Do you think ratios will be closer to 12:1 like the Euro Kuchera has been showing...or 8:1 like the NAM?

A meltdown is a badge of honor. Need to hold out until 0z tonight when the first wave is fully sampled, then it’s full tilt mode.

I imagine it's best to look at the Euro ensembles at this stage.

Green is a snow depth of 24"+.

Even though this arctic air mass will be short-lived in the Midwest and Plains (what else is new), it's pretty potent. Grand Forks ND was 29 at 1 AM this morning...and by 8 AM, it dropped to -13 with blowing snow and N winds sustained 39 mph, gusting to 49 mph...wind chill -47.

Good to know that winter is happening somewhere. Deadhorse, AK had a wind chill of -80 at 6 PM local time on 2/7/2020. Temp -47 with a SW (offshore) wind at 15 mph. It's their 2nd coldest wind chill on record, behind the -85 in January 2012. Coldest AK wind chill in 2020 so far is -84 in Nuiqsut; temp -53 with a S wind at 12 mph on 2/7/2020. The blog below said -82, but the METARs confirm -84. http://ak-wx.blogspot.com/2020/02/north-slope-cold.html

Even worse on temps here, and I am further north (far NW suburbs of Chicago). We haven’t been below zero yet, and only 3 days with lows in the single digits.

Absolutely...sorry about that. Just hard to fathom. Beyond words at this point...

And to others - it’s not meant to be preachy or a soapbox. You’re completely missing the point, and my intent. Just complaining about our climo, hoping others will empathize and join me. That’s how it is for a winter weenie. We all like winter, that’s why we’re here. Some of us get more sad and frustrated than others when we don’t have it. It’s a very emotional thing. In northern WI a couple weeks ago, the locals were talking about the weenie roasts on the frozen lakes. The lakes are always frozen this time of year and there is always snow hanging from the black spruce trees. That’s where it’s at, very simple.

I hear you, but it’s all relative to what you hope for. Yes, 2013-14 actually felt like winter...but that’s how winter should be. Cold and snow. But December 2013 wasn’t that great and there was no White Christmas, so it could have been better. But overall, I agree it was pretty good. The only cool summer I remember here was 1992. No argument there. But 98 out of 100 summers have a majority of days that are 80F+ from June 10th through September 10th. In other words, it consistently feels like summer during summer. I don’t wake up on August 1st and think that it might be a cold day. But February 1st is never guaranteed to be a wintry day. Not many winters here are consistently wintry. We are all smart people; we know this, but no one wants to admit it. “Wintry” means a high temp in the 20s or colder with 2+ inches of snow cover. For people who love severe weather, I imagine that Chicagoland is not the best place to be either, due to the cool lake messing things up in the spring. Occasional bouts of severe weather, but you can’t count on it. And in the open plains, the visibility and openness is much better, to actually see, enjoy, and/or chase the storms. I guess I’m the andyhb of winter weather. Can you believe it - I made a post about a non winter aspect of weather.

Not that anyone cares about what winter should be...but it has been a complete joke in pretty much the entire Lower 48, with respect to getting more than 1-2 days of cold weather at a time. I am reading in other sub-forums how there is no cold weather too; it's happening everywhere, not just here. Usually, when one region is mild, another is cold...but not this year. At ORD, in the 75-day period since November 15th, there have only been 11 days with a low temp colder than 19F. That is ridiculous. Even in our horribly bad climo, you'd expect about 50% of the days to have low temps colder than 19F...and it "should" be 75+% if we had anywhere close to a decent winter climate. Most winter mornings should be colder than 19F. Not 11 out of 75. It's not even in the same ballpark compared to what it should be. And, only 2 days in the single digits. No sub-zero days. Where is the cold air? Where are the clippers? I don't think there has been one clipper all winter, for anyone in our subforum...or in the entire Lower 48. Am I missing something?? What is happening?? I know someone will chime in and say "we've had winters like this before"...but that only makes it worse, because it reinforces how bad our climo is. I which people would stop with the sugar-coating. It's ok to admit that something is bad. We should all unite in our complaining, as opposed to arguing whose snowfall call is right 5 days out. The result is what matters...and if it's not winter-like, who cares.

That's how bad our climo is...we hope for getting snow from airplanes.

Verbatim it looks good on that map...but unfortunately the trend has been to shift the frozen precip a bit further NW with each successive model run. 30-50 more miles and Chicago misses out. Not saying that's going to happen, but the trends aren't the best. And, people need to remember that Alek's microclimate is like St. Louis...and I would be forecasting rain more often than not if I lived there too. UHI is bad enough here in Lake County. Take a look at a map of the growing season in Illinois; you'll see a little bubble in urban Chicago of a very long growing season, even longer than southern IL. It's unfortunate...but apparently the general public sees it as a good thing.

Look, I know I'm not in the majority on this board...I get that. And I do agree with Josh that today is a nice wintry day...near 30 with about 2" of snow on the ground. But that's the bare minimum to qualify for a wintry day...just barely hanging on. If you use the criteria of a high temp <= 30F and 2+" of snow cover to define a "wintry day", we've only had about 5 of them since November 15th. So, 5 days out of 70. Not good. Believe me, it's exhausting to have to hope for every day to be below normal...and to know that if it gets close to freezing, you have to desperately wish for the sun not to come out, because otherwise the drip drip drip will start. I was up in northern WI snowmobiling with my son and brother this past weekend, and it was glorious. About 20 degrees during most of the day with pixie dust falling, all surfaces covered in snow, very short daylight...and about 10-15" of snow on the ground. Then it cleared out after sunset and rapidly dropped to 5 degrees, even with a fairly mild large-scale air mass in place. And, the locals all said that 2019-20 has been an incredibly mild winter so far. Even in the most boring winters up there, you can wake up every day between 12/15 and 2/28, and there will be snow on the ground and it will be wintry. No worries at all about melting; it's just a matter of how much below freezing it will be, and whether there is a ton of snow or a decent amount of snow. It's a sacred part of the calendar. The Cubs didn't win a World Series for 107 years, but it didn't stop people from hoping for it each year.

I mean unacceptable compared to what winter should be (especially in those areas), not climo. You know, Currier and Ives, people ice fishing, etc. If we judged everything by climo, it would be pretty depressing in our part of the world. It’s just reality.

Sorry that it’s 37F at MSP in January. That’s unacceptable. It’s even supposed to get into the 30s in the UP. What a joke.

Right. I checked MSN, and they've been below zero every winter since records began. Quite a bit different than MKE...not a surprise I guess. https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/WI/Madison/extreme-annual-madison-low-temperature.php

Unfortunately, because our winter climo is so bad, there have actually been 5 winters at MKE since 1870 where the temp never dropped below zero at all. I know your backyard may be different than MKE, but still...

Yep. I started reading through the late January 2019 arctic outbreak thread...good stuff.