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Remainder of the Midwest/Great Lakes Snow Events

wisconsinwx

By wisconsinwx,
in Lakes/Ohio Valley

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wisconsinwx

wisconsinwx

Posted
Posted

I decided to make a topic where anyone from the Great Lakes or Midwest regions can discuss their snow events. I think it's better that we have a broader region so threads like this do not clog the board. If Thundersnow wants to combine this with the N Illinois thread, I would be more than happen to oblige.

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wisconsinwx

wisconsinwx

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Feb. 5-6, 2008 is the first one I will do. This was a nice one, with over a foot in locations in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Link: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/?n=020608_snow

February 5-6, 2008 Major Winter Storm <BR style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Southern Wisconsin

A major winter storm impacted south-central and southeast Wisconsin on February 5-6, 2008, with the hardest hitting part of the storm during the morning of the 6th. This was a long duration event coupled with strong gusty winds and some thunder. Blowing and drifting snow compounded the effects of the heavy snow. Total new snow accumulations in excess of 12 inches occurred in the area southeast of a line from Dubuque, Iowa to Madison to Beaver Dam to West Bend to Sheboygan. Up to 16 inches fell in the area from Monroe and Janesville to the Port Washington and Milwaukee area...with isolated 18 to 21 amounts reported. Total snow amounts tapered off quickly to 4 inches north of Wisconsin Dells and an inch or less across far northwest Marquette county.

The accumulating snow gradually decreased from west to east in the late afternoon and early evening hours on Wednesday the 6th...and finally ended near Lake Michigan by around midnight. Occasional heavy snowfall rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour were observed in that area where a total of 12 inches or more were measured. The winds were out of the north at 15 to 25 mph with some gusts to 35 mph. These winds generated blowing and drifting snow, especially in open areas. Visibilities dropped to below 1/4 mile at times, and west-east orientated roads experienced considerable drifting, and 2 to 4 foot drifts. Some brief blizzard or near-blizzard conditions occurred near Lake Michigan where the winds were stronger, as well as in open, exposed areas over the remainder of southern Wisconsin.

Some roads become impassable due to the blowing and drifting snow. A major traffic backup occured on Interstate 39/90 westbound south of Madison with as many as 2000 cars stranded for up to 12 hours.

On the weather map, a strong low pressure area over northwest Indiana moved from Missouri to central Illinois and then to northern Indiana and lower Michigan. Some moisture from Lake Michigan did manage to enhance the snowfalls over parts of southeast Wisconsin.

Weather spotters sent an unbelievable number of snow reports to the Milwaukee/Sullivan office.

Some of the higher storm snowfall totals include:

21" at Orfordville, and 9WNW Beloit, 20.6 at Delavan, 20.4" at Ft. Atkinson, 20.1" at Saukville, 20" at Beloit, Jackson, and 1E Evansville

19.5" at Germantown

18" at 2NE Glendale, and Stoughton

17.8" at Brodhead, 17.3" at West Allis, 17.1" at Beaver Dam, 17.0" at Jefferson, Brown Deer, Lake Mills, and Rome

16.5" at 1N Sun Prairie and 1N Beaver Dam, 16.3" at the Milwaukee/Sullivan WFO about 3.8 miles southeast of Sullivan and 2SE Waukesha, 16" at Brookfield, 4NNE Sun Prairie, 4S Waukesha, Janesville, Johnson Creek, 1S Mt. Horeb, 2SW West Bend, Alleton, and 2N Saukville

15.5" at Argyle, 1NW Beaver Dam, Kenosha WWTP, Whitnall Park, and 0.4W State Fair Park, 15.1" at Wind Point, 15.0" at Watertown, Afton, 1S Rochester, Union Grove, 3W Thiensville

13.4" at Madison Truax Field

12.9" at Milwaukee Mitchell Field

Below are plots of snowfall amounts for the 36-hour period from Noon on February 5th to Midnight on the evening of the 6th:

snowfall-statewide.jpg

...PUTTING FEBRUARY 5-6 WINTER STORM SNOWFALL AMOUNTS INTO PERSPECTIVE...

THE LAST TIME LARGE PARTS OF SOUTH-CENTRAL AND SOUTHEAST WISCONSIN HAD A SNOWSTORM PRODUCING 15 TO 20 INCHES OF SNOW WAS WITH THE JANUARY 2-3, 1999 WINTER STORM/BLIZZARD. IN THAT STORM...20.5 INCHES FELL AT SLINGER IN WASHINGTON COUNTY AND 20 INCHES IN WEST ALLIS. MILWAUKEE MITCHELL FIELD PICKED UP 15.4 INCHES.

ANOTHER STORM WITH 15 TO 17 INCHES AFFECTED RACINE AND KENOSHA COUNTY ON DECEMBER 1, 2006. HOWEVER...THE AREA AFFECTED BY SNOWFALLS OVER 15 INCHES WAS CONSIDERABLY LESS THAN THE FEBRUARY 5-6, 2008 STORM.

BOTH MILWAUKEE AND MADISON SET SNOWFALL RECORDS FOR THE DATE WEDNESDAY WITH MIDNIGHT TO MIDNIGHT TOTALS OF 11.9 INCHES AT MADISON AND 11.6 FOR MILWAUKEE. THIS WAS THE 8TH HIGHEST CALENDAR DAY TOTAL ON RECORD FOR MADISON...WHILE MILWAUKEE’S TOTAL TIED WITH FEBRUARY 25, 1935 AND APRIL 9, 1973 FOR 16TH ON THE CALENDAR DAY SNOW TOTAL LIST.

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Tim from Springfield (IL)

Tim from Springfield (IL)

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Posted

Feb. 5-6, 2008 is the first one I will do. This was a nice one, with over a foot in locations in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Link: http://www.crh.noaa..../?n=020608_snow

And of course we all know too well what was on the southern end of this storm system--the "Super Tuesday" tornado outbreak in the Mid-South.

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Chicago WX

Chicago WX

Posted
Posted

This thread needs some love. Thus I bring you the February 12-15, 2007 blizzard/winter storm.

Watch and warnings map

Surface map at 7AM on the 13th

Radar images from the 12th through 14th at 6 hour intervals

My rendition of the snowfall totals. Not a perfect representation.

A sampling of the snowfall totals

Pepper Pike, OH: 23.5"

Saybrook, OH: 22.1"

Galion, OH: 18.5"

Richfield, OH: 18.1"

Lyndhurst, OH: 18.0"

Lafayette, IN: 17.0"

Sidell, IL: 17.0"

Hartford City, IN: 17.0"

Paxton, IL: 16.0"

Marion, IN: 16.0"

Springfield, IL (4 SW): 15.8"

Alexandria, IN: 15.0"

Herscher, IL: 14.9"

Whiting, IN: 14.6"

Attica, IN: 14.0"

Ogden, IL: 13.7"

Bloomington, IL (5 W): 12.5"

Monticello, IN: 12.5"

Watseka, IL: 12.0"

Kokomo, IN: 12.0"

Van Wert, OH: 12.0"

Lima, OH: 11.0"

White Pigeon, MI: 11.0"

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kab2791

kab2791

Posted
Posted

Interesting storm...basically 7" of pixie dust. The radar returns were never impressive, but somehow we managed, as you have shown nicely, 6-9" across SE MI.

This thread needs some love. Thus I bring you the February 12-15, 2007 blizzard/winter storm.

Watch and warnings map

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baroclinic_instability

baroclinic_instability

Posted
Posted

Not sure if you're intending to include MN in the scope of this thread...but if so, the Halloween 1991 snowstorm was a good one :)

Yeah that was one hell of a storm. MSP and Duluth got completely buried. I have relatives in southwest Iowa that got a major ice storm with that.

That storm was a classic--prototype for a trough-vortex merger. Absloute classic.

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post-999-0-31728300-1318100790.gif

post-999-0-47961200-1318100791.gif

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snowlover2

snowlover2

Posted
Posted

Thought of 2 more good ones here. January 2, 1996 started as rain but by noon had changed to snow and was a flat out blizzard. I was sent home early from work and what was normally a 5 minute drive home took 30 minutes. Could barely see anything. And of course there was March 7,8 2008.

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an uncanny otter

an uncanny otter

Posted
Posted

The Dec. 22-23 2004 storm was one of the best storms that i've seen. I got almost 20 inches of snow from that storm. Most of it fell overnight on the 22nd to the morning of the 23rd when the storm really cranked up.

I remember this storm with fond memories - one of my top 5 favourite winter storms. I don't have specific measurements of how much we received (I was only 11 years old when it happened) but I seem to recall the final total being somewhere around 15".

The fact that it occurred only two days before Christmas and ushered in frigid temps after it was just icing on the cake. I would kill to get a repeat of that storm this December. Probably the best Christmas weather I've ever experienced here.:snowman:

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wisconsinwx

wisconsinwx

Posted
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Posted

This next event I will mention was a pretty good spread-the-wealth WSW type snowfall: February 9-10, 2010:

winwx20100210.gif

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/winter_storm_summaries/graphics/2009_2010/feb08_10_2010.html

This was the best storm IMBY of what was overall a bad year (not surprising given a relatively strong El Nino. It apparently was a very good year for Chicago, though.

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snowstormcanuck

snowstormcanuck

Posted
Posted

This next event I will mention was a pretty good spread-the-wealth WSW type snowfall: February 9-10, 2010:

http://www.hpc.ncep....08_10_2010.html

This was the best storm IMBY of what was overall a bad year (not surprising given a relatively strong El Nino. It apparently was a very good year for Chicago, though.

Winter of 09-10 in a nutshell.

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Chicago WX

Chicago WX

Posted
Posted

i lost all my previous images on my harddrive for this one :(

certainly one of the best.

That sucks, I know it's one of your favorites.

I'm going to go back through the threads over at Eastern to see if there's anything still saved (worth saving) from that storm.

Regardless, I'll have my write up of that storm posted here by early this week.

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kab2791

kab2791

Posted
Posted

January 1, 2008

Some of us were screwed over with the dryslot, but for those locations that resided in the intense mesoscale banding, these areas revived snowfall rates of up to 4"per hour, and most of the snow fell in these places in 6 hrs. The snow was heavy/wet, plastering everything and made for some of the most picturesque scenes.

DTX Writeup:

ZCZC ARBPNSDTX NOUS43 KDTX 011925 PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT SNOWFALL REPORTS NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DETROIT/PONTIAC MI 220 PM EST TUE JAN 01 2008 NEW YEARS DAY 2008 WILL GO DOWN AS NOT ONLY THE SNOWIEST NEW YEARS ON RECORD...BUT ALSO AS ONE OF THE MOST INTENSE SNOWSTORMS IN RECORDED HISTORY OVER A LARGE SECTION OF SOUTHEAST LOWER MICHIGAN. BETWEEN 12 AND 16 INCHES OF SNOW FELL IN A SWATH ORIENTED SOUTHWEST TO NORTHEAST ACROSS THE AREA...ROUGHLY FROM BRIGHTON IN SOUTH LIVINGSTON COUNTY TO LEXINGTON IN SOUTHEAST ST CLAIR COUNTY. SNOWFALL AMOUNTS QUICKLY TAPERED OFF BOTH NORTH AND SOUTH OF THIS AREA. A TIGHTLY PACKED LOW PRESSURE CENTER MOVED NORTHEAST ACROSS THE VICINITY OF DOWNTOWN DETROIT DURING THE EARLY MORNING HOURS. HEAVY SNOW FELL TO THE WEST AND NORTH OF THIS TRACK AND FELL STEADILY AT A RATE OF NEARLY 2 INCHES PER HOUR FROM ROUGHLY MIDNIGHT TO 7AM. SNOWFALL RATES ACTUALLY APPROACHED 4 INCHES PER HOUR AT TIMES BETWEEN 4AM AND 6AM ALONG THE M59 AND I69 CORRIDORS. THERE WERE ALSO SEVERAL REPORTS OF THUNDERSNOW DURING THE SAME TIMEFRAME. THE BULK OF THE SNOWFALL...INCLUDING THE REPORTS IN EXCESS OF ONE FOOT...FELL IN LESS THAN 7 HOURS...MAKING THIS TRULY ONE OF THE MOST INTENSE SNOWS ON RECORD. THE FOLLOWING REPORTS ARE FINAL SNOWFALL TOTALS FROM THIS UNUSUALLY ROBUST AND QUICK HITTING SNOWSTORM.

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post-1245-0-88074300-1318208137.png

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snowstormcanuck

snowstormcanuck

Posted
Posted

January 27th, 2004:

This was actually snow on the radar. This was the hardest I've ever seen it snow that wasn't lake effect.

post-599-0-93999600-1318209326.gif

http://www.crh.noaa....now200401281052

Great storm. I thought I was the only one who looked fondly upon it. Actually, at least here, Jan 26-27, 2004 was the only period of excitement in an otherwise boring winter.

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AppsRunner

AppsRunner

Posted
Posted

January 1, 2008

Some of us were screwed over with the dryslot, but for those locations that resided in the intense mesoscale banding, these areas revived snowfall rates of up to 4"per hour, and most of the snow fell in these places in 6 hrs. The snow was heavy/wet, plastering everything and made for some of the most picturesque scenes.

DTX Writeup

Every time I see New Year's '08 part of me dies. Projected to get a foot by Local Media at the 6pm news... got a solid dusting.

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