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Feb 10/11 Arctic Front and Snowfall


michsnowfreak

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Some local numbers of interest per DTX's climo page, 3.8 for Detroit Metro, 3.5 for Detroit City Airport, 3.5 for Flint, and 4.6 for Saginaw. All and all a decent surprise storm and like Josh mentioned also per the daily climate summaries the whole area should have been WWA.

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Hate to be that poster with the mby question...but what is the situation/status on this overnight heavy snow EC is forecasting across SWON/GTA? How can they possibly be expecting 4" over the next few hours for us?

Best looking area on radar is a snow band drifting south off Lake Ontario over the Niagara Peninsula. I suspect that is the widespread heavy snow they were expecting two hours ago.

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VERY nice storm here in Canton, MI. Went driving in the peak of it and actually got anxious from the blinding whiteouts. I became disoriented on familiar roads... and so far we have 8-9 inch drifts on the side of the house. The wet snow at the beginning has clung to trees... but the sudden drop in temperatures and the abrupt wind/powdery snow gave it a brief Plains-blizzard feel... best of both worlds!

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Looks like some LES has set up due south of lk Huron over Sarnia ON/Port Huron MI. Exeter radar is estimating 0.2" an hour snow rates.

Meanwhile in Region of Waterloo and in the GTA...it has become apparent without SSC...us southern ON'ers have been lost all evening/night with what is happening :whistle: . At midnight EC was calling for 4"...well we're at 1.4" since 2pm yesterday. Chimes well with SSC's hope the storm would bust because of his exam in the morning....which btw we're all cheering for him!

And to our SEMI neighbours...big congrats to you all. The mini GHD blizz has been well earned!

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Looks like some LES has set up due south of lk Huron over Sarnia ON/Port Huron MI. Exeter radar is estimating 0.2" an hour snow rates.

Meanwhile in Region of Waterloo and in the GTA...it has become apparent without SSC...us southern ON'ers have been lost all evening/night with what is happening :whistle: . At midnight EC was calling for 4"...well we're at 1.4" since 2pm yesterday. Chimes well with SSC's hope the storm would bust because of his exam in the morning....which btw we're all cheering for him!

And to our SEMI neighbours...big congrats to you all. The mini GHD blizz has been well earned!

Sorry bro. Have not been following this one very closely. I looked out my window and I can't see any grass tips. That's usually an indication that we're at 2"+ here. Definitely not a bust here.

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Sorry bro. Have not been following this one very closely. I looked out my window and I can't see any grass tips. That's usually an indication that we're at 2"+ here. Definitely not a bust here.

I gotta stop using my bedroom window for estimating snow. The angle or something makes me overestimate I guess. Measured about 1.2" although there's a lot of blowing snow so I'm not sure if that's a bit low.

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Looks like semi did pretty damn good! 3-6" amounts not to shabby. From the looks of it out the window i say we recieved 4-4.5" but will try to take a good measurement later.

Good luck measuring. I have 1/2 inch to 2.5 feet IMBY. The drifting is crazy. The neighbors fence really helps create those 2.5' drifts :) Based on my best protected areas I am going with 4.5". In the end it was a solid WWA system that DTX blew chuncks!!!

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Good luck measuring. I have 1/2 inch to 2.5 feet IMBY. The drifting is crazy. The neighbors fence really helps create those 2.5' drifts :) Based on my best protected areas I am going with 4.5". In the end it was a solid WWA system that DTX blew chuncks!!!

Seriously I'm marking this down as 4.25"...

It was pretty much obvious yesterday morning that this was a 2 to 4" event with winds up 25mph+ and don't forget the rapid temperature drop that iced the roads up. EPIC fail on there part. Someone should be getting reamed this morning with that debacle.

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Hate to be that poster with the mby question...but what is the situation/status on this overnight heavy snow EC is forecasting across SWON/GTA? How can they possibly be expecting 4" over the next few hours for us?

Best looking area on radar is a snow band drifting south off Lake Ontario over the Niagara Peninsula. I suspect that is the widespread heavy snow they were expecting two hours ago.

Wouldn't be surprised if parts of the GTA hit 3-4". I have a little over 2" on the ground now and still snowing.

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smile.pngbiggrin.pnglaugh.png

WOW!

We have our over-performer! Snow, wind, ice, wind chills, drifts, piles..REAL winter makes a stunning comeback in the lower lakes. Was kinda difficult to get a good measure due to the winds last night. I measured 1" about 6pm before going out and made it back home a bit after 10pm. Was still snowing so I measured again in the morning and looked like 3.6" which correlates well with other area reports. Congrats to everyone on the snow and wonderful surprise event (2nd best of the season for me wrt total impacts) and nice to see the plows out all over this morning.

Ahhh..winter in Michigan, gotta love it.

PS-roads were still terrible this morning with active slide-offs in progress. Single digit freeze-up limiting salt's effectiveness..

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Seriously I'm marking this down as 4.25"...

It was pretty much obvious yesterday morning that this was a 2 to 4" event with winds up 25mph+ and don't forget the rapid temperature drop that iced the roads up. EPIC fail on there part. Someone should be getting reamed this morning with that debacle.

Maybe they tried to issue an advisory but it malfunctioned due it being a year since they issued a winter advisory.

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A tad shocked about a lack of headline out of DTX. A special weather statement just doesnt do the job of warning motorists. I heard of some sort of bad multicar pile-up on i75 near Saginaw. I understand that its very difficult to predict such systems. Thinkng DTX needs to have a meeting on Monday to discuss how to better handle such a senario. I have the utmost respect for that office and consider them a becon of good in the NWS, but mistakes happen and they can learn from this.

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In defense of DTX, this event didn't officially meet any headline criterias (and Bill Deedler can correct me on this).

The 2-5" of snowfall fell over a 12-18 hour period, usually I think you need something like 2-4" in less than 6 hours (didn't happen) or 4-8" in 12 hours (very isolated if that did happen) for even a WWA. So things were borderline at best for a WWA, and thus all things considered I don't think they did too bad of a job given how strange of a system it was (although they didn't account for isolated heavier banding either, thus the lollipop 4"+ amounts).

A lot of you are just weenieing out over the final snowfall totals, rather than how exactly we reached them.

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In defense of DTX, this event didn't officially meet any headline criterias (and Bill Deedler can correct me on this).

The 2-5" of snowfall fell over a 12-18 hour period, usually I think you need something like 2-4" in less than 6 hours (didn't happen) or 4-8" in 12 hours (very isolated if that did happen) for even a WWA. So things were borderline at best for a WWA, and thus all things considered I don't think they did too bad of a job given how strange of a system it was (although they didn't account for isolated heavier banding either, thus the lollipop 4"+ amounts).

A lot of you are just weenieing out over the final snowfall totals, rather than how exactly we reached them.

First off most of the snow fall occurred between 4pm to 8pm in the North and 8pm and 12am in the South, where I'd say 2-4" of it did depending on locale. Secondly if you can see in the LSRs there were a large number of spots that were in the 4-6" range and lastly winds/blowing snow can trump snow amounts with respect to travel hazards of course this time we had both wind and heavy snow.

This is semi old but I believe still valid if you carry the Snow Advisory numbers over for Winter Weather Advisory http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/wwa_definitions/wsw.php

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First off most of the snow fall occurred between 4pm to 8pm in the North and 8pm and 12am in the South

It doesn't matter. The snow in all locations from DTW-ARB northward started around noon, and many areas had accumulations long before thw worst of the event arrived (regardless of how much fell before the worst of the event)

Even if one made an argument about rush hour and teh blowing snow, again, the worst of it fell after rush hour and the criteria when facotring it blowing snow is slightly lower than blizzard criteria (25-40 MPH wind gusts and visibilities than than 1 mile for 3 hours), but without the warning criteria amounts.

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It doesn't matter. The snow in all locations from DTW-ARB northward started around noon, and many areas had accumulations long before thw worst of the event arrived (regardless of how much fell before the worst of the event)

Even if one made an argument about rush hour and teh blowing snow, again, the worst of it fell after rush hour and the criteria when facotring it blowing snow is slightly lower than blizzard criteria (25-40 MPH wind gusts and visibilities than than 1 mile for 3 hours), but without the warning criteria amounts.

Trust me it should have been an advisory, you can say otherwise but there should have been one.

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Trust me it should have been an advisory.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

Bottom line, they have good, fact-based reasons as to why they didn't issue one.

I'm the VERY first to criticize DTX if I think they're wrong, but I just don't see how they were this time.

Anyway, the event's long gone now. Now we just need to mix out this stratus and bring on a real winter storm.

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Here's the final snowfall map. Definitely on the higher end of what they were expecting when all said and done, but other than the few spots of 4"+, they still didn't do a bad job forecasting this...

http://www.crh.noaa....now201202111113

Oh, and most importantly (if that storm total out of Romulus came from Metro Airport), this puts Detroit at 20.4" for the season. So much for the sub-20" winter several people were expecting, lol.

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In defense of DTX, this event didn't officially meet any headline criterias (and Bill Deedler can correct me on this).

The 2-5" of snowfall fell over a 12-18 hour period, usually I think you need something like 2-4" in less than 6 hours (didn't happen) or 4-8" in 12 hours (very isolated if that did happen) for even a WWA. So things were borderline at best for a WWA, and thus all things considered I don't think they did too bad of a job given how strange of a system it was (although they didn't account for isolated heavier banding either, thus the lollipop 4"+ amounts).

A lot of you are just weenieing out over the final snowfall totals, rather than how exactly we reached them.

What are you talking about? I had 1" at 8pm and 4.25" at by 1030 pm. Thats over 3" in one 1-1/2 hours..if that didn't meet WWA criteria then IDK..

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