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February 25-27 Winter Storm Part 4


wisconsinwx

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Started my commute from Lincoln Park with slush of a few inches and mist falling from the sky. As I headed north on 90 to 94, snow depth increased and the mist turned to flakes. Sitting in Lincolnshire there is moderate to borderline heavy snow falling at the moment.

I missed the big one in Chicago two years ago. The city has been paying for it since and I have been lucky enough to move in just in time.

 

your daily commute sounds awful

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Well, it's not black and white. About an inch downtown, 3" and counting here, 5" where you are. The gradient worked out but the amounts weren't as high. I was thinking about 8" near Steeles Ave by about 10 this morning, and I was one of the more conservative calls. 

I measured about 7" before I started shoveling an hour ago. 7" of wet, compact, snowball making snow. A tall pine tree on my street is bent over, a small tree by my house was brought down by the weight of the snow. Will try and post pictures later.

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PalmBoy is saying he has 14 inches on top of Mt Saukville...  Says its still coming down.  Loves it.  Already putting back out his Christmas decorations :santa:

 

I believe it Sheboygan had over 14"

 

-SN right now with spells of moderate snow moving through. Snowpiles 3-4' are common along my street.

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I measured about 7" before I started shoveling an hour ago. 7" of wet, compact, snowball making snow. A tall pine tree on my street is bent over, a small tree by my house was brought down by the weight of the snow. Will try and post pictures later.

 

Snowstorms at the same latitude but to your west wasn't even so lucky. Congrats. You might have ended up being the sweet spot.

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Storm synopsis from my backyard. Still snowing actually, and probably will for a while, but the main event is about wrapped up.

 

6:15pm: Moderate snow begins. Temps just above freezing at the surface.

6:45pm: Switch over to rain/ice pellet mix, with a bit of snow thrown in. Temps hovering around freezing.

8:30pm: Finally switch back to snow. +SN for a while. Huge flakes. 

10:30pm: Back to rain/ice pellet/snow mix. This window is where we lost a lot of our totals. Almost pure rain for about half an hour. At this point we are under the highest returns, the meat of the deformation band. TROWAL passing over head. Surface temps -0.7C for this entire period. Total accumulation 2.75" until this point.

12:30pm: Switch back to +SN for a few hours straight. Measured rates of 1.25"/hour. Winter storm conditions during this period, high winds, gusts to 40 knots. This was the most enjoyable part of the storm. Amazing rates! Less than 350ft visibility this entire period. 

3:30pm: Dry slow moves in. Rates slow considerably, but never really completely stop.

 

Woke up this morning and measured a total of 5.5", probably another 0.5"-0.75" since I last measured.

 

Overall, a very entertaining storm to track and watch. Watching some near blizzard conditions for an hour was great to see, including one flash of lightning. I think its pretty amazing I managed to measure a rate of 1.25"/hour given the terrible ratios (this would have been easily over 2"/hour in a colder storm). Huge QPF which unfortunately didn't translate to all snow as the models showed. Probably lost a good 2"+ to rain. 

 

Would have to estimate snow-water equiv. averaged around 5 or 6:1 for the whole event. Had this storm happened a week ago we may have seen twice the snow accumulation, and maybe a historic storm.

 

Been fun tracking this one with you all, I'm still happy with the overall experience. It was a tense one to watch!

 

Some pics:

 

post-8234-0-09882200-1361984404_thumb.jp

post-8234-0-83326100-1361984420_thumb.jp

post-8234-0-18295900-1361984422_thumb.jp

post-8234-0-22916800-1361984423_thumb.jp

 

Aaaand video, best rates of the night:

 

 

That's a wrap, until next time,

 

harrisale

 

 

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5.1" at MSN as of 6 am, been snowing continuously since then and still coming down. GFS says accumulating snow will continue through the evening, with light snow until Thursday afternoon.

 

If we keep getting trained on by these bands that snowfall total could go up alot more than 1-2", which is the original forecast for today.

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So my theory as to why Toronto and Ontario in general goes like this. I'm not a trained met so I'm hoping someone else can chime in as well.

 

Most models forecast us to be all snow, particularly away from the lakeshore. But, even at higher elevations with temps safely below freezing, there way still a larger period of freezing rain and ice pellets (mixed with some snow).

 

Now given that the surface temps were below zero AND soundings did not show a low level warm layer, the models went nuts on snow totals.

 

We were located right under the deformation band for a significant portion of the storm. I have a feeling that the TROWAL was actually TOO warm, and that precipitation could not form into snow before it hit the ground. So although this resulted in very high precipitation rates, it really cut our snow accumulation down.

 

thoughts?

 

(I may be entirely wrong)

 

EDIT: Also it appears storm track was more northern than expected, which may have brought more warm air up this way. 

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