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I think a good model average for synoptic QPF is around 0.3". Ratios will be decent, but we've seen strong winds cause the ratios to not be truly realized due to the winds shredding the dendrites on the way down or due to blowing and drifting snow not allowing the snow to nicely pileup. Given the duration of the heavier snows will be pretty short I don't mind going on the lower end. For LES it's pretty marginal, there's just a brief window before ridging moves overhead tomorrow night. So I think there will be some but it won't be as organized or as long lasting as yesterday's.

 

NOW, Monday into Monday night I think may be more interesting. We should have at least as much if not more of a stripe of open water to work with after the strong SW winds this weekend east of the islands and possibly a small sliver near the southern lakeshore as well. The NAM, GFS and Euro are hinting at an inverted trough hanging back towards Lake Erie behind the departing and strengthening low pressure Monday into Monday night, and all appear to show a lobe of higher low to mid-level RH moving overhead Monday into Monday night with very cold air temperatures moving in. The models don't really push ridging into northern Ohio until late Monday night. If this all comes together it's kind of a similar setup to yesterday with a WNW flow and possible convergence near the lakeshore. We'll see. But Monday's what I'd personally watch.

 

 

Good points about the strong winds hurting the ratio's and ridging moving in. 3-6" seems reasonable.

 

Take a look at the cleveland crib webcam... lots of open water. The winds are doing the dirty work on the ice. Who knows to what extent but good to see open water.

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Good points about the strong winds hurting the ratio's and ridging moving in. 3-6" seems reasonable.

 

Take a look at the cleveland crib webcam... lots of open water. The winds are doing the dirty work on the ice. Who knows to what extent but good to see open water.

Yeah, MODIS imagery definitely shows a few miles of open water near the southern shoreline. Right now I'm willing to put most of my eggs in the Monday basket for LES and go from there. You'll get a nice shot of light to moderate snow for several hours tonight into tomorrow either way with a little LES behind it. But I think if we're going to see decent LES out of the next few days it'll be Monday.

 

Evidently CLE agrees...rather aggressive in their zone forecast wording for this far out:

 

Cuyahoga County:

 

.MONDAY...SNOW SHOWERS LIKELY. MODERATE SNOW ACCUMULATION

POSSIBLE. BRISK AND COLDER WITH HIGHS AROUND 10 ABOVE. CHANCE OF

SNOW 70 PERCENT. WIND CHILL VALUES AS LOW AS 15 BELOW.

 

Geauga County:

 

.MONDAY...SNOW SHOWERS LIKELY. HEAVY SNOW ACCUMULATION POSSIBLE.

BRISK AND COLDER WITH HIGHS AROUND 10 ABOVE. CHANCE OF SNOW

70 PERCENT. WIND CHILL VALUES AS LOW AS 15 BELOW.

 

They don't mention it much in their AFD but we'll see what happens.

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Sure looks to be a snowy weekend. Cle does sound somewhat optimistic about sat night. Hopefully either sat night or Mon night work out. Sure is going to be a lot of drifting with the winds. Already blowing around what's currently on the ground.

AN ADDITIONAL INCH OR

TWO OF LAKE EFFECT IN THE SNOWBELT ARE POSSIBLE SATURDAY NIGHT. THE

LAKE EFFECT COULD BE MORE IF THE STRONG WINDS TODAY THRU SAT BREAK

UP AND SHIFT ICE ON LAKES ERIE TO OPEN UP MORE EXPOSED WATER THAN

EXPECTED.

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Driving home today there was definitely open water a mile off the coast. I'm sure that ice is getting pushed out and packed up to the Ontario side. Hopefully the winds stay up.

 

On that same thread, it's sad what strong winds can do to high ratio lake effect. Most of yesterday's snow has been settled in half. There are places where lawns are windswept to bare grass.

 

I actually wouldn't be surprised if tonight and tomorrow end up on the low end of the scale. I've seen way too many times where depending on ratios with winds like this doesn't pan out. I think 3" for tonight and tomorrow is a more realistic expectation. The wind will surely turn flakes into dust.

 

Hopefully the lake effect can pan out on Monday!

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Good luck measuring this!

 

We've been under great returns most of the morning and even last night, but with the winds it's impossible to get an accurate measurement. I also think the winds help the snow settle quicker on the ground, reducing the effects of ratios.

 

Nonetheless, nice to see the snow falling.

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Just took quite a few measurements. 5.2" seems to be the average. CLE's original call of 4-6" might be too low if this continues. Winds aren't all that bad out here.

 

The winds have died down the past few hours. I have some pretty large drifts at the end of the driveway.

 

We still have the arctic front to look forward to once the snow we are having now winds down, it's producing a quick, but intense burst of snow through Michigan now. Models have this swinging through mid afternoon. This will also be accompanied by a wind shift from SW to a more favorable direction off the lake, so we might get a quick burst of enhancement with it too.

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Looks like about 5" here so far. It's really a guess with all the drifting. Snow depth was 7-9" in protected areas. There was about 3" on the ground last night, so I'm going with 5". Looks like more to come still!

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The initial burst with the arctic front gave me 0.6" in 10 minutes. So that was 3"+ per hour rates. 

 

Looks like one of the METARs caught it:

 

KCLE 251913Z 29021G29KT 1/4SM +SN BLSN BKN013 BKN025 OVC038 M03/M06 A2934 RMK AO2 PK WND 29029/1909 SNB06 P0000 T10281061

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And it's reloading again on the west side.

We'll likely see a lot of warning criteria amounts come in for today.

I think it'll become lighter and more scattered shortly, but that's a really nice burst over Cuyahoga County right now. Then again I also thought there'd only be 2-4" of synoptic so what do I know :lol:
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I think it'll become lighter and more scattered shortly, but that's a really nice burst over Cuyahoga County right now. Then again I also thought there'd only be 2-4" of synoptic so what do I know :lol:

 

Just happened to check the PNS from this morning. There is no way, under any circumstances that CLE only had 0.8" of snow at 7 am this morning  :lol: Looks like they just took whatever liquid equivalent that they reported (which is always notoriously underdone during low temperature and high wind events) and then applied a straight 10:1 ratio:

 

...CUYAHOGA COUNTY...

CHAGRIN FALLS 3.5 700 AM 1/25 SNOW SPOTTER

BEREA 3.2 700 AM 1/25 SNOW SPOTTER

SHAKER HTS 3.2 700 AM 1/25 SNOW SPOTTER

GARFIELD HTS 3.0 700 AM 1/25 SNOW SPOTTER

EUCLID 3.0 700 AM 1/25 SNOW SPOTTER

BROADVIEW HTS 3.0 700 AM 1/25 SNOW SPOTTER

CLEVELAND-OLD BROOKL 2.0 700 AM 1/25 SNOW SPOTTER

CLEVELAND HOPKINS AI 0.8 700 AM 1/25 ASOS

 

I can't wait to see what they report as a total today. I'm thinking they should be at least 5" but with the squalls now, they should have eclipsed 6"

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Just came across this METAR last hour from KCLE:

 

KCLE 252051Z COR 36015KT 1/4SM +SN BLSN VV008 M06/M09 A2945 RMK AO2 PK WND 35027/2020 SLP983 P0001 60006 SNINCR 1/4 T10611089 53037

 

It's not that an inch fell last hour, it's the second reading. How can CLE only have 4" on the ground at 4pm? But wait, how could they have only had 3" on the ground at 3pm (that's actually after the first arctic squall)? CLE was reporting a 2" snow depth yesterday. So that's what, perhaps an inch or so of snow between midnight at 3pm?

 

Prepare yourselves for one of the biggest lowball CLE totals of year.

 

Going around the yard, I've got snow depths ranging from 7-10" average is about 8.5". I'm sure 30+ mph winds at a wide open airfield is going to result in all of the snow just blowing away.

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CLE snowfall looks to be coming in accurate. The climate summary at 5pm has the accurate precip amount. It's annoying that they put out "fake PNS" reports from CLE in the morning.

 

...THE CLEVELAND OH CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR JANUARY 25 2014...
VALID TODAY AS OF 0500 PM LOCAL TIME.

CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1981 TO 2010
CLIMATE RECORD PERIOD 1871 TO 2014


WEATHER ITEM OBSERVED TIME RECORD YEAR NORMAL DEPARTURE LAST
VALUE (LST) VALUE VALUE FROM YEAR
NORMAL
..................................................................
TEMPERATURE (F)
TODAY
MAXIMUM 30 205 PM 73 1950 35 -5 19
MINIMUM 19 222 AM -15 1897 22 -3 12
AVERAGE 25 28 -3 16

PRECIPITATION (IN)
TODAY 0.44 0.08 0.36 0.15
MONTH TO DATE 2.09 2.25 -0.16 1.15
SINCE DEC 1 6.19 5.35 0.84 5.08
SINCE JAN 1 2.09 2.25 -0.16 1.15

SNOWFALL (IN)
TODAY 5.7 0.6 5.1 2.1
MONTH TO DATE 22.6 15.0 7.6 4.6
SINCE DEC 1 40.1 29.1 11.0 19.8
SINCE JUL 1 44.8 33.6 11.2 20.1
SNOW DEPTH 5

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Wow, certainly some moisture flux east of the islands I'd have to say :lol:

 

Things look to be slowly winding down, but maybe someone will push 8 or 9" in Cuyahoga, Lorain or Geauga Counties. Monday's lake effect potential is still there, but the models show surface winds shifting a bit which may make it hard to get a good convergence band to form.

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Wow, certainly some moisture flux east of the islands I'd have to say :lol:

 

Things look to be slowly winding down, but maybe someone will push 8 or 9" in Cuyahoga, Lorain or Geauga Counties. Monday's lake effect potential is still there, but the models show surface winds shifting a bit which may make it hard to get a good convergence band to form.

 

These bands rotating through are INTENSE.

 

Today easily would have verified as a winter storm warning. I'm eager to see the snowfall reports that come out. Should be widespread 6-8".

 

I took a video that shows how intense these bands are. I'll try to upload it later.

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Sorry for the portrait mode, but wow, today definitely over performed. Looks like the GFS won for this storm.

 

I think this might end up being my largest calendar day snowfall in about 3 years ... and considering the New Year's Storm was actually broken up by a window of about 18 hours with no snow, today's storm actually wins out.

 

Can't wait to see what CLE's final tally is:

 

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Picked up 7" here.

 

Some PNS reports are trickling in. Adding the 7am reports to the 7pm reports (really wish they'd do storm totals instead) in Cuyahoga County we've got 7" also in Old Brooklyn and 7.5" in Garfield Heights.

 

Big winner thus far is Thompson in Geauga County with 12.5"

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Nice vid Trent!

Been snowing hard the past several hours. Looks to be another 4" on the driveway since I cleared it early afternoon. I'll measure in the morning. Event total would be around 10" if thats accurate ( and going by low end because of drifting on the early afternoon measurement) .

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Nice vid Trent!

Been snowing hard the past several hours. Looks to be another 4" on the driveway since I cleared it early afternoon. I'll measure in the morning. Event total would be around 10" if thats accurate ( and going by low end because of drifting on the early afternoon measurement) .

10" is a good estimate so far. It has been non stop snow after the brief break before the front passed. Snowiest day of the year Imby. Too bad ridging is moving in. Great to have more snow in the forecast tomorrow.

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