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2/4-2/5 Winter Storm - ice, ice, baby


LVblizzard

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I have been biting my tongue on this. But I'm really starting to get worried for certain portions of our area. I'm reserving complete statements for another few hours as I'm curious to see how this performs in some of the other areas of the US with similar conditions.

 

I'm partially counting on the precipitation falling with such ferocity that the glaze is not near what it is estimated to be looking purely at the models. This requires a little human manipulation of the data.

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If the layer(s) above the surface are sufficiently below freezing to allow the rain to be supercooled, 29-30 would more than do the trick. Now, that being said, it wouldn't be too terribly much of an issue if this were happening 5 hours after sunrise and temps were 29-30.

 

The combination of marginal temps in the layer above the surface and borderline below surface temps compounded with the rate at which the precip falls will be our best predictor of what sticks around. 

 

IE: High rate of precip and marginal on both fronts? Nuisance Ice (still dangerous) BUT If precip falls at a low rate to begin with and we begin to accumulate enough ice to constitute a true 'glaze'? We could be in for a mound of trouble.

 

Freezing Rain is just too difficult to nail down right away. This is going to come down to the hours before.

 

Just don't forget all the snow that's laying around. I saw 2-3" of snow on POWERLINES here in York. That snow is more than capable of sucking up any moisture that falls. No matter how hard the precip falls. Same for trees.

Aren't we looking at 29-30 with temps creeping up during the ZR for the NW burbs according to the soundings?

 

This should reduce the accretion during heavy precip.

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All the storm drains around here are covered with three feet of cement. Heavy precip rates are going to result in a large amount of standing water on the roadway ready to freeze solid when the temp drops. On the plus side the snow should soak up a lot of the rain and people didn't clear their drain outlets at the curb so the water will not be able to drain off the roofs.

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I think a consideration that has to be made is how much snow is still on trees.  Yesterday's plastering, from all pictures I've seen, just covered most trees.  If that is still mostly intact tonight...  wow could it be bad.

This is my main worry. Everything here is still heavily plastered with 3" of snow or more. Even small branches. It could be a disaster.

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12z data with GFS/NAM for NW Chesco - not looking good - here is the rundown

Snow/Sleet arrive around midnight temp 21.8
Heavy Sleet at 4am temp 25.0 (0.26" w.e.)
Mix of IP/ZR at 7am temp 28.1 (0.70" w.e.)
ZR at 10am temp 30.9 (1.16" w.e.)
12 noon ZR temp 32.0 (1.31")
above freezing by 1230 am with another 0.16" falling as plain rain

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My experience of living through  severe ice storms in the mid south is this: Once the snow clumps come off the trees with sleet or freezing rain, ice starts accruing real quick because of the thin coating of snow left behind on the limbs still remains. If the temp is not rising watch out. The second issue is that any ice accrual over .5 of an inch will definitely cause power outages because the tree branches are still weak from Sandy. I have been picking up and cutting branches for two years from that storm event because many broken branches are still hanging in the trees. The last issue that if we get any wind, we are screwed big time. The wind will worsen the situation greatly

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