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Northern Ohio Obs/Discussion Part 2


Trent
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Thanks for the ice report. Been too many clouds lately to get a good satellite shot. If the lake were unfrozen this would be a good 4-8" event with a couple of troughs moving through tonight. As is I'd generally expect about 1-3", maybe a local 4" amount in northern Geauga. Good moisture and decent inversions with a NW wind and high snow ratios will probably be enough to allow for light accumulations tonight. Even though there isn't much open water, any moisture picked up plus the synoptic moisture and perhaps some upstream lake moisture should combine with frictional convergence as the wind hits the land and higher terrain and ring out light snow.

 

Sunday still looks interesting.

 

Hopefully we can squeeze out 2-4". It is actually dumping mostly snow and sleet here. Figured we would see a quick flip to rain... but the cold air is hanging tough.

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Although it's possible the models trend back weaker for the Sunday-Sunday night storm, it's highly unlikely IMO. The polar vortex over Hudson Bay will cause the system to be more of a bowling ball (W-E mover) than a cutter, so I think northern OH probably stays all snow. Want to look at the 12z Friday models before making a call but I don't think a widespread 6-10" or so is a bad starting point.

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Nice little band of snow last night with the lake effect/enhanced flare up overnight. Looks like the traditional lake belts with some upslope probably had some nice accumulations considering the frozen lake.

 

As for Sunday, hard to believe that the Euro, NAM, and GFS all jackpot northern Ohio with snow starting within 48 hours. It's been a LONG time since we've had one of these types of bowling ball snow set ups for these parts. Don't want to jinx it, but these tend to have less mixing worries for lakeshore counties.

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Awesome! The Chardon cam still shows heavy snow even though the returns have weakened some since earlier this morning. It's still probably snowing 1" per hour in Chardon. I figured there'd be some enhancement, but if you got 8" last night that's a lot more than I'd ever envision off of a frozen Lake Erie with a NW wind. Very impressive. Imagine amounts if the lake was open.

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Wow! I took 3 measurements and got between 7.5 - 8". Still snowing hard. NeOH what do you have?

 

Took quite a few measurements around 7:30 and was in the 7-8" range as well. Snow has lightened up considerably now. Still coming down though. Nice snowpack out there. If the weekend storm can deliver, we'll have one of the deepest snowpacks in quite some time.

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Anyone see the blurb in the AFD about the best snows on Sunday being south of the US 30 corridor? With the way the models have flipped flopped all winter there's no way you can pin down an exact snowfall swath 50 hours out.

At least we have some breathing room on either side. What are the odds this ends up being a whiff to the north?

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Anyone see the blurb in the AFD about the best snows on Sunday being south of the US 30 corridor? With the way the models have flipped flopped all winter there's no way you can pin down an exact snowfall swath 50 hours out.

At least we have some breathing room on either side. What are the odds this ends up being a whiff to the north?

 

Yeah, I saw that as well. CLE gets too caught up with one model run. Given model performance this year you would think they wouldn't get so specific this far out. 

 

As OHWeather mentioned, I think there's a cap on how far north this can move with the vortex over hudson bay. I like where we sit at this point.

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SUN 00Z 01-FEB  -4.4    -6.3    1024      69      21    0.00     552     533    SUN 06Z 01-FEB  -3.0    -6.2    1022      73      88    0.00     550     533    SUN 12Z 01-FEB  -2.9    -6.5    1021      96      98    0.09     547     531    SUN 18Z 01-FEB  -2.0    -6.3    1018      92      97    0.15     545     530    MON 00Z 02-FEB  -5.1    -6.2    1014      92     100    0.24     541     530    MON 06Z 02-FEB  -8.4    -7.3    1010      87     100    0.26     534     526    MON 12Z 02-FEB -10.6   -11.8    1015      80      98    0.15     529     517    MON 18Z 02-FEB -11.6   -14.9    1023      66      22    0.02     531     513    

0.91" for CLE

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I will remain on the cautious side. How many times over the past few winters have we been tortured with model runs 48 hours out promising the largest synoptic storm in 5 years only to wind up with another run of the mill 4-6" storm?

The drill goes as follows, storm pops up several days out and looks promising. Then in the 48-60 hour range the models have their most juiced up runs. The NWS and media start to hype up totals and watches go out. The next few runs drop QPF by 0.05" to 0.10", not noticeable until several runs stack up. By the start of the storm QPF is in the 0.60" range and we hope that ratios will help get totals close to 10". In the end the storm ends up being drier and less intense, ratios don't pan out and the storm total is 4-7" for most folks.

I'm setting my expectations for 5" with this storm. Call me a pessimist but the vast majority of "significant" storms that are modeled like this a few days out never pan out as significant as modeled.

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I will remain on the cautious side. How many times over the past few winters have we been tortured with model runs 48 hours out promising the largest synoptic storm in 5 years only to wind up with another run of the mill 4-6" storm?

The drill goes as follows, storm pops up several days out and looks promising. Then in the 48-60 hour range the models have their most juiced up runs. The NWS and media start to hype up totals and watches go out. The next few runs drop QPF by 0.05" to 0.10", not noticeable until several runs stack up. By the start of the storm QPF is in the 0.60" range and we hope that ratios will help get totals close to 10". In the end the storm ends up being drier and less intense, ratios don't pan out and the storm total is 4-7" for most folks.

I'm setting my expectations for 5" with this storm. Call me a pessimist but the vast majority of "significant" storms that are modeled like this a few days out never pan out as significant as modeled.

 

Cleveland sports fans and snow weenie's often suffer the same fate. While I feel pretty good about this storm given the set-up, I'll curb my enthusiasm until tonights model runs. I believe all of the players will be fully sampled at that point. Perhaps they have been already.

 

Its not often we find ourselves with a little wiggle room on either side so that's a good thing. Not sure a drier solution verifies unless the storm heads further south.

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SUN 00Z 01-FEB  -4.4    -6.3    1024      69      21    0.00     552     533    SUN 06Z 01-FEB  -3.0    -6.2    1022      73      88    0.00     550     533    SUN 12Z 01-FEB  -2.9    -6.5    1021      96      98    0.09     547     531    SUN 18Z 01-FEB  -2.0    -6.3    1018      92      97    0.15     545     530    MON 00Z 02-FEB  -5.1    -6.2    1014      92     100    0.24     541     530    MON 06Z 02-FEB  -8.4    -7.3    1010      87     100    0.26     534     526    MON 12Z 02-FEB -10.6   -11.8    1015      80      98    0.15     529     517    MON 18Z 02-FEB -11.6   -14.9    1023      66      22    0.02     531     513    

0.91" for CLE

 

Thanks for the info. You coming home this weekend?

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Watch issued by CLE - If there was more open water to work with this storm would be a great candidate for lake enhancement with NE'erly wind turning Northerly.

 

WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE SATURDAY NIGHT THROUGH MONDAY MORNING...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CLEVELAND HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM LATE SATURDAY NIGHT THROUGH MONDAY MORNING.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS...6 TO 8 INCHES IN NORTHWEST PENNSYLVANIA AND  8 TO 10 INCHES ELSEWHERE. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS ARE POSSIBLE.

* SNOW...SNOW WILL DEVELOP OVER THE AREA EARLY SUNDAY MORNING  BEFORE DAYBREAK.

* PERIOD OF MOST INTENSE SNOW...THE HEAVIEST SNOW WILL FALL FROM MIDDAY SUNDAY INTO SUNDAY EVENING.
 

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I will remain on the cautious side. How many times over the past few winters have we been tortured with model runs 48 hours out promising the largest synoptic storm in 5 years only to wind up with another run of the mill 4-6" storm?

The drill goes as follows, storm pops up several days out and looks promising. Then in the 48-60 hour range the models have their most juiced up runs. The NWS and media start to hype up totals and watches go out. The next few runs drop QPF by 0.05" to 0.10", not noticeable until several runs stack up. By the start of the storm QPF is in the 0.60" range and we hope that ratios will help get totals close to 10". In the end the storm ends up being drier and less intense, ratios don't pan out and the storm total is 4-7" for most folks.

I'm setting my expectations for 5" with this storm. Call me a pessimist but the vast majority of "significant" storms that are modeled like this a few days out never pan out as significant as modeled.

I agree with setting expectations low. Its hard to not get excited though. When is the last significant synoptic event we've had?

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Got 4.5" yesterday into the night and 7.6" overnight thru very late this morning - a total of 12.1" in about 24 hours from this clipper / lake enhanced / lake effect snow combo.  Very pleasantly surprised.  Have about 18 or 19" on the ground.

 

From CLE Watch, seems MBY will get substantially more from this little hybrid system than the upcoming storm.  We shall see.  Hope you all get appreciable amounts! :snowing:

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The one positive to this storm compared to some of the past season's 8-12" snowstorm busts is that this is long duration light snows. Previous busted forecasts had relied on a window of 1-2" per hour rates for 4-6 hours, which is very difficult. If we can get 0.3"-0.6" per hour snows strung out over 15 hours, I can see us getting 8" or so across a widespread area.

The model means still look great for us, we can afford some wobble north or south.

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