Northern Ohio Obs/Discussion Part 2

[NEOH]

14 minutes ago, MAIDEsNow said:

Hope this plays out. I expect heavier totals will be just north of me, as with the entirety of this winter. This event may be one of, if not the, last chance to move this winter grade from a solid F into D territory.

Second lowest snowfall total in my 15 years living here - just barely above the terrible winter of 2011-2012, with every month well below average (save December). Of course the real kicker is the "fact" that 10-14 miles to my north has received "record winter snowfall". The idea that the Erie Airport received 100" of snow in the month of December (they sit at 156" for the season) is about as likely as me dunking a basketball - at 5'5", ain't that likely. The constant complaining or bragging of how "harsh" this winter has been for Erie...makes it even more insufferable.

Perhaps this can be reverse psychology to the weather gods, and I get hammered with snow March into early April. Thank you for allowing the cathartic rant. 

I think you are in a great spot for this storm... snowfall should only increase as you head NE out of Ohio into PA. Edinboro seems like a good spot for terrain enhancement given the elevation. It has been a frustrating winter for those that rely on a WNW or NW wind direction... we know that all too well around here.

[OHweather]

I’d be surprised if NW PA doesn’t do well with this storm.  Any other observers near ERI airport than can confirm or deny the December snowfall? It seemed suspiciously high at the time, though they did get hit well with a few events so I’m sure the city and lakeshore at least were “well above average” even if not as truly record breaking as reported. 

[NEOH]

29 minutes ago, OHweather said:

I’d be surprised if NW PA doesn’t do well with this storm.  Any other observers near ERI airport than can confirm or deny the December snowfall? It seemed suspiciously high at the time, though they did get hit well with a few events so I’m sure the city and lakeshore at least were “well above average” even if not as truly record breaking as reported. 

Looks like a mix showing up on radar over the lake, with snow starting around the islands. I wonder if we'll have a slow turnover for those of us south of the lakeshore.

[dta1984]

12z wrfs still bonkers.  This one is looking good!

[OHweather]

7 minutes ago, NEOH said:

Looks like a mix showing up on radar over the lake, with snow starting around the islands. I wonder if we'll have a slow turnover for those of us south of the lakeshore.

I think as the band of heavier precip pivots in it’ll change pretty quickly (maybe a brief period of sleet)...but it probably won’t be until 7-9PM in the Cleveland metro and east side.  

[NEOH]

Just now, OHweather said:

I think as the band of heavier precip pivots in it’ll change pretty quickly (maybe a brief period of sleet)...but it probably won’t be until 7-9PM in the Cleveland metro and east side.  

Sounds good. CLE just jumped on board --

..WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIS EVENING TO NOONEST FRIDAY...

* WHAT...Heavy snow expected. Total snow accumulations of 7 to  10 inches, with localized amounts up to 13 inches, 
are expected.

* WHERE...In Pennsylvania, Crawford county. In Ohio, Cuyahoga,
  Lake, Geauga, Ashtabula Inland and Ashtabula Lakeshore
  counties.

* WHEN...From 7 PM this evening to noon EST Friday.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Plan on difficult travel conditions. Tree branches could fall. Be prepared for significant 
reductions in  visibility at times. Snow will be heavy at times with snowfall  rates of 1 to 2 inches an hour. Once
the snow begins to stick to  surfaces, it will begin to pile up rapidly in the heaviest snow.

[MAIDEsNow]

Umm, wow. Warning for 12-16" in Erie Co. Hope so...a solid synoptic event area wide in the works, we shall see.

If we push north of a foot, winter grade may reach a C- 

 

[HO1088]

Storm dynamics usually surprise me, but it seems like in this case a boundary layer temperature difference of 1 C from forecast is enough for a forecast bust. 

 

Where is the cold air?

[Cleveland_WX]

Saw lightning once we converted to snow here in west side of Cleveland. Windy as all get out lost power already  hopefully we get some good snow already got a dusting.

[OHweather]

Changed to snow about 20 minutes ago here after a brief period of sleet.  It is beginning to accumulate.  Some streets adjacent to my complex have lost power...luckily mine is still on.  Everything seems on track, though how efficiently the snow accumulates will strongly influence where the totals end up at (ie higher end vs low end). 

[NEOH]

Flipped to snow around 7:20. Deck and grass are starting to get covered. We had so much rain today there’s standing water everywhere. It will be interesting to see the snow cover in the morning. The winds are really howling. Hopefully we’ll see a slow low transfer and maximize snowfall tonight.

[dta1984]

It's ripping pretty good outside.   The wind really makes it impressive.  Timing is right with it happening at night to help maximize the accumulations. 

[Benadrill]

 

[carumba]

Drive back from downtown to Chagrin Falls. I-77S was okay, not great, but once I got over Valley View then things took a turn for the worse. 480E was awful and it just got worse closer I got to Solon. Absolutely ripping out there, haven't seen it snow this hard for quite some time.

[dta1984]

Definitely a low ratio plaster job.  With the drifting it's tough to measure,  but anywhere between 6-9".  

[OHweather]

Got about 6” here, actually some drifting.  Really low ratio.  It was an impressive evening and overnight with prolonged moderate to briefly heavy snow and a lot of wind.  Would’ve been a blizzard if it wasn’t like a 7:1 ratio.  

[NEOH]

1 hour ago, dta1984 said:

Definitely a low ratio plaster job.  With the drifting it's tough to measure,  but anywhere between 6-9".  

Been awhile since we've had paste job. I measured 8-9" on the deck. From 0 - 6" in the yard.

[Trent]

I thought the west side was finally going to score with this one. Add another 2-3” snowfall to the list. 

[vpbob21]

2 minutes ago, Trent said:

I thought the west side was finally going to score with this one. Add another 2-3” snowfall to the list. 

You did better than I did.  Just over an inch out my way.  Only a trace left on the ground this morning.

[OHweather]

It was too warm near the lake.  Sat at 33-34.  There have been a couple of marginal events where surface temps have been warmer than modeled.  An inch in Huron is ouch.  Definitely thought there’d be more based on the radar there, and saw a report on Twitter of 5” in Collins (which is much farther inland).  If I’ve learned anything from reading posts from you guys on the lake it’s that I’m never going to get a place right near a body of water if I can help it. 

[NEOH]

Pretty crazy that Erie has a +76" snowfall departure, while CLE is -13" for the season... just 14" more than last year. I haven't see CLE's final snowfall total for the storm so that may be off somewhat.

[OHweather]

8 minutes ago, NEOH said:

Pretty crazy that Erie has a +76" snowfall departure, while CLE is -13" for the season... just 14" more than last year. I haven't see CLE's final snowfall total for the storm so that may be off somewhat.

Looks like 3.0” at CLE 

[OHweather]

A little post-mortem looking at the reports that came in...

Definitely a typical late-season synoptic storm with some elevation dependence, a need for strong rates to accumulate well, and a very wet snow.  The unusually strong low and associated winds made it an impressive site with decent snow falling and blowing good for several hours...too bad this couldn't happen during the day.  The number of power outages (peaked at a bit over 100,000) was reasonably impressive, though certainly a far cry from bigger power outage events we've had like Sandy.  Roads were quite slick with a very dense, slushy snow last night, which made travel hazardous along with the scattered tree/power issues.  It was definitely an event worthy of a Winter Storm Warning both by amounts and impact.  I noticed here that in areas that were somewhat sheltered from the wind (either by terrain or buildings) there was a good couple inches of snow plastered to the trees, while areas more exposed had little or no snow on the trees...on one hand sort of cool, on the other would've been nice to see everything covered in snow.

As for the forecast and verification, this one sort of snuck up as it got closer.  The Euro in particular hinted at some snow several days out, while the GFS and CMC had the storm but were a little too warm for snow.  It became obvious early in the week that decent accums were at least remotely possible, but the last-second shift south and stronger really improved the odds of that occurring Wednesday and into yesterday on the models.  As for the final forecast, most of the higher terrain did see 6-10" in NE OH (including the secondary snowbelt), with a couple of 10-12" reports in Geauga and Ashtabula.  In general it was solid, but two areas that didn't do well were along the lakeshore from about Mentor west seeing less than expected and also southern Summit, southern Portage, and southern Trumbull Counties seeing more snow than expected.  As for the lakeshore, that's a perplexing issue that is hard to forecast.  I figured there'd be less there than inland, but also thought that with there being a lot of QPF from the synoptic snow along the lake that there'd at least be a few inches.  Temps did run about 2F warmer than modeled, which along with the strong wind off the water blowing some of the snow away likely made it hard to accumulate well on the lakeshore.  So, a bit disappointing in those areas.  As for farther inland, I'm guessing a little less wind and probably a slightly higher ratio snow falling allowed decent amounts to occur pretty far south despite gradually diminishing liquid equivalent.  I thought the forecast was solid but still could've been better.  Every local station except for channel 5 was only calling for 1-3" in the snowbelt yesterday morning, which was a bad miss.  The NWS was a little slow, though they did have 3-6" for the snowbelt yesterday morning before going up several more inches (and in turn being too high in most areas) with their afternoon package.

Overall, I won't complain if we get another one or two types of these storms this spring...probably won't but who knows, the pattern doesn't look warm/dry anytime soon. 

[vpbob21]

5 hours ago, OHweather said:

It was too warm near the lake.  Sat at 33-34.  There have been a couple of marginal events where surface temps have been warmer than modeled.  An inch in Huron is ouch.  Definitely thought there’d be more based on the radar there, and saw a report on Twitter of 5” in Collins (which is much farther inland).  If I’ve learned anything from reading posts from you guys on the lake it’s that I’m never going to get a place right near a body of water if I can help it. 

It actually started out fairly promising with close to an inch falling quickly after the changeover, but then the precip rate slowed and some rain started to mix in and pretty much stayed that way through the rest of the event.  I'm pretty used to these really borderline events not producing in November and early December but it really hurts when it happens near the end of the snow season when the lake should be colder.  I guess it shows how much the warm temperatures the last couple weeks raised the water temperatures.  I think with a mostly frozen lake we would have done a lot better.

[OHweather]

7 hours ago, vpbob21 said:

It actually started out fairly promising with close to an inch falling quickly after the changeover, but then the precip rate slowed and some rain started to mix in and pretty much stayed that way through the rest of the event.  I'm pretty used to these really borderline events not producing in November and early December but it really hurts when it happens near the end of the snow season when the lake should be colder.  I guess it shows how much the warm temperatures the last couple weeks raised the water temperatures.  I think with a mostly frozen lake we would have done a lot better.

 

That's definitely possible.  Some 36F waters showing up near the coast out west, and even if that added just a degree or two to the temps that may have made the difference. 

It looks like two more time periods to watch coming up with relatively deep/slow moving troughs across the east...Wednesday-Friday of this upcoming week and then around the 12th-13th.  Maybe some sort of lake effect potential along with non-zero synoptic snow potential.  A lot of ensemble members are uninteresting with only light amounts of snow, but enough have something more substantial with each period that it's worth keeping an eye on. 

[snowlover2]

22 minutes ago, OHweather said:

That's definitely possible.  Some 36F waters showing up near the coast out west, and even if that added just a degree or two to the temps that may have made the difference. 

It looks like two more time periods to watch coming up with relatively deep/slow moving troughs across the east...Wednesday-Friday of this upcoming week and then around the 12th-13th.  Maybe some sort of lake effect potential along with non-zero synoptic snow potential.  A lot of ensemble members are uninteresting with only light amounts of snow, but enough have something more substantial with each period that it's worth keeping an eye on. 

You should look at the 0z GGEM.

[OHweather]

9 hours ago, snowlover2 said:

You should look at the 0z GGEM.

That’s a big lobe of cold behind the storm too!  Would be pretty impressive for mid March. 

[OHweather]

A number of snow chances through Friday with a slow-moving upper-level low drifting across the region...we'll see if any of them can put down some decent accumulations anywhere.

First shot is Tuesday morning with the occluded front.  This looks to be fizzling as it comes in.  Classic "dusting at best" scenario.

Second shot is Tuesday night into Wednesday morning as a lobe of the upper low approaches, takes on a negative tilt, and sparks a surface low either overhead or just to our north.  With very cold 500mb temps of -35C with the upper low, lapse rates will be steep and there will be some instability.  If the lift from the developing surface low and approaching upper low can spark some precip, as many models show, it may be a bit convective in nature and drop some locally moderate amounts.  Low-levels appear marginal for snow, but with plenty cold air aloft, favorable time of day, and potential for convective precip, have to think if any decent precip develops it would fall as mostly snow.  At the moment most areas will probably just see a light accumulation at best in this period, but the potential for some locally heavier convective snow will have to be watched and could produce some locally heavier amounts somewhere in northern Ohio.

Third shot is some potential lake enhanced snow Wednesday night into Thursday morning as we stay in a cyclonic flow on the backside of the intensifying Nor'easter as colder air works in.  This looks like a W to WNW flow event.  The 0z NAM was pretty robust with this, but the other 0z models are drier.  Even so, it's mainly lake-driven so something to watch as we get closer. 

And finally, another potent lobe of the upper-level low looks to move overhead Thursday night into Friday, increasing lift and bringing in somewhat colder air.  This increased moisture/lift with the upper low and what looks to be a W to NW flow could cause decent accumulations in parts of the snowbelt if all goes well.

Then probably a break over the weekend as that system currently is progged to go south of us, but potentially some more lake effect potential next week as some decent cold for mid-March looks to move in. 

[dta1984]

The nam hits the east side pretty good .  Looks like the majority is thurs -fri.  

[OHweather]

I did see some wet flakes this morning, not a prayer of accumulating though.  Too light/warm/brief.  Tonight into tomorrow morning is still interesting with some potential for convective snow showers, though some models are hinting the Cleveland area may be in a bit of a hole.  I didn't/still don't expect much out of tonight locally, but it wouldn't shock me if a few spots in northern Ohio "cash in" with a quick 1-3" snow through early Wednesday...but pretty hard to guess where.  There are hints that extreme NE OH and perhaps parts of NW OH may be favored.  The lake effect tomorrow night looks weak, but with a W or slightly north of due west flow parts of the primary snowbelt may see 1-3" additional tomorrow evening through Thursday morning.

The potential for later Thursday through Friday remains interesting, with the upper low moving right overhead bringing a shot of synoptic snow possibly enhanced by the lake.  Some of the global models have had decent QPF with this feature, and the potential for several inches may exist in the higher terrain...we'll have to see where the best synoptic snow goes though, some models do keep it a little southwest of Cleveland with lighter amounts for us.