Autumn/Winter 2019-2020 Banter/Complaint Thread

[buckeye]

4 hours ago, Spartman said:

Or Marches 2016, 2009, or 2007.

give me 2008 or 2012.... 

if you ain't gonna bury me....torch me.

[Jonger]

On 2/12/2020 at 8:17 AM, michsnowfreak said:

After the November 11 storm way overperformed and the Jan 18 storm met expectations, i laughingly thought this would be the season when Winter storms got better within short range. Since then its the frequency of snow has picked up but every event (except LES) has ended up much less than it first looked. 

About 6 inches here. Most of those crappy storms produced here.

[Hoosier]

Don't know what it is but having a hard time getting into the upcoming storm.  

Maybe things will change if we get unanimous consensus of a foot+ imby.

[IWXwx]

The satellite from yesterday pretty much tells the story of winter 2019-'20.

 

[michsnowfreak]

21 minutes ago, IWXwx said:

The satellite from yesterday pretty much tells the story of winter 2019-'20.

 

Though I know you were referencing lack of snow in Indiana, I have to lament on two things. We lost our snowcover several days ago...as seen by the satellite in se mi. I think this was the first time this season there was such an annoying close cutoff here. Also...unusual to not see the thick overcast shrouding the Lakes.

[cyclone77]

1 hour ago, IWXwx said:

The satellite from yesterday pretty much tells the story of winter 2019-'20.

 

If you look closely you can see a big shelf of ice/snow that has broken off the southeast shoreline of LM, and floated "out to sea" several miles.  

[Jonger]

At my hotel here in Twin Lakes...

4 feet or so..

Got pretty warm today though.

[kevlon62]

Hell of a week/end at Walker. 28 inches of ice with no impeding ice heaves on Leech gave us good fishing and lake riding out to the trail systems. $51 for the trail permit but worth it all the way. 80-90% of the trails were solid, flat and fast. Softened up with the warm temps and traffic yesterday but we were loading the trailers by then.

Hell of a fire/smoke plume in Becker, MN last week too.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[HillsdaleMIWeather]

That meltdown over the 0Z NAM slowing down making everyone think the storm disappeared proves how terrible this winter has been

[beavis1729]

11 hours ago, HillsdaleMIWeather said:

That meltdown over the 0Z NAM slowing down making everyone think the storm disappeared proves how terrible this winter has been

Right on...and then the subsequent meltdown, after realizing that this apparent “recovery” on the 0z NAM was just a mirage after all...after seeing today’s 12z NAM. 
 

This winter has invented about 10 new ways to fail. No cold air at all, no clippers, no phasing, Christmas which felt like summer, on and on and on and on. It’s a complete abomination. 

[IWXwx]

A couple of questions concerning the NBM. Which models are included,  what data are included from each, and is there any weighting?

[michsnowfreak]

11 minutes ago, beavis1729 said:

Right on...and then the subsequent meltdown, after realizing that this apparent “recovery” on the 0z NAM was just a mirage after all...after seeing today’s 12z NAM. 
 

This winter has invented about 10 new ways to fail. No cold air at all, no clippers, no phasing, Christmas which felt like summer, on and on and on and on. It’s a complete abomination. 

This was a disappointingly and somewhat unexpected mild Winter.  However, your exaggerations aside (ie "no" cold air, Christmas "summer", etc), none of these nuances are newly invented this year. They come with crappy winters. Unfortunately every Winter cannot be great, that is just how things have always worked.  Whether you like to admit it or not, this region has been quite lucky the past 20 years. I am just hoping for a much colder Winter next year.

[michsnowfreak]

Not sure if this has ever been posted, but check out this amazing link. Really shows you that haves and have nots of every Winter since 1950. Also shows you how crappy winters were in the 1950s, how great they were the 2nd half of the 1970s, and how unprecedented 2014 and 15 were.  You can slow it down using the speed button on YouTube.

 

[BuffaloWeather]

Well my winter fix has been satisfied. Definitely my favorite trip ever to the Adirondacks. 30-50" of snow on our hikes up to the peaks. Winds at the top of the one peak had to be over 80 mph. By far the strongest winds I have ever experienced in my life, nothing comes even close. We did a sunrise hike the first day.

 

 

There was a high peak called big slide. We were the only ones on the entire trail. On the way down you can slide all the way down, literally one of the most fun things I've ever done in my life.

https://imgur.com/a/BThJPhr

 

[BuffaloWeather]

One more pic from the overnight sunrise hike.

[Chicago Storm]

7 hours ago, IWXwx said:

A couple of questions concerning the NBM. Which models are included,  what data are included from each, and is there any weighting?

All but the UKMET are included IIRC. But that's another question @RCNYILWX could better answer.

[snowstormcanuck]

7 hours ago, michsnowfreak said:

Not sure if this has ever been posted, but check out this amazing link. Really shows you that haves and have nots of every Winter since 1950. Also shows you how crappy winters were in the 1950s, how great they were the 2nd half of the 1970s, and how unprecedented 2014 and 15 were.  You can slow it down using the speed button on YouTube.

 

Cool.  Worse ways to spend 3 hours.

[KokomoWX]

It has been a junk nickel and dime winter with a thaw almost always happening right after.  I have not put gas in the snow blower or blade on the lawn tractor.  If I somehow end up in a jackpot zone, I'm gonna be rather annoyed.  Winter has sucked and the models have sucked more.  

[cyclone77]

Still a bit early, but it's almost time to give out our annual winter grades.  At this point I'm thinking an F+ works here.  We've had worse winters with less snow, but the majority of the snow this winter fell late at night, lack of a warning criteria event, and constant rug-pulling-out-from-under-at-the-last-minute events have made it a lower grade than what seasonal totals would normally dictate.  With how well things went last winter when pretty much everything seemed to work out for this area we def can't complain too much about how this winter went here.  If it weren't for the fact that 80% of our less than average snowfall happened in the middle of the night I probably would have given it a D+, or C- even with that models screwing us over and over at the last minute multiple times.

[Hoosier]

I probably won't be able to give it an F no matter what happens from here on out.  Don't get me wrong though, it's been bad.  Generally I am reluctant to give out the top or bottom grade.

[Stebo]

If we end up getting this storm I cant go lower than a C as we will be shockingly butting up against average but this might be one of the most frustrating winters in quite some time. Even 2012 wasn't as bad because you knew you weren't getting much after awhile, so there wasn't any of this pulling of the rug nonsense.

[snowstormcanuck]

Assuming Wednesday's storm pans out and we cross the 50" line for the season, as a preliminary grade it'd be hard to go below a B.  No monster storms (which is 8-10"+ here) but a handful of solid moderate events, lots of smaller but shovel-able events, occasional periods of snow cover.  Very little frustration; except for that one event in late January everything worked-out according to plan or ended up being a slight surprise on the pleasant side of things. 

In fact, that's a grade on a curve relative to other winters.  If you look at 19-20 in isolation, given the overall warmth, the snow that's still managed to be produced, you'd have to give this winter an A for effort.

[Geoboy645]

My preliminary grade would probably be C+ or B-. After that crappy December and 1st week of January, the winter really turned around. I have had a snowpack basically since the 15th of January and it was pretty deep at some points. It was deep enough to have the snowmobile trails open for an extended period of time which is always good.  We did get pretty warm at some points, but in a good way. I will say that that like 14 day stretch of clouds was pretty bad though. Snowfall wise we have had 32" or so since mid-January. The best storm the winter was probably the overperformer last week. It had heavy and attractive snow in the day, and was our largest snow of the year. Another plus is that it hasn't been super cold. We have had 2 or 3 periods that I would consider pretty cold, but nothing like last year. Only reason why this winter isn't higher is because of December and Early January. That wasn't great at all. So yeah overall C+ or B-

[hawkeye_wx]

C-

[Baum]

D

 

[beavis1729]

Grade of F- easily.

Only 6 “wintry days” at ORD, defined as a day with a high temp in the 20s or colder AND 2”+ of snow cover. 

Only 53 SDDs so far. It is hard to overstate how bad that is.

Max snow depth of 3”.

Pathetic on all counts.

Total snowfall has 0% weight in the grading, on a stand-alone basis. Of course, all else being equal, more total snowfall would imply more SDDs...but this winter has been so warm that the total snowfall metric is even less important than usual. 

[Hoosier]

35 minutes ago, beavis1729 said:

Grade of F- easily.

Only 6 “wintry days” at ORD, defined as a day with a high temp in the 20s or colder AND 2”+ of snow cover. 

Only 53 SDDs so far. It is hard to overstate how bad that is.

Max snow depth of 3”.

Pathetic on all counts.

Total snowfall has 0% weight in the grading, on a stand-alone basis. Of course, all else being equal, more total snowfall would imply more SDDs...but this winter has been so warm that the total snowfall metric is even less important than usual. 

Which winter would get a higher grade from you?  One with 25" but relatively consistent cold and little thaws, or more of an up and down one with 60" but frequent thaws.  Let's assume the max individual storm in each winter is the same.

[Chinook]

Interesting story: on this day in 1965, a great storm tracked from the lower Mississippi Valley to bring 11" of snow to Detroit. As you can see on this map, over 10" was reported in MO, IL, IN, and MI, and close to Toledo. It also seems likely that there were some 10" amounts in Kansas

[beavis1729]

1 hour ago, Hoosier said:

Which winter would get a higher grade from you?  One with 25" but relatively consistent cold and little thaws, or more of an up and down one with 60" but frequent thaws.  Let's assume the max individual storm in each winter is the same.

First option...as long as the lions share of the snow occurred early in the season, after which the cold would preserve the modest snowpack. 

[vortex]

On 2/24/2020 at 9:16 AM, michsnowfreak said:

Not sure if this has ever been posted, but check out this amazing link. Really shows you that haves and have nots of every Winter since 1950. Also shows you how crappy winters were in the 1950s, how great they were the 2nd half of the 1970s, and how unprecedented 2014 and 15 were.  You can slow it down using the speed button on YouTube.

 

You can really see how impressive the depth, longevity and widespread the snow cover was in 79.