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January 10th-12th Winter Storm Potential


Thundersnow12
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4 minutes ago, Moosey2323 said:

I think the general rule of thumb is to underestimate the northward extent of the warm front, especially in situations with convection to the south. The Euro/Canadian seems to place the warm front too far north. I think the NAM 3km is the better solution.

Disagree entirely with so much gulf moisture being pumped into this thing. Unless you believe the LLJ is being overdone, I see no reason to believe that a warm bias would be occurring. I believe the bias you are mentioning has been a warm season bias, not a winter bias. And even then that is because soil moisture affects results

 

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for the River level forecasts:
Do you happen to know if they used 48 hour rainfall (12z today thru 12z Sat) or used the full 3 days on the WPC forecast (another inch or so after 12z Sat)
it is obviously not just the  next 24 hours like it says in the wording
Have family members that get isolated when the river hits 25.8 at PIA
crest 23.4 just issued
 
right now it looks like the SE part of the IL river basin gets 4 inches(with that much also falling south of the basin.. the rest 1-3...
of course a shift in the heavy band will affect the levels
 
 
I think they're using 48 hours but I could be wrong on that.

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10 minutes ago, Moosey2323 said:

I think the general rule of thumb is to underestimate the northward extent of the warm front, especially in situations with convection to the south. The Euro/Canadian seems to place the warm front too far north. I think the NAM 3km is the better solution.

Alternatively, this is the kind of convective outbreak that will pump the SE ridge enough to allow the warm air aloft to overspread surface cooling. That's why we're seeing a band of sleet and freezing rain. 

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1 hour ago, Hoosier said:

Small differences affecting very populated areas

namconus_T2m_ncus_43.thumb.png.da0da3aed67340ddfc1ed0f993a3ab70.png

gfs_T2m_ncus_10.thumb.png.6872c84225f3948deb42c17804805a93.png

I wonder how much of the 2M air temp differences shown are from the interpretation of the modeling pools of warmth from the lakes. The NAM seems much more sensitive to the warm waters over the GFS.

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17 minutes ago, nwburbschaser said:

I'm probably 30 miles from a sig snow event so I'm really hoping that this can come a bit south. Hopefully convection can do the trick and put N IL into the snow although I have doubts it will happen.

Several runs in a row go from 8-9" on the north side of my county to DAB-1".  I don't even need 30 miles.

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The GFS and Euro surface low tracks are practically identical, but there are notable differences in the sfc/near sfc temps.  Would love to get RC's take on the sfc temps.   
Maybe it's to the point where the GFS is overcompensating for the effects of the high pressure to the north? That's a bit of a wild card. I do think with the angle of approach of the surface low, it will favor areas west of the lake staying below freezing because you don't lose the northerly component to the wind and that's pulling from very cold and dry air to the north. That said, GFS seems too cold.

The ECMWF tends to do pretty well with temps so would have to lean towards what it's showing with the tracks being very similar. It'll be an interesting test case for the new version of the GFS.

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12 minutes ago, DAFF said:

I wonder how much of the 2M air temp differences shown are from the interpretation of the modeling pools of warmth from the lakes. The NAM seems much more sensitive to the warm waters over the GFS.

Maybe. I remember dropping to like 31 for a while in the 12/28/15 event.  I'm going to assume lake temps were similar back then (later in the season now but we are coming off a very warm period) but who knows, maybe the cold layer was better back then or the wind direction was subtly different.  

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This is the NWS forecast for the next 66 hours. I'm sure they will be basing their winter storm watches and winter storm warnings on this or something similar. The Weatherbell web site also has a graphic for the freezing rain expected, but it's confusing right now, but it says 0.48" of freezing rain for Grand Rapids, MI.

6h0BDPC.png

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This sounding over northern IL from the 12z Euro illustrates the point I've made about the model ptype algorithm potentially overforecasting freezing rain and underforecasting sleet. In the lower right of the pivotalwx soundings, they have temperature and wet bulb profile information.

 

The positive and negative energies in J/kg are from the Bourgoin layer energy ptype technique. When there is a warm layer aloft sufficient for full melting, whether ptype is sleet or freezing rain depends on the negative energy below it. Two of my co-workers have done extensive work on modifying the Bourgoin method based off observed soundings and ptype observations from the events used and they're getting a paper published in AMS.

 

Many of the NWS offices in the area use this method for ptype derivation. In it, the studies done show that when negative energies get greater than -100 J/kg, sleet probs steadily increase and -125 J/kg or more is 100% sleet probs with lower freezing rain probs even if there is more positive energy aloft. Based off the wet bulb profile showing -156 I think that sounding would support sleet more than freezing rain even though best guess precip type is listed as freezing rain. 2fbd84a69ee7a3c68cf2866619b7a453.jpg&key=bbb2b71726ecde0686e67e965d03a384a79ca5af6cf6bdb234de7df6a3a5f2ed

 

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8 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

This sounding over northern IL from the 12z Euro illustrates the point I've made about the model ptype algorithm potentially overforecasting freezing rain and underforecasting sleet. In the lower right of the pivotalwx soundings, they have temperature and wet bulb profile information.

 

The positive and negative energies in J/kg are from the Bourgoin layer energy ptype technique. When there is a warm layer aloft sufficient for full melting, whether ptype is sleet or freezing rain depends on the negative energy below it. Two of my co-workers have done extensive work on modifying the Bourgoin method based off observed soundings and ptype observations from the events used and they're getting a paper published in AMS.

 

Many of the NWS offices in the area use this method for ptype derivation. In it, the studies done show that when negative energies get greater than -100 J/kg, sleet probs steadily increase and -125 J/kg or more is 100% sleet probs with lower freezing rain probs even if there is more positive energy aloft. Based off the wet bulb profile showing -156 I think that sounding would support sleet more than freezing rain even though best guess precip type is listed as freezing rain. 2fbd84a69ee7a3c68cf2866619b7a453.jpg&key=bbb2b71726ecde0686e67e965d03a384a79ca5af6cf6bdb234de7df6a3a5f2ed

 

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Good stuff.  Looks like southwest of Streamwood?

The southern part of the modeled freezing rain area seems like a better bet for less sleet, but sfc temps would be more marginal.

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Good stuff.  Looks like southwest of Streamwood?
The southern part of the modeled freezing rain area seems like a better bet for less sleet, but sfc temps would be more marginal.
Agree there I've been thinking farther south in the area showing freezing rain. Would think with westward extent too where you have a higher chance of staying below freezing deeper into the cold air. This is all obviously dependent on the exact sfc low track which we haven't completely nailed down yet.

Bringing up the 2015 event again, what I found really impressive with it is that the mesoanalysis at the time and reanalysis indicated that the 850 mb temps south of I-80 got as high as +8 to +10 but yet that's where the most significant ice accums were in the CWA.

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41 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

This sounding over northern IL from the 12z Euro illustrates the point I've made about the model ptype algorithm potentially overforecasting freezing rain and underforecasting sleet. In the lower right of the pivotalwx soundings, they have temperature and wet bulb profile information.

 

The positive and negative energies in J/kg are from the Bourgoin layer energy ptype technique. When there is a warm layer aloft sufficient for full melting, whether ptype is sleet or freezing rain depends on the negative energy below it. Two of my co-workers have done extensive work on modifying the Bourgoin method based off observed soundings and ptype observations from the events used and they're getting a paper published in AMS.

 

Many of the NWS offices in the area use this method for ptype derivation. In it, the studies done show that when negative energies get greater than -100 J/kg, sleet probs steadily increase and -125 J/kg or more is 100% sleet probs with lower freezing rain probs even if there is more positive energy aloft. Based off the wet bulb profile showing -156 I think that sounding would support sleet more than freezing rain even though best guess precip type is listed as freezing rain. 2fbd84a69ee7a3c68cf2866619b7a453.jpg&key=bbb2b71726ecde0686e67e965d03a384a79ca5af6cf6bdb234de7df6a3a5f2ed

 

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You'll know more than I about this but doesn't heavy rain give off quite a bit of latent heat which would then help it turn into a higher percentage of sleet falling as opposed to strictly freezing rain?

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Winter Storm Watch on top of a Flood Watch for parts of LOT.

 

Quote

Winter Storm Watch


URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Chicago IL
136 PM CST Thu Jan 9 2020

...Significant Snow and Ice Accumulations Possible late Friday
Night Through Saturday Night...


ILZ006-012-013-019-020-100345-
/O.NEW.KLOT.WS.A.0001.200111T0600Z-200112T0900Z/
Lake IL-Kane-DuPage-La Salle-Kendall-
Including the cities of Waukegan, Buffalo Grove, North Chicago,
Highland Park, Mundelein, Gurnee, Round Lake Beach, Aurora,
Elgin, Naperville, Wheaton, Downers Grove, Elmhurst, Lombard,
Carol Stream, Addison, Ottawa, Streator, Peru, La Salle, Mendota,
Marseilles, Oswego, Boulder Hill, Yorkville, and Plano
136 PM CST Thu Jan 9 2020

...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH
LATE SATURDAY NIGHT...

* WHAT...A mix of freezing rain and sleet likely late Friday night
  and Saturday, possibly changing to a period of snow Saturday
  evening. Total ice and sleet accumulations in excess of a
  quarter inch are possible late Friday night into Saturday. Total
  snow accumulations in excess of 3 inches are also possible
  Saturday evening. Winds could gust as high as 40 mph Friday
  night and Saturday.

* WHERE...Lake IL, Kane, DuPage, La Salle and Kendall Counties.

* WHEN...From late Friday night through late Saturday night.

* IMPACTS...Power outages and tree damage are possible due to the
  ice and windy conditions. Travel could be significantly impacted
  across the area Friday night through Saturday evening.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Monitor the latest forecasts for updates on this situation.

&&

$$

 

 

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3 minutes ago, wegoweather said:

Winter Storm Watch on top of a Flood Watch for LOT.

Probably obvious, but just passing along the note that the WSW for the more NW counties (Winnebago, Boone (mby), DeKalb, McHenry, Ogle, Lee) is different than the one for Cook, in terms of snow/ice amounts.

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1 minute ago, Sciascia said:

Probably obvious, but just passing along the note that the WSW for the more NW counties (Winnebago, Boone (mby), DeKalb, McHenry, Ogle, Lee) is different than the one for Cook, in terms of snow/ice amounts.

Correct. 

Multiple Watches issued with varying frozen/snow accum possibilities.

.

 

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