2020 Year in Review

[Hoosier]

I got next to nothing.  Overall, may be one of the more boring weather years I can remember imby.

If I had to pick out a few things, I'd go with the Cristobal remnants followed by the severe storm the next morning.  

The warm streak in November was pretty impressive.

Had a couple semi-big rain events.

The August 10 derecho was rather run of the mill in my local area.  Obviously it was a big show stealer elsewhere.

[Snowstorms]

You're right. It was a boring year. Only a few things come to my mind.

- January rainstorm. (3" of rain. Has never happened before). 

- Rare May snow and cold (1.2" locally). Snowiest May ever

- July heatwave. Widespread 90's across the sub

- November record breaking "heatwave" (as mentioned)

- November snowstorm (8-10" locally). 3rd biggest November snowstorm ever 

[Chicago Storm]

.

[dmc76]

2020 will be easily forgettable in SEMI. Other than the May 10th snow event. Pretty much a snoozer. 

[Hoosier]

I see cyclone is currently posting.  I will bet 5 million dollars that I don't have that it will contain a mention of 8/10.

[cyclone77]

The August 10th derecho is the event of the year here, and is the most impressive single weather event I've ever personally experienced while at home.  60-80+mph winds that lasted over an hour, and no power for 92 hours.  Might have been the only time I actually felt afraid of the weather while being at home, mostly because of not knowing exactly how much worse it could get.  Reports upstream were pretty scary.  We got off pretty easy compared to places along the main swath like Cedar Rapids, and across the river in Clinton.  Hawkeye and others definitely had it WAY worse than what we got.  Still can't believe how long those high winds lasted.  What will probably always stick with me about this event is how no matter where you went you were always coming across huge trees down/uprooted now and again.  In most cases around here after a severe event while driving around you'll come across a swath of 1-3 miles wide of trees down, or uprooted.  With this event it was wherever you went, and in some places whole groves of trees were destroyed/uprooted.

 

[cyclone77]

12 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

I see cyclone is currently posting.  I will bet 5 million dollars that I don't have that it will contain a mention of 8/10.

Haha!  Wait till Hawkeye and hlcater see this thread.  

[hlcater]

Nothing will top the derecho, not for a long time at least. At my location near Fairfax/Atkins. I had multiple gusts over 100 and one that probably approached/exceeded 120. In hindsight, lucky I didn’t lose glass in my car. Then we were without power for 3 days, and we were amongst the first to get it back. Even now, local forests are quite eerie with fallen snow atop large swaths of blown down forest. I’ll have to get some pics the next time it snows. The AON estimate is up to 9 billion in damage, which is just incredible. Perhaps(probably) it’s because I’m a huge weenie, but I feel like the spatial extent of the 100/120mph winds from the survey are underdone with south and especially westward extent(ie I’m confident I saw 120 3 S Atkins) and Nick Stewart was pretty confident he had 130-140 near Van Horne. For such a historic event, I really do feel like DVN dropped the ball in the survey department.
 

Had 2” hail back in April, but that doesn’t hold a candle. Other than those two, only saw 2 tornadoes, each from a distance. So my noteworthy events list from this year is quite small. 

I’ll leave this by reposting some of the more impressive damage pics.

 

[andyhb]

Aside from the 8/10 derecho, lol this severe season. Can’t say things are looking up for next year for us out here in the Plains with the raging drought out west and La Niña conditions, but I could certainly see some Midwest shenanigans.

[IWXwx]

My top 10 events for 2020

1. Leftovers from the 8/10 derecho

2. Multiple days of record-setting November warmth

3. 1.6" snow accumulation on 4/17

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

 

[A-L-E-K]

iowa derecho and that's about it

[michsnowfreak]

Getting a top 10 harder than most years, but here we go...

 

1.) May 10th accumulating snow (0.7") amidst a record 5 consecutive days with May snow and record cold 

2.) Jan 11th rainstorm (2.81" over 36 hrs)

3.) Jan 18th heart attack 7" snowstorm thump

4.) November Indian Summer with record amount of 70s

5.) Local downpour July 10 (2.62" in less than hour)

6.) July 2-9 heat (no extremes but 8 consecutive days over 90).

7.) Postcard spring snowfalls Apr 15 (1.5") & Apr 17 (3.4")

8.) Feb 26 snowstorm (5.7")

9.) unusually long lasting and vivid Fall color show

10.) being in/near local "jackpot" for early season snows (Nov 22, Dec 1, Dec 16)

[RCNYILWX]

Aside from the derecho, which I say thankfully wasn't bad at all where l live, definitely a more boring year weather wise.

 

Noteworthy events in the LOT CWA in chronological order:

 

January 10-11 significant lakeshore flooding. The winter side of that system was a big old bust, but the lakeshore flood certainly wasn't, as it was the most significant episode since Halloween 2014 and perhaps since the February 1987 event.

 

- April 7th wind blown sig severe hail in far northern Illinois, some up to 3" in diameter, which is really impressive for an April event. The event was also noteworthy for the SPC handling it quite poorly in the outlooks (removal of general thunder in the day 2 update from some of the areas that had sig severe hail yikes), while it was a pretty synoptically evident good early season severe setup for days.

 

- May 14th and 17th flooding events in the metro. The 17th was the most widespread flash flooding in the metro I think since the April 2013 flood and locally the most sig flooding I had seen where I live in Naperville. We issued our first (and warranted) considerable tag FFW on the 17th. The footage of the Chicago River flooding in the South Loop in particular was pretty nuts.

 

- June 9th Cristobal remnants, more for the novelty of that setup.

 

- June 26th severe event, with some sig severe wind reports. It was actually a pretty respectably widespread event by recent standards and it and April 7th are the most notable severe episodes of the year aside from August 10th.

 

- June 27th flooding. A lot less fanfare than the May flooding because the rural southeast CWA was hardest hit, with actual observed rainfall of over 8" in southern Newton County and radar estimates up to 10". Had this rain occurred over the metro, we would've had a high end flash flood event. It was also my first issuance of a considerable tag FFW.

 

- August 10th derecho and QLCS tornado outbreak, with the strongest tornado in the Chicago city limits since 1976.

 

- Persistent summer warmth, including Chicago setting its warmest summer on record. It loses significance for me because we believe the ORD ASOS site has been affected by local construction to skew temps warmer there, including August being first summer month in our entire dataset in which ORD finished warmer than MDW. Summer 2012 stands out as much more noteworthy and memorable than summer 2020.

 

- November 3-10 warm wave. Up there with mid to late February 2017 as the most impressive stretch of out of season warmth in recent history aside from Morch 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CheeselandSkies]

15 hours ago, andyhb said:

Aside from the 8/10 derecho, lol this severe season. Can’t say things are looking up for next year for us out here in the Plains with the raging drought out west and La Niña conditions, but I could certainly see some Midwest shenanigans.

La Niña  can be such a mixed bag. You have years like 2011 (obviously an extreme example but the general idea of being dangerous in Dixie holds), which wasn't great in the Plains/Midwest in May/June apart from that late-May series which included Joplin, 2012 which aside from a couple early outbreaks was obliterated by drought, and 2008 which was IMO one of the best all-around severe seasons in my memory, although I could have done without so much flooding. Activity commenced with that early January N IL/SE WI outbreak, Super Tuesday in Dixie, and continued right on through peak with about a 3-week stretch of nonstop action from late May through mid-June.

...and ya, 2020 sucked for interesting weather unless you're a hurricane chaser. Even the Cristobal remnants were a downer here, just wasted an early June day on drizzly, blustery conditions more suited to early spring or fall.

[MIstorm97]

Never went to the Plains this year for chasing, as there was basically nothing to chase. Saw 8 tornadoes this year, all in Iowa and Illinois. I saw about 25ish waterspouts along the Great Lakes during a record-breaking waterspout season. This includes a waterspout with a rain and snow falling. 
Severe season locally was relatively dead this year...again. A moderate risk on June 10th failed to produce much. The most impressive storm was a single cell storm that had a downburst with winds of 60-70mph. I spent a week cleaning storm damage with the City of Royal Oak in their DPS parks and forestry department (my job). 
I covered a ton of lakeshore flooding events this year. January 11th in Chicago, March 6th in NW IN and SW MI, April 13th in SW MI, April 26th in N OH, November 1st in W MI, and November 15th also in W MI. The November 15th event was pretty intense with some of the most consistent big waves lashing the Grand Haven lighthouse that I’ve seen. The March 6th event was particularly intense in New Buffalo and did substantial damage to the beach park. 
There were a couple 6”+ snowstorms imby in the early part of the year (January 18th and February 25th-26th). An intense LES band from Lake Michigan dropped a few inches of snow quickly here on February 8th. Winter lingered right into May with accumulating snow early on Mother’s Day. So far in the winter of 2020-21, it’s been a zzzzfest with a 42hr 3.7” event being the biggest “storm”. 
Josh mentioned here the unusually long-lasting and vibrant fall colors. Boy were they great this year. Best I’ve seen in years. I spent every weekend in October going somewhere to take pictures of the fall colors. 
By far the biggest and most impactful event I saw was the Sanford and Edenville Dam failures. I originally went to Saginaw Bay on the 18th for lakeshore flooding, but a couple FFW for dams caught my attention and I went to the Secord Dam and saw unusually high discharge rates. I figured I needed to head back up this way the next day since major flooding was predicted on the Tittabawassee. I came back on the 19th to find significant flooding ongoing in Midland already. I then traveled to Sanford where Sanford Park was completely underwater. Some homes and businesses were taking on water at that point. I then moved to Edenville and Wixom Lake where numerous homes were under a few feet of water. It was at this time when disaster struck and the Edenville Dam collapsed. There were multiple people observing the record flooding near me when everyone’s wireless emergency alert went off alerting about the failure of the Edenville Dam. I raced south to Sanford to capture some of the ensuing chaos and evacuation, before evacuating to Freeland. The next day, the 20th, I started in downtown Midland where record flooding was ongoing. I saw some wildlife sadly swept down the river. The flooding in Midland was very impressive. I was in constant contact with TWC getting video out this entire time, as well as all the other major news networks through LSM. After getting everything I needed in Midland, I went to Sanford. The town had been effectively destroyed. When the Edenville Dam broke, it sent a torrent downstream that was too much for the Sanford Dam to hold. The Sanford Dam overtopped and then fully failed, with most of the earthen dam collapsing. A lot of homes in Sanford were completely wiped away off their foundations. Downtown Sanford was destroyed as well, with a few buildings leveled and the rest gutted by the flood. It was the worst flooding disaster since the great 1986 flood in Michigan, and honestly I’d put the May 2020 flood at the number 1 spot for worst Michigan floods. The Tittabawassee flood gauge in Midland broke the all-time record crest from 1986 by over a foot. It is a combination of luck and great evacuation procedures from EM and first responders that there were no fatalities or serious injuries. 
There’s other events locally that I’m sure I’m missing, but it was a relatively boring year. The lightning locally was better than last year I guess. Hopefully 2021 delivers more excitement, but with less destruction from dam failures. 

 

Forgive me for the long post with 15 pics haha, ended up being longer than I’d thought it’d be.

[Hoosier]

The winds today might be a top 10 highlight.

[Brian D]

2020 was a year of extremes in not only weather, but in many other ways. I think we adapt so quickly to stuff now, that in the end, it seems like nothing, when in fact it was something.

The west coast could drop in the sea, and we would aghast for a week or two, then back to whatever we were doing before, even complaining how boring it is. 

[michsnowfreak]

11 minutes ago, Brian D said:

2020 was a year of extremes in not only weather, but in many other ways. I think we adapt so quickly to stuff now, that in the end, it seems like nothing, when in fact it was something.

The west coast could drop in the sea, and we would aghast for a week or two, then back to whatever we were doing before, even complaining how boring it is. 

Good point. Weather weenies are often of the "what have you done for me lately" mindset.

[hawkeye_wx]

The non-derecho weather I remember this year is...

- Large hail hit far northern Cedar Rapids in April.  I got some pea-nickel size hail.

- Cristobal remnants tracked through eastern Iowa, something that rarely happens.

- Long dry stretches through summer.  Western and southern Iowa experienced severe drought.

- Second straight October with a significant snow event.  This year it was way back on October 19th.

August 10th derecho...

Obviously, the derecho is the big story this year.  I was without power for ten days and without cable tv/internet for another week beyond that.  With the leaves gone now, the tree damage really stands out.  Most private land is cleaned up, but some hard-hit wooded areas around town are still a big mess of downed and shredded trees.  A destroyed house near me was finally bulldozed a couple weeks ago.  The destroyed apartment building farther sw hasn't been touched.  Next  year we'll have to get some roof shingles redone, plus I have to plant a new tree and rebuild half of the fence.  I talked to the fence company a couple months ago and they said they had 5000 build/repair jobs to do.

This was my backyard after the storm.

[michsnowfreak]

On 12/20/2020 at 10:05 AM, michsnowfreak said:

Getting a top 10 harder than most years, but here we go...

 

1.) May 10th accumulating snow (0.7") amidst a record 5 consecutive days with May snow and record cold 

2.) Jan 11th rainstorm (2.81" over 36 hrs)

3.) Jan 18th heart attack 7" snowstorm thump

4.) November Indian Summer with record amount of 70s

5.) Local downpour July 10 (2.62" in less than hour)

6.) July 2-9 heat (no extremes but 8 consecutive days over 90).

7.) Postcard spring snowfalls Apr 15 (1.5") & Apr 17 (3.4")

8.) Feb 26 snowstorm (5.7")

9.) unusually long lasting and vivid Fall color show

10.) being in/near local "jackpot" for early season snows (Nov 22, Dec 1, Dec 16)

you know me, have to add pics. See corresponding # to pic

[michsnowfreak]

I finished 2020 with 42.64" of precip and 45.9" snow.

 

Detroit finished 2020 with 

51.9F temp 

38.73" precip 

44.6" snow