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Jan 11-13th Blizzard


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2 minutes ago, Frog Town said:

I was only kidding.  I'm still in the bargaining stage of my grief.  

 

You and me both. Still holding a sliver of hope for maybe a front end thump and some decent back end snows. But unfortunately rain in between looks very likely. 

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38 minutes ago, CheeselandSkies said:

We've been close to or in the sweet spot with this one for a while...and surprisingly that hasn't really changed.

Should be interesting when I'm trying to leave work around midday Friday.

@madwx I just realized how similar our avatars are ever since I changed mine to a frame from my Keota tornado video; horizon and debris cloud are at about the same level, only difference is my foreground is drab brown since it was taken in March.

grab a beer together, mates!

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It looks heavy and wet followed by flash freeze and wind with lake effect white-outs.  It will be the worst driving conditions in a long time no matter what the totals are.  Any change-over to rain will just make the ice situation worse when the cold hits.

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1 hour ago, WestMichigan said:

RGEM and ICON buth have less QPF and even with the RGEM east solution snow totals are much lower in MI.

 

Then we get a ton of lake effect till Sunday night anyways. 

 

How has all been? 

Happy New Year! 

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If anyone has specific LOT centric questions on forecast stuff from today, ask away and I'll try to reply a bit later.

Apologies for the lack of a more in depth meteorological dissertation in the AFD lol - just less and less time available for us on days like this.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk

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4 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

If anyone has specific LOT centric questions on forecast stuff from today, ask away and I'll try to reply a bit later.

Apologies for the lack of a more in depth meteorological dissertation in the AFD lol - just less and less time available for us on days like this.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
 

Was the city/south end of the winter storm watch debated heavily internally?  Or was there good agreement?  

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6 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

If anyone has specific LOT centric questions on forecast stuff from today, ask away and I'll try to reply a bit later.

Apologies for the lack of a more in depth meteorological dissertation in the AFD lol - just less and less time available for us on days like this.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
 

What is your personal take on ratios in the farther outlying suburbs around the city? 

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5 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

If anyone has specific LOT centric questions on forecast stuff from today, ask away and I'll try to reply a bit later.

Apologies for the lack of a more in depth meteorological dissertation in the AFD lol - just less and less time available for us on days like this.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
 

I'm driving to Algonquin tomorrow from western Maryland to chase the storm. My friend is right on the Fox River so ~35-40 miles NW of the Loop and am staying with her for the long weekend. I used to live in Chicago and still follow the weather there closely. At least where Algonquin is, I am not too concerned with mixing w/rain although the ratios for a time will be akin to wallpaper paste. Your thoughts on accums for the Fox River valley based on what you see/know now?

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4 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

If anyone has specific LOT centric questions on forecast stuff from today, ask away and I'll try to reply a bit later.

Apologies for the lack of a more in depth meteorological dissertation in the AFD lol - just less and less time available for us on days like this.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
 

The AFD update was great. Nice putting the "Forecast Uncertainty" in there too...

As to the timing... You guys were spot on with the N IL impacts of the last storm between 12-4 PM. My daughter's school canceled classes and at 11 am it looked like things were not that bad on the roads. But from 11-3 it just RIPPED here (Northern Kane County in Elgin - 3 miles south of I-90) and the roads were awful. Buses (especially in my rural area) would have had a hell of a time. 

Looks like the hourly forecast for the next storm has the snow really starting around me by 8 AM Friday and going through the whole day. In your 100% "not representative of the US Government" opinion ;-) it is looking like the second snow day this week for my daughter?

I've said it before, your posting here is so awesome. Thanks for taking the time. 

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1 minute ago, katabatic said:

I'm driving to Algonquin tomorrow from western Maryland to chase the storm. My friend is right on the Fox River so ~35-40 miles NW of the Loop and am staying with her for the long weekend. I used to live in Chicago and still follow the weather there closely. At least where Algonquin is, I am not too concerned with mixing w/rain although the ratios for a time will be akin to wallpaper paste. Your thoughts on accums for the Fox River valley based on what you see/know now?

I'm 5 miles south of where you will be. The last storm had the front end precip a sloppy mess (my backyard was full of slush) but the backside was *nice*. Best flakes I've seen in years. 

Parts of the Fox Valley (Aurora for example, 15 miles south of Algonquin) are notoriously a few degrees cooler in the dead of winter.

We are far enough away from the Lake that usually lake warming doesn't hurt us that much. But we have got a few Lake bands when all the stars align. 

Provided the low doesn't make some crazy big jog north, the lake "warming" will be less of an impact out here. 

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2 minutes ago, michaelmantis said:

I'm 5 miles south of where you will be. The last storm had the front end precip a sloppy mess (my backyard was full of slush) but the backside was *nice*. Best flakes I've seen in years. 

Parts of the Fox Valley (Aurora for example, 15 miles south of Algonquin) are notoriously a few degrees cooler in the dead of winter.

We are far enough away from the Lake that usually lake warming doesn't hurt us that much. But we have got a few Lake bands when all the stars align. 

Provided the low doesn't make some crazy big jog north, the lake "warming" will be less of an impact out here. 

Thanks for your insight! How much did you end up with the storm that just passed after all was set and done?

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17 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

If anyone has specific LOT centric questions on forecast stuff from today, ask away and I'll try to reply a bit later.

Apologies for the lack of a more in depth meteorological dissertation in the AFD lol - just less and less time available for us on days like this.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
 

Thoughts on "less slop, more snow"? Hard to really tell, but looks like precip/dynamics may be shutting down by the time the arctic air gets pulled into the system and profiles cool. Could this be another repeat of Mon-Tue when even Rockford was plagued by marginal temps, inefficient accumulation, mixed precip and lousy snowfall for 3/4 of the storm?

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1 minute ago, katabatic said:

Thanks for your insight! How much did you end up with the storm that just passed after all was set and done?

3ish inches at the end. It all compacted down so much can't really tell. But there was a few hour period where the cotton ball flakes added to at least 3 inches on their own (before compacting down). 

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3 minutes ago, michaelmantis said:

3ish inches at the end. It all compacted down so much can't really tell. But there was a few hour period where the cotton ball flakes added to at least 3 inches on their own (before compacting down). 

I picked up around 5” here, but it was quite variable.  Places with lots of blacktop around didn’t accumulate as much compared to surrounding rural areas.  Oddly, the rooftops of parked cars seemed to accumulate the most.

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Was the city/south end of the winter storm watch debated heavily internally?  Or was there good agreement?  
Honestly, certainly couldn't discount a warmer outcome, but we were looking at a bit south of I-80 (aside from the very real lake influence) on too much uncertainty for a watch.

I do think it's going to be white rain near the lake on Friday, but my thinking is that the 700 mb and 850 mb low tracks with this per the very consistent ECMWF and recently more consistent GFS are more favorable to keep things heavy wet snow away from the marine bubble on Friday.

Definitely uncertain how far inland the lake influence on accums gets, but [mention=9209]mimillman[/mention] noting the difference between Wicker Park and the Loop yesterday afternoon swayed me to use the Dan Ryan as a rough demarcation zone.

I was most on the fence about Livingston (not included), Kankakee (included), and Lake and Porter, but IWX wanted LaPorte in and I was fine to put them in the watch for collab purposes. WPC has an internal watch proposal that actually had the whole CWA in it.

There was good agreement for the purpose of watch issuance in what we went with, and didn't consider not including central and southern Cook because of inland portions of those zones currently look good for warning level impacts per global consensus.

Officially had about 5" along the Chicago shore, which very well could still be a bit high depending on how long temps take to cool Friday evening.


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What is your personal take on ratios in the farther outlying suburbs around the city? 
Our collaborated ratios were in the 7-9:1 range for the western and northwestern burbs during the day on Friday and I was good with those as a starting point. Temps are marginal so 10:1+ seems unlikely. South of I-80 and the city I had ratios as low as 5-6:1, so we certainly didn't go high with ratios.

Then Friday night on the backside, they come up to 10-12:1 (highest inland) during the evening. Of course this is all contingent on keeping snow as the ptype.

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4 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

Honestly, certainly couldn't discount a warmer outcome, but we were looking at a bit south of I-80 (aside from the very real lake influence) on too much uncertainty for a watch.

I do think it's going to be white rain near the lake on Friday, but my thinking is that the 700 mb and 850 mb low tracks with this per the very consistent ECMWF and recently more consistent GFS are more favorable to keep things heavy wet snow away from the marine bubble on Friday.

Definitely uncertain how far inland the lake influence on accums gets, but [mention=9209]mimillman[/mention] noting the difference between Wicker Park and the Loop yesterday afternoon swayed me to use the Dan Ryan as a rough demarcation zone.

I was most on the fence about Livingston (not included), Kankakee (included), and Lake and Porter, but IWX wanted LaPorte in and I was fine to put them in the watch for collab purposes. WPC has an internal watch proposal that actually had the whole CWA in it.

There was good agreement for the purpose of watch issuance in what we went with, and didn't consider not including central and southern Cook because of inland portions of those zones currently look good for warning level impacts per global consensus.

Officially had about 5" along the Chicago shore, which very well could still be a bit high depending on how long temps take to cool Friday evening.

 

So north of I80 and near the shore like downtown you are predicting around 5inches which could be on the high side? 

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1 hour ago, Radtechwxman said:

Hard to ignore gfs consistency. But wish it had some support for higher snow totals further south. 

GFS sniped that ice storm 5-6 days out last year that hit DTW area. Was quite surprised to say the least.

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I'm driving to Algonquin tomorrow from western Maryland to chase the storm. My friend is right on the Fox River so ~35-40 miles NW of the Loop and am staying with her for the long weekend. I used to live in Chicago and still follow the weather there closely. At least where Algonquin is, I am not too concerned with mixing w/rain although the ratios for a time will be akin to wallpaper paste. Your thoughts on accums for the Fox River valley based on what you see/know now?
As of now that area looks good, but the mesoscale details can certainly augment that, and I know the southeast McHenry Co. area has been somewhat of a local minima the past few winters.

WPC in their internal snow total forecast had a large area of 12+ in the northwestern suburbs, encompassing the northern Fox Valley area. The way things fell out in my first cut today, officially came out in the 10-12" range in Algonquin, but admittedly didn't have enough time to put a ton of small scale detail in except for near the lake and current favored rain/snow line.

Ratios will certainly favor paste during the day on Friday but things should fluff up decently Friday evening.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk

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