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Jan 11-13th Blizzard


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Just now, RCNYILWX said:

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.

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Many thanks! I really appreciate your insight. 10 wind driven inches and vodka cold following makes for a helluva weekend. But, if you see a truck with Maryland plates stuck on 90, uh remember me lol.

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1 hour 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.

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Hi, first time long time. What speeds do you think you'll reach on the road driving into LOT on snowy surfaces and will it be a repeat of the other afternoon with large parachutes falling from the sky under 35-40dbz but struggling to accumulate? Thanks, I'll hang up and listen.  

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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. 
Thanks for the good feedback on the AFD! Tried something different there with the more limited amount of time I had. Glad to share insight on here over the years too. As far as school Friday, always tough to say how they'll handle the Friday morning part with the more marginal temps.

With it being the last day of the school week I guess I wouldn't be surprised at a snow day, or early release even, because things should get more hairy in the afternoon like they did yesterday. Then they have to account for everyone getting home safely, including teachers who might live farther out. There does seem to be less of a break than yesterday did before the ramp up 11am-4pm, and with a warning pretty likely to be in effect.

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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?
I think even more than the temps, the Rockford area was plagued by subsidence holes yesterday between the prominent banding associated with the 700 mb deformation (eastern IA to far NW IL and SW WI) and the band that set up just north of the 850 mb low track and dry slot and hit parts of the interior metro hard. When you have marginal temps and subsidence, it's a recipe for an underperformer.

As things stand now, I think the RFD area is in a better spot to avoid that but too early to call, since mesoscale banding is one of the tougher things to pin down, especially at this range of the forecast when the system track is still in flux a bit. Then Friday evening, should still be enough forcing on the back side to wring out as much as a 0.2" QPF while ratios greatly improve.

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1 minute ago, RCNYILWX said:

I think even more than the temps, the Rockford area was plagued by subsidence holes yesterday between the prominent banding associated with the 700 mb deformation (eastern IA to far NW IL and SW WI) and the band that set up just north of the 850 mb low track and dry slot and hit parts of the interior metro hard. When you have marginal temps and subsidence, it's a recipe for an underperformer.

As things stand now, I think the RFD area is in a better spot to avoid that but too early to call, since mesoscale banding is one of the tougher things to pin down, especially at this range of the forecast when the system track is still in flux a bit. Then Friday evening, should still be enough forcing on the back side to wring out as much as a 0.2" QPF while ratios greatly improve.

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If you had to guess precip amounts for downtown what do you think is your call and could that change tomorrow based on future runs of the models or are you pretty set ? 

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So north of I80 and near the shore like downtown you are predicting around 5inches which could be on the high side? 
Here's the raw storm total forecast output, available at: https://www.weather.gov/lot/winter . The dark blue is 4-6", the light yellow is 6-8", orange is 8-12" and the darker orange is 12-18", in this case between 12-13".

For watch purposes today, was okay with this, but certainly might be too broad brushed and how far inland the marine influence extends is a challenging aspect of the forecast. ec24b9ea1cb5394eac5218965b2d9b78.jpg

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2 hours 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.

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What's LOTs thoughts on pinapple on pizza?

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34 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

Here's the raw storm total forecast output, available at: https://www.weather.gov/lot/winter . The dark blue is 4-6", the light yellow is 6-8", orange is 8-12" and the darker orange is 12-18", in this case between 12-13".

For watch purposes today, was okay with this, but certainly might be too broad brushed and how far inland the marine influence extends is a challenging aspect of the forecast. ec24b9ea1cb5394eac5218965b2d9b78.jpg

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Crazy how the lake I assume can reduce amounts and then you go just west a little and you are at 10 inches. That sucks for us near the shore or in downtown. Is there anyway that the shore or downtown can get in that 10 inch range ? 

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5 minutes ago, WeatherMonger said:

I'm just going to go buy about 50lbs of poly fill and stake it down across the front yard.

 

This has been a depressing 8 days of winter.......

I certainly had higher hopes for this pattern but should have known the feet of snow was too good to be true. Ha. 

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Crazy how the lake I assume can reduce amounts and then you go just west a little and you are at 10 inches. That sucks for us near the shore or in downtown. Is there anyway that the shore or downtown can get in that 10 inch range ? 
I'd feel better about it if the lake were colder and the antecedent air mass was 2-4 degrees colder and also colder at 850 mb.

Unfortunately paying for the warm December and dealing with issues more common to early or late season storms.

I'd say if it really rips, the extent of marine influence could be more muted, but if you're along the shore and probably a mile or two inland if not a bit more than that, experience (yesterday, November 25-26 2018, November 2015) tells us that it's gonna be tough to max out accums there.

And as mentioned earlier, including 18z Euro solution, if the 850 mb warm nose temporarily pushes too far north, that'll also make it even tougher to get the higher end accums.



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Crazy how the lake I assume can reduce amounts and then you go just west a little and you are at 10 inches. That sucks for us near the shore or in downtown. Is there anyway that the shore or downtown can get in that 10 inch range ? 

Rapid cooling of Lake Michigan


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