12/09 - SNOW STORM: GREAT LAKES

[Dan Cook]

Snow pics from here:

http://www.midwestchasing.com/gallery/thum...ils.php?album=1

Still going at a pretty good rate.

 

[B Ozanne]

Breaking News: Looks like a weather related crash at Midway Airport in Chicago! Plane crash I should say. All passengers reported safe, not sure about people on the ground though.

 

[Robert Dewey]

The 00Z and 01Z RUC continue to bring good vertical velocity through southern lower MI between 06Z and 09Z (or I should say better vertical velocities) - on the order of 15-20 ubars. Model QPF still on the order of 0.50 inches or a touch higher in some areas.

On the national NEXRAD loop, echoes appear to be weakening between IWX and CLE, but I think that's because there is such a wide gap between radars. Looking at the long range base reflectivity for KCLE, KIWX, and KILN shows what appears to be cellular or possibly convective precipitation. In fact, I can see what appears to be "waves" of heavy precipitation (could it be gravity waves?) on KILN and KIND. All of this precipitation appears to be rotating northward into lower MI... We shall see what happens.

As of now, southwest lower MI appears to be getting the brunt of the action with pretty high reflectivities and decent banding.

 

[Joel Wright]

The last of the snow is winding down here now. We picked up about 4.5-5" here today, which kind of surprised me. When I left for work things weren't looking too good, but apparently things came together better. Portions of Chicago have already had over 8" with snow still coming down heavily. Some areas of the city may get close to a foot.

It's pretty neat right now, the moon is dimly visible through the falling snow, with a snowpack of 7-8" now.... 8)

 

[Chris Hayes]

Well, as usual, a dry slot moved in and cut off my snow early :cry: They were forecasting 3-5". Ohio doesn't have big snowstorms anymore, a dry slot always cuts it off real early. :x

 

[Caleb Lawrence]

Got about 5-6 inches here, with 10 inches in some places (at least I plowed through as much on this one road, and there was hardly any wind). Drifting is beginning to take place right now.

Around 11:30pm:

 

[Robert Dewey]

Well, I would say that was a decent snowstorm considering the time of year, and the fact that my area usually doesn't get a +4 inch snowstorm until AFTER Christmas.

My prediction of 5-8 inches with locally higher amounts seemed to verify... I really didn't expect that the heaviest band of snow to extend into southwestern lower MI though. Looking back at the data, the FSL RUC actually did the best job and captured a somewhat further northwest system / snowband at 36-48 hours out. The NAM also did a very good job at showing the very heavy snow band around 06Z, but the 3HR timesteps were too big as that band only lasted for an hour or two.

This system really could of put out some high snow amounts if it would have just moved slower. It seems like the snow was in and out in about 3-4 hours (at least around here), and the burst of best dynamics only lasted about 3-4 hours at best (producing 2 inches per hour).

Here are some snow maps for MI:

GRR: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/grr/snowmap/
DTX: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/display_event....now200512091024