12/11-12/13 FCST Midwest

[Donovan Gruner]

I went up near the Illinois/Wisconsin border this afternoon to check things out, and it was pretty brutal. Winds were sustained around 30-35 mph, and gusts were occasionally reaching 45-50mph. Here's a few shots I took before getting my car stuck in a 4 foot deep snow drift...

 

[George Widener]

Was pretty crazy here...picked up close to 12" by my best attempt at measuring. Kind of hard to do with all the blowing and drifting. Had a 37" drift in front of my garage, and about the same in front of the house. I've been through many winter storms here in Wisconsin and this had to have been one of the windiest I can remember. Temps are now plunging and icing everything up.
From what I have read the conditions were really bad once you got out of the city and into the rural areas, many roads were closed and impassible. Even in the city, I took my wife to work this morning and we were busting through 2-3' drifts.
Crazy...

 

[Bryan_Knitter]

Pretty much a dud here as well. I measured an average of 2.5 inches outside of my apartment. Highest drift I found was 8 inches. The wind is wicked though... 28.4 mph sustained measured on my kestrel, gusts just over 40, but there's a ton of buildings around here.

 

[John Vandehei]

Didn't see it in any of the obs, but there must of been some freezing rain in the Battle Creek, Michigan area. Couldn't figure out why most of the schools in Calhoun County were closing, while here in Kalamazoo County (next county to the west), schools stayed open. On my way to work (live in Kalamazoo County - work in Calhoun County), noticed that the trees have the telltale glaze covering as I got near Battle Creek. Probably less than three inches of snow here. But with the initial wet snow, flash freezing due to rapidly falling temps and maybe some ZR, roads remain quite slick here. Not much drifting. Biggest snow drift I saw was maybe 12 inches on the downwind side of my house.

 

[rdale]

There was no ZR yesterday - the column was way too cold. Just a lot of wet roads turning to white roads combined with plenty of blowing and drifting.

 

[Robert Dewey]

Yep, we cooled from the top down early yesterday morning. In fact, it was snowing at 34F as the freezing level crashed. Surface didn't get AOB 32F until after noon.

That dry slot which surged northward knocked about 2-3 inches off of what I expected at my location and pushed my "10 inch" forecast further north. As far as I can tell, the north side of my prediction verified quite well (not counting any lake contributions), I was perhaps about 30-40 miles too south on the west end near MPX.

 

[John Vandehei]

There was no ZR yesterday - the column was way too cold. Just a lot of wet roads turning to white roads combined with plenty of blowing and drifting.

You may be right. Usually in a rain to snow transition, the trees don't glaze up like they did overnight. The water tends to run down the trunk and branches and the ice will tend to form at the tips of the branches (or at the end of pine needles or any remaining leaves). The temperature drop was likely so rapid that that the water on the trees froze right where it was, giving it the freezing rain glazed appearance.