OHweather

The squalls didn’t disappoint, at least where I’m at. Slept through a good portion of it, but it was nearly a whiteout when I looked outside and it looks like I’ve gotten 2-3” of new snow since 6pm.

There was definitely more freezing drizzle and less snow than hoped this morning. Upstream honestly looks a little underwhelming, but there’s still a bit of time for stuff to pick up before the front gets here.

Recently tallied up my seasonal snowfall, and I'm sitting at 67" to date. Last season, I had 68" all winter. Friday's system looks like a nice refresher of the snowpack. It's more of a lobe of the polar vortex than a regular clipper...there will be synoptic snow in the warm advection ahead of the system Friday morning and afternoon, which looks like a quick 1-3". The more dynamic portion will be Friday evening/night, when an Arctic front pushes through. That should bring a nice burst of lake-enhanced snow (looking at satellite, the ice is still somewhat lose and has cracks, so there should be a limited flux from the lake), along with rapidly falling temperatures and strong wind gusts. It'll only last a few hours, but conditions will be quite harsh along and just behind the front Friday evening. Some limited lake effect lingers Friday night into early Saturday. The snow Friday evening through early Saturday probably adds a variable accumulation of 1-4" to most of the area downwind of Lake Erie, pushing event totals into a 3-6" type range.

After getting a little over 7" of synoptic snow through Sunday evening, got a little over 3" of LES overnight Sunday night through Monday. Event total of 10.4". Today, had about a two hour period of light to moderate snow late morning, followed by two pretty decent snow squalls in the early evening. Another 2.2". What a stretch of cold and snow! Could use a little warm up soon though for sure!

The strongest lift was focused above the preferred dendritic growth zone (DGZ) for most of the storm…so flakes were forming in a part of the atmosphere that was too cold for good crystal growth. It seemed like there were bands of higher ratios across parts of NW OH, and then down towards central OH ENE towards YNG, with lower ratios in between. It’s not uncommon to get bands of higher/lower ratios based on where better banding sets up, and is not easy to predict ahead of time unfortunately.

The fluffy lake enhanced snow last night into this morning has been a nice bonus…I was a little over 7” for the synoptic snow, but was at a running total of 9.6” this morning after the overnight lake enhanced stuff. A few spots may add 2-4” of fluff today. The lake enhanced snow will make most of the totals look nicer in the metro area.

Fluffy/efficient lake effect processes occurring beneath/within a broader synoptic snow are basically magic in terms of getting good snow, but it’s rarely organized into a firehose like what’s been going into Toronto.

Glad the lake effect came through for the Chicago folks!

Yeah I’ve been underwhelmed by this in the Cleveland area. I’m at 6” or so right now…one more better band to swing through the next few hours then it’s down to off and on lingering lighter stuff through Monday. The drive in this morning was pretty bad, the drive home was not any worse, so it just wasn’t snowing much during the day at times. The snow to liquid ratios at some of the airports through 1 PM was near or only a little over 10:1, so I think the big issue was we needed ratios to come through for bigger totals and we largely have struggled to make good flakes most of the storm. Overall it’s still a warning level snow in what’s been a cold and snowy stretch, but am a little bummed that despite last minute upticks in guidance until pretty much hour 0 we’re finding a way to come in on the disappointing side around here. Par the course for synoptic snows I guess. The Canton and Youngstown areas have or will clear a foot, so it was close.

Even though the lake effect affecting the southwestern shoreline of Lake Michigan tonight into Sunday is rather shallow, forecast soundings within it depict strong low-level instability with lift maximizing in the DGZ. Supportive of relatively intense and very fluffy/high ratio lake effect. If the band can sit over an area for several hours...which may be possible somewhere over NE IL or far SE WI within a few miles of the lake...there's definitely local overperformance potential into the 6" range.

Everything seems to be lining up for this to be a pretty epic storm for Ohio, with almost the entire state seeing 6"+ and a thick swath of 12-18" looking likely. All models really locking in today, the only question is how quickly mixing punches into SE OH. This will definitely be the biggest snow for the state (overall) since the February 5-6, 2010 storm and will not be far off from that one.

Good trends today, slightly more amped and a bit more QPF across northern Ohio. I’d go 9-14” across all of Northeast OH (best shot for a foot plus appears to be Akron-Canton over towards Youngstown), tapering a bit (let’s say 7-11”) towards Sandusky and a bit less but still solid (6-10”) towards Toledo. There may still be a fairly sharp gradient between double digit amounts and amounts closer to 6” somewhere between the I-71 corridor and NW Ohio, though I think everyone a little further E/SE is in great shape for the biggest synoptic snow since at least early 2022.

Yeah that seems like a fair bare minimum. To their credit, they’ve realized that the FV3 core the GFS/RRFS currently run on won’t work, and the next version of the RRFS will be run on an MPAS core. Early indications are that will be much better. With that said, that they’ve decided to still move ahead with making the RRFS/REFS operational and turning off the NAM and several other models that go into the HREF while the RRFS still is running on the shitty model core that they’ve acknowledged they need to replace is certainly a choice.

RRFS is cheeks Although NAM is also cheeks in its own ways Feels like a one step forward one step backward kind of tradeoff (although turning off most of the HREF members and going to the REFS is an additional step backwards IMO)

A model's QPF does in theory take into account things like low-level RH and if precip will make it to the ground, but some models struggle more with it than others. We don't assume a static snow ratio...the NWS snow forecast largely comes from taking QPF (which is usually a blend of many models and ensemble members...outside of lake effect situations) and snow ratios (which do adjust based on the modeled temperature/moisture/lift profile, but certainly can be wrong at times) and multiplying them (more complicated calculations come into play with mixed precip or temps above freezing, which isn't the case here). I would say the CLE snow forecast has been a bit more conservative compared to some model output, but there are enough ensemble members that don't have as much QPF up here that that's likely why the forecast hasn't been as aggressive as say the last several Euro runs.