roardog

The problem with using lake ice as a gauge for winter temperatures is that a mild December will make for late ice thickness no matter what the rest of the winter brings. You could have a mild December and frigid January and February and the thick ice will still be late coming on. There’s been a lot of mild December’s in the past 10 years. I can think of 2011,2012,2014,2015 along with the last 3 December’s. The other point is that if you take an inland lake like Houghton Lake and you have a cold December then by January 1st, the ice will be plenty thick enough for winter activities. If that cold December is followed by a “mild” January and February, the ice will still remain thick enough for outdoor activities because unless it’s an extreme situation, a “mild” January at Houghton Lake isn’t going to melt ice that is already thick. I’ll bet the ice there was very thick after the cold December and early January of 2017-2018. I’ll also bet that when the very mild 2nd half of January and mild February came, that the ice was still thick enough to go on because of the early season cold. So, that winter would be remembered as a good winter for ice on the lake even though half of the winter was mild. One could argue that December’s have been milder due to less early season cold available with less sea ice in the Arctic but I have a hard time with that because when the pattern supports cold(2017 for example) it can be very cold as we saw that year. In the end, I think the mild December’s have been more of a product of the shift to warmer waters in the North Pacific that occurred around 2012. I think that’s also a reason for the quieter severe weather seasons overall since then as well but that’s a discussion for another time.

If you watch the extended 2M temperature anomalies on a regular basis, you will see they have a huge warm bias on all of the models. Maybe in a mild pattern they might be ok but in a cold pattern, they’re always terrible. The models seem to do much better with the 850mb temp anomalies. I love it when it forecasts a cold source region, well below normal 850 temp anomalies and above normal 2M temps. lol

I would take a rainy, stormy look to the models over the pattern we've had this past weekend and will have thru mid week. If it's a stormy pattern in December, there's a good chance to run into an accumulating snow, especially up here.

Bastardi was saying that many of the members from the weeklies were taking the MJO into 5 and 6. So it makes sense that they were so ugly for much of the country.

Did he take a turn for the worse? I thought he was doing better during the summer.

The snow COULD be heavy at times? With 91-97 inches in one night, I would say it would have to be heavy all night.

Strep throat? I’ve had those symptoms with strep throat before. One way to tell the difference between a sore throat from strep throat and from other illnesses such as a cold is with strep you won’t get any kind of congestion in your nose/lungs. I learned that tidbit from a doctor one time when I had it about 20 years ago.

I do know that I’ll take my chances with a La Niña over an El Niño in this area any day.

So if a city has temps in the 90s or even 100F then it snows a couple of days later, do you think warm ground will be a problem for accumulations? People in our region get worried when it is 40F the day before. lol

When was the last time the region had a September with below normal temps? 2012? It feels like it's been awhile.

They don’t have a precip map as far as I can see, just a percentage of normal snowfall map. Basically the 100% of normal line is along Lake Michigan, so anywhere east of that has below normal snowfall. They have a pocket of less than 75% of normal snowfall around the mid Atlantic region. In other words, our area all the way east into New England is between 75 and 100 percent of normal snowfall.

Apparently testing was way up, which is a good thing. Positivity rate was only 3.1% which is actually below the 7 day average.

Something that I’ve noticed here this summer is that there’s been an unusually low amount of thunder and lightning. Even when we’ve had convection, there hasn’t been much thunder and lightning with it. Usually with a hot summer, you get a good amount of lightning. Anyone else notice that?

I wonder if in a place like Buffalo, if you need a warm June to get a record July. If you had a cool June and Lake Erie wasn’t so warm I think it would be much harder to get that record.

Without looking up the data, it doesn’t seem like it’s been dry around here. The early 2010s had some dryness(especially 2012) but it doesn’t seem like it’s been very dry the past several summers. Again, this is without looking up the actual data.

Alcohol withdrawal can be serious but so can getting the low paid cashier at the store infected with Covid-19 from the customer that couldn’t go without his whiskey since a liquor store is essential.

I’m all for non essential businesses and outings being closed. So, let’s then have all non essential businesses and outings actually closed. Lottery essential? lol. Liquor stores essential? Even bigger lol. Do we really even need fast food drive thru open?

I guess I should have read the original post more clearly. It’s for the city of Champaign. That is crazy stuff though.

So what law did Illinois pass? I can’t seem to find info on it.

Are the residents of Winnipeg jealous of you Toronto folks in the Spring with your "warm" weather? lol

I liked it better about 12 or 13 years ago when everything trended NW and stronger. It was exciting because someone ended up with big totals at the last minute. Now, the area the gets the jackpot ends up with a couple of inches. lol. I can’t wait for someone to be in an enhanced severe weather area this Spring only to end up with a 45 degree steady rain. lol

Most here should be in good shape for some snow once the storm inevitably trends south/weaker.

It looks like we haven’t had a PDO reading that negative since 2013. That’s probably a sign that things are changing in the Pacific.

Still couldn’t get the yellow orb here. Only made it to about 40F.

Do you think another weak Nino/warm neutral year is coming?