Chinook

Denver: warmest December since 1933 Fort Collins: record warmest December

So I guess this is the best storm Toronto has had in a decade. I'm not sure what any Canadian posters may have to say about this. I can't remember them ever boasting about 9.6" in the entire time AmericanWX has existed. and other storm reports of 6"-14.5" near Cleveland, 10"-20" by South Bend

This must be like 1/4 mile visibility, 1" per hour at downtown Cleveland now

It was above freezing not too long ago

no alerts for Toronto. What are they thinking?

the most exciting page of any book 10" is light blue, 20" purple, 30" red

my area got to 61 before sunrise, breaking a record of 59

wintertime deluge of rain

snapshot of some (not all) storm reports in a couple hour time frame. 10-12" at Colorado Springs (5-10" in Colorado Springs on CoCoRAHS as of this morning)

no watches/advisories for most areas

10"-20" in 14 days is a lot. It's above the annual rainfall of Colorado every state other than California and North Dakota has drought.

freezing rain/rain at Toronto

1976-1977 was of course as you mentioned extremely dry for the western USA, and also quite cold and snowy for the Northeast/Great Lakes. This may have been a time when great long-range weather forecaster Namias started noticing the link between El Nino, Pacific SST anomalies, and huge changes in the USA's weather systems. I think this paper says that no low pressure areas tracked through the ridge (at all) around the West Coast. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/106/3/1520-0493_1978_106_0279_mcotna_2_0_co_2.xml

I've always thought TDWRs (range of 50 miles/45 nautical miles) aren't too helpful with light precipitation, but radar composite type maps are better.

I thought my place had been chilly for December, but Fairbanks Alaska had -22.8 as the average