The lake effect machine could be running at full throttle late next week around here. Water temp at mid-lake of Lake Michigan is in the low 40's. It's the one positive of a warm January.
Euro and GFS all have a signal for a potential snowstorm somewhere in the Great Lakes area next Thursday. There's nothing else track-worthy so I'm all in on this one.
The point is few, if any, meteorologists are going to start making predictions that it's going to snow without some kind of model consensus. Even here a thread was started once there was some consensus among the models.
Two days ago the GFS was also showing a decent ice storm across I-80 in Indiana and Illinois. Good thing mets didn't sound the alarm about that because it's long gone now. They waited to see if there would be model consensus. Shocking concept!
I'd give it a B+ here. We've really only had two events (a week of lake-effect in November and the Christmas lake-effect blizzard) but they were both great events here. We're 15" above average for snowfall for this time of year. I'd give it an "A" but it's been painfully boring and cloudy between the big events. At least the sun is out today.
Interesting to see such low totals in these parts compared to the previous map. I believe at one point the average snowfall in South Bend was near 70" per year. The data I can find now shows it is 62.5" per year. I wonder if that number will drop again with this latest release.
We ended up with around 6 inches of snow. Blizzard conditions subsided late Saturday morning. Got on the road for the Chicago suburbs for Christmas yesterday evening. It was slow going until about Lake County, IN then it was fine.
Guess I'll start posting in here since we're in the lake-effect portion of the storm locally. Snow has eased but should get a boost with the wave currently moving down the lake around Green Bay.
Blizzard Warning has verified here. The drive into work was horrible. Occasional white out conditions with visibility around 1/4 mile or less the entire way. Roads are a disaster. Would not recommend.