Hoosier

Meanwhile I can't even get an advisory. Although I suspect one may be coming eventually because the pm commute tomorrow looks a little dicey with the snow/wind/falling temps.

Full run I obviously think the lake effect depiction into northwest Indiana is overdone, and it's been something that the HRRR has struggled with more often than not. But in an overall sense, the warm stretch that we've been in will help to give some boost to the lake effect compared to what it would otherwise be with this same airmass. This airmass with more typical lake temps would have delta T values peaking around 16-17C, but it will be more like 19-20C instead.

18z HRRR is absolute hammertime with lake effect around here as a well organized band stalls out. Haha

I don't necessarily buy it, but the 18z RAP extrapolated would be virtually all snow for Chicago.

I assure you that we're in mid February

That's actually a pretty good look. No guarantees but you'd roll the dice.

This is one of the rare times that I'm not even attempting a precip type call for my backyard for tomorrow morning into the afternoon. So good luck to the NWS. I do think there will be enough snow to accumulate. And then the lake effect aspect could get a bit interesting, but the main focus of that may end up farther east.

Wouldn't normally say this, but it seems like the sleet could pose a bigger travel impact than freezing rain in the LOT cwa. I'm just skeptical about how icy the roads can get from freezing rain after it's been this mild. Sleet is icy from the get go, so can imagine that creating a slippery layer right away. Now as temps drop throughout Thursday, then could start to get slippery roads basically cwa wide as any leftover moisture begins to freeze.

Kinda gusty tonight

Different situation than what the 00z NAM is advertising. It has like a half inch of precip in 3 hours in some areas. A good amount of that wouldn't freeze, especially since temps are marginal.

The freezing rain accumulation map does have quite a bit, yes. Posting that map would be a good way to freak out the general public lol. In reality, there's no way that much ice would actually accrete because the rates are too heavy.

Nice of it to finally start to wake up.

That's another thing. It took like 4 days until her taste/smell was affected, so it was not one of the first symptoms. I've somehow avoided covid so far, at least to the best of my knowledge. Last booster was at the end of 2021. I have some minor autoimmune stuff that I take supplements for, and I dialed that in even more since covid began. Maybe that's been playing a role but I'm sure my luck will run out sometime.

I think Baum ran the 21z RAP out of his basement.

BFF February As in big fat fail. So far.

That's 7 am central/8 am eastern time, which is usually a temporal dead zone for severe weather in this region of the country. Usually.

Still wildly apart on the 18z runs. Both are probably easy tosses, as they say.

Somebody stop me... but I'm actually getting just a little bullish on this one especially in the northern 1/2 or so of the metro. It appears like there will be a period of decent rates and temps may fall below 30 during that time. This would help to counteract the recent warmth. I could imagine advisory snowfall amounts south of where LOT currently has the watch.

You still rolling with DAB?

A little tricky on the ptype forecast/placement, but there's certainly a non-zero chance that somewhere in Chicago metro gets a fair bit of icy precip in the form of sleet/zr (this may even be down to I-80). I would assume that any freezing rain would tend to be on colder/elevated surfaces given the mild stretch that we've been in and marginal temps while that precip type is in play.

In other news, my sister got covid a week and a half ago. Had several symptoms, some of which have cleared up, but she's still dealing with considerable fatigue and some taste/smell issues. I know those symptoms can drag on for a long time in a subset of people... hopefully not her. The taste/smell thing sort of surprised me as I had seen that that was a much less common symptom these days. She was never vaccinated though, and I'm not sure if it was something that inherently changed with the virus to make that symptom less likely or if vaccination somehow affected the symptomology and made it less likely on the whole.

Quite the laughable difference between the GFS and NAM.

It's pretty remarkable how little attention that story is getting.

By this winter's standards, there's a decent airmass dumping in on the tail end and behind this storm. With lake temps running above average, could get a respectable lake response for a time especially in IN/MI.