Thundersnow12

6z NAM and Nest are very snowy for most of northern Illinois, including a good chunk of Chicago metro. Wow.

18z NAM takes a hard jump into the Euro camp

One of my favorite events for sure

12z Euro goes to pound town across northern Illinois and Chicago metro with early intiail onset band

6z Euro bumped SE again from 0z run. Nice early weenie band with initial advection/fronto snows Wednesday morning into western Chi metro.

Some serious big dogs

Deepens 24mb in 12 hours lol 1002mb nw IN Thursday evening to 978mb Fri morning over far nrn MI

North of DBQ ends up the jackpot zone with 20" between both systems. Half inch for ORD. A nice nickel and dimer

GEFS mean and members look like they made a small jump to the Euro camp and as posted, the 12z GEM jumped more towards the Euro.

2-5" swath verbatim from STL to Chi metro

Hot look

Euro crushes parts of IA/MN with a blizzard before Halloween and probably severe with upper 60 dews getting into srn IL and north of the OH River.

12z GFS with first sticking snow day before Halloween

Weird looking at GEFS member snow accumulations this early in the season

Has been some very interesting GEFS members the last 36 hours or so

https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/winter-outlook-warmer-than-average-for-many-wetter-in-north

Where is the winter discussion thread?

Ended up with a total of 4.5" Winter total of 42.5"

Welp, already up to 1.6” here as of 20 mins ago. That last batch was extremely impressive and pushed the heaviest rates of the season.

I already had 0.7” at 7am from that initial wave of moderate heavy snow which is a good head start. LOT, DVN, and DMX radar loops all look pretty solid right now. Starting to think this is an overachiever across some portions of this area. Good radar returns about to come back into parts of western metro and nice uptick looping DVN. Latest hi res continues to suggest widespread 4-5” with higher amounts across far northeast IL from added lake enhancement/lake effect.

To me it looks like it'll continue fairly active the rest of this much and into the first few weeks of March as well along with a cold air supply by to the north to keep things interesting for the snow lovers. The storm track will depend on the strength/placement of the SE ridge and we could see several big systems/cutters between now and the middle of March. After that, it does look like we'll see a turn to a more widespread mild pattern.

Model guidance, including hi res guidance has continued to struggle/waffle back and forth with the low level dry air across portions of northern Illinois. The most drastic runs were the extended HRRR/RAP runs yesterday along with many NAM runs as well. The last two GFS runs 0/6z have both trended a bit snowier and the 6z NAM and nest came in snowier as well (mainly talking for north central/northeast Illinois). To add to those models, the 9z RAP trended much snowier across a large portion of northern Illinois, including the Chicago metro area with 4-5" for DKB/ARR/DPA/ORD. If these higher amounts of 3-4" locally 5" across northeast Illinois/Chicago metro area end up verifying, this will be a big win for solely the RGEM which has held steady for many runs now showing those amounts. It is always interesting to watch setups like these with fairly good WAA and enough forcing run into dry easterly flow at the surface and what ends up winning out. The last few HRRR runs has trended toward the new guidance as well and is a bit snowier.

My apologizes for killing this event

I disagree. The cold front sweeps into the GOM early-mid week but it does become wide open for business pretty quickly as the high moves off the SE coast allowing for favorable trajectories. There is an impressive baroclinic zone being modeled, very warm 850s to the south of the front and PWATs well over an inch get into the southern Midwest and dews in the mid 50s advect up the Mississippi River.

Haven’t started a thread in years it seems like so figured why not. I am almost more interested in this system over the early week system given the ceiling for this one looks to be much higher with a lot of potential. Model guidance been showing this system for a few days now in some fashion and 0z runs so far took it up a notch. Obviously a lot to work out but the baroclinic zone ahead of this potentially ejecting wave looks very impressive as modeled currently. I did a write up for ISC this past Tuesday about this pattern potentially being very active and snowy so it’s nice to see models latching onto ideas of bigger systems. http://www.illinoisstormchasers.com/forecasts/middle-of-february-could-turn-very-active-with-multiple-snow-systems-potentially-affecting-illinois