michsnowfreak

One of my favorite snowstorms. 16.7" at DTW.

Expected to wake up to freezing drizzle this morning, instead woke up to 0.3" of snow. Adding a few pennies to the pot.

This is so perfectly said. I always get a kick out of people acting like the Southern Great Lakes or midwest is a bad Winter climate when it really is Wintrier than most places. I think the fact that we do get snow so relatively frequently is what makes a true snowlover thirst for more, and knowing the massive amounts of snow that fall just to our North is tempting. However as someone who goes up North every year (going to Munising Feb 16 - 19), I can definitely tell you that every time I go up there I have an awesome time but I could NEVER live in that isolation. Plus much of the rural north is several decades behind the times.

It looks like it's averaged a bit warmer in Buffalo than here, but still it's been very mild since the 3rd week of December. Neither December or January will show up in the all time warm lists because of the cooler start to December in what looks like a cold end to January. But I'm sure if you take an intra month 30 day period, it's up there. But i always believe the heart of Winter is mid January to mid February, I never consider mid December to mid January the "heart" of Winter. As for rarity, February 2015 is in a very elite minority group (much like march 2012), I have to say this mild stretch does not come close to it, at least here.

Flash freeze

See the above post. Wasnt meant to be taken literally. Although i disagree about the starting later. This year was the earliest bout of deep winter id ever seen...and since then....blahhh.

You missed the point lol. I wasnt comparing it literally (if that was the case, they wouldnt have had so many days with mood flakes). I was just generalizing that having 3 large storms and just some lake action is different than a typical year when we likely would not have had 3 large storms already but in turn would have had many more actual synoptic winter systems.

Storm total at DTW was 2.56" and 0.3" snow. That is a 48 hour total from approximately 4:00 a.m. January 10 to 4:00 a.m. January 12, however the brunt of the storm was January 11th. The calendar day rainfall on January 11th was 2.06", largest on record for any day in January, and this was exactly 2 months to the day after we set our largest November calendar day snowfall for any day at 8.5". Everything is iced over now with a fresh coating of snow. I too received 0.3" of snow at the end however my final precipitation total is estimated as my rain gauge is literally frozen to its stand and I cannot get it to budge to melt the remaining inside (my running total was 2.32 at 5pm yest).

I don't even consider it positivity, it's just realism. I'm NOT happy with the lack of Winter weather recently either, but it's just comical when I read responses or knee jerk reactions to op runs and claims of dispair, when the big picture and reality of weather and climate is so misunderstood by even so many weather hobbyists. Having a true sense of your areas climatological history as I and a few others on here have, is awesome in my opinion. I do know that some posters enjoy our climate posts and others probably get annoyed saying they don't want to hear about climo, yet all it is is stating fact. What I find amusing about the season in SE MI is that we're kind of having an East Coast Winter to be honest. We had a big snowstorm in November 11-12th, a big rainstorm December 29-30th, and a big rainstorm (with a bit of frozen) January 10-12th. All 3 storms were very impressive, especially the November and January storms as they set all time records for their respective months. But outside of those 3 storms, it's been a ton of zzzzs. Don't get me wrong we've had many typical SE MI days of flurries, snow showers, and dustings, but that is going to be impossible to not get living in the Great Lakes. The general picture though has been that of the East Coast climate, and I know you will remember back in the day when we were bombarded with constant nuisance snow falls and i was in my glory, there was a huge contingent here that said they get tired of our constant small snows and want an East Coast type climate. Where are they now lol?

By the way, I'm having a total brain fart. When I was calculating the decade snow around new years, I was doing it for my own Detroit records, but seeing how it was easily the snowiest decade on record, I started to compare to other areas in the Great Lakes and midwest. I ran numbers for quite a few cities, just playing around on xmacis, but did not document them. It may have been Flint not Chicago that was their 2nd snowiest decade, I can't remember. Regardless, as that chart shows, Chicago had above normal snowfall in 7 out of the 10 years of the decade.

Oh, it's been garbage since the start of December. I just meant even if that storm didnt happen, way too early to talk about futility. For what it's worth, 4.8" would rank as 13th least amount of snow on the season to date. The all time lowest to date is 1.1" in 1889-90. As it stands, 2019-20, at 14.0", ranks just below the middle, 63 seasons having less snow to date, 76 having more.

Many winters feature warm spells lol. The 2010s were the snowiest decade on record for Detroit and i believe 2nd snowiest for Chicago. I do remember Toronto had a miriad of misses.

Yeah it was mainly the 1 storm but it stayed on the ground for a record number of days for November. We set records for cold, snowfall, snowdepth and length of snowcover. If you want to play the what if game, you could say "if it wasnt for...." in many winters. Although, even if you completely erased November, it's awfully hard to talk about futility one third of the way thru the snow season.

Actually here, we have not had that many rainy days. Only December 29-30 and now January 10-11, however both of those were very large rainstorms. Otherwise it's been boring with bits of snow since Snowvember.

Storm signal definitely there on all models, which means there's only about 25 model cycles before some amount of clarity is seen.

Not so sure about that, it appears the cold will be widespread.

It goes without saying that cold & active would be the preference, however, even cold, dry and clippery is a massive improvement over what we've had in December and January. After a nice bout of sustained Winter in November, it's been nothing but fleeting cold shots and brief periods of snow which quickly melted. So now that the light is at the end of the tunnel, I am counting down the days lol.

Detroit should break the record for largest Jan precip event, just as they broke the record November 11th for largest November snowstorm. Quite impressive marks for the same season, considering records fo back 146 years.

Hi Don. I pop in from.time to time to read your thoughts! Unless the models fail, tomorrow will be the wettest January day on record for Detroit, after November 11 was our snowiest November day on record. Very impressive to set 2 such records the same season. Records to 1874.

CFS has colder than normal weeks 3, 4, 5, 6 with normal to above normal precipitation. If only its partially correct, some fun times lol

I welcome a cold clippery pattern. Bring it. Thanks for the analysis, we have very few mets in this subforum. Please keep us updated in the coming days and weeks as well!

Red sky in morn...sailor take warn....cant wait til the weekends over lol

Cold clear night last night, starry over the Detroit river

Obviously all the attention is on this weekends storm, but I must say, the long range is starting to look better and better per ensembles (& CFS, tho CFS has been hinting at this for a while). Bring on some more sustained winter, something we have not seen since November. Since then its been brief bouts, ie, yesterday at this time it was in the low 40s, now there is an inch of snow on the ground with temps in the low 20s and wind chills in the single digits, but tomorrow temps will rise to 40 again. Ensembles also look quite active. Hopefully fun times ahead for us all, so sticking with my call of more sustained winter late Jan into Feb.

Backwards winter