michsnowfreak

That is a cool website. I personally have compiled things like that for Detroit but it's very rare to see a national weather service compile that much detail of stats, let alone the dnr. I just used Xmacis and it calculated the data from 1900 to 2020 period I do not have snow cover data for Minneapolis from 1884 to 1900. I like Xmacis because as long as there is no missing data you can get the exact averages of whatever your looking for, no quality control or anything. The bottom line is, 88 or 100 days it really does not matter, for a snow cover lover Minneapolis is one of the best metros to live in in this sub. Considering the long term average is only 6" more snowfall than Detroit but 38 more days of 1" snow cover, I would say Minneapolis does an excellent job of making their snow last.

MKE averages 60 days per season of 1"+ snowcover. The most was 117 days in 1978-79 and the least 17 days in 1953-54. Side note....its crazy how many anemic winters there were in the 1930s-50s in this region. I've said it many times regarding Detroit but as I look at other areas I see a lot of the same. Whether it was warm winters, low snow winters, or both, some of them were terrible everywhere, while others were bad in some spots and serviceable in others. There were a few good region wide winters thrown in there but they were few and far between during that era.

I am terrible at reading those type of maps for what they mean at the surface but I know extended runs have definitely shown a lot of abnormal cold in Canada for February. Someone mentioned that the split polar vortex cold will now be on our side of the globe in February where currently it's on the other side. Take it all for what it's worth and we all know how bad LR models can be but honestly February does not have a bad look for being a wintry month in our sub. If it does get very cold hopefully we can get into a clippery pattern and the ice fisherman can have their fun but I have a feeling that what some to our Southeast considerate "dumpster fire" could actually mean less cold with lots of storminess in our neck of the woods. Anomalous cold is not as important up here as it is down there for snowstorms.

As mentioned above, I am not sure though 100 number comes from everything I looked at showed an average of 88 days for Minneapolis. Obviously it's still double Chicago. As for 2014, im shocked the snow depth with that low in Chicago. I know others have complained about measuring at ORD, I wonder if it was too low? Detroit spent the entire months of both Feb 2014 and Feb 2015 with double digit depth. Each year it lingered well into March as well.

Snowy night here as well

Wouldnt the negative NAO also make liquid precipitation less likely? Still 5 days out and a lot of model runs to go.

The average for Minneapolis looks to be 88 snow cover days per season (1"+). The record is 137 days set twice, in 1964-65 and 2000-01. The record least amount is 26 days in 1930-31. At Chicago the average snow cover days per season is 43. The record is 98 days set in 1978-79 and the record low is 9 days set in 1948-49. At Detroit the average snow cover days per season is 50. The record is 96 days set in 2013-14 and the record low is 10 days set in 1936-37. Note that these are days with 1" or more of snow cover. This does not include days where trace of snow cover is reported, which adds quite a few additional days for each location per season

it seems like this could either help or hurt lol

Don't have my averages right here, but since 2007-08 Detroit is Dec: 9.7" (less than 1" more than avg) Jan: 14.7" (approx 4" more than avg) Feb: 17.8" (approx 8" more than avg)

I can definitely look up some past stuff once you start the thread.

Snowcover over a foot is generally rare though we had it in 5 of the 10 winters between 2009-2018. Another example of those good times for me.

This will change some, but here in the land of clouds check out the difference in departure between high and low temps this Jan. DTW max +4.4 min +9.0 ORD max +4.3 min+10.8 CLE max +3.4 min+7.7 BUF max +5.0 min+10.7 MQT max +8.5 min +14.2

No question Feb has been our big month but Jan had been pretty solid the last 15 years mostly. December has been very hit or miss, some big hits and big misses. This is easily been the most boring stretch of Winter in my memory. Has it happened before? Yes. However Not since I started following Winter weather patterns. It's not warm, it's not cold, there is no Sun. It's just stagnant with occasional flakes. The last thing you'd expect in a nina.

I don't disagree. For instance, December saw average snowfall due to several systems but we could not keep it on the ground more than 3 or 4 days each time. Had it not been for the fact that a couple of them were perfectly timed (Dec 16th when I had an outdoor Christmas event in a driving snow, and a perfect Christmas snowstorm), I would have easily traded my pattern with cyclone or some of Chicago's NW burbs, taking less snowfall in exchange for a period of sustained white. Everything is relative. I remember multiple times back in our glory days when local snow weenies would complain if a storm busted despite the fact there was over a foot of snow on the ground. In a zzzz pattern like this a 2" solid snow cover would make a snow weenie happy lol our last double digit snowstorm was Dec 11, 2016, though to be fair we missed double digits by a few tenths of an inch Feb 11, 2018 and again Nov 11, 2019.

This is over reaction after a few mild winters. Winters in Detroit have barely warmed the last 100 years. Yea they've warmed since the 70s...just like in the 70s one could definitely say winters are getting colder because they were. Long term....summers are warming more noticeably in the Lakes than winters. Have a safe trip. Im very confused at this last paragraph though. We've had some excellent Decembers and Januarys the past 15 years. As posted in another thread, Detroit has seen an accumulated total excess of around 102 inches of snow the past 15 winters. That comes out to 6.8 inch average more than normal the past 15 years. its not all been February lol. Look at winter temp trends the past 100 years. Looks a lot different when you don't use the 1970s as baseline.

Oh wow I did not realize that 1" is your greatest depth all season? Our greatest depth was 4" on December 1st, But we also had 3" on December 2nd and 3rd, 3" on December 17th, and 3" on Dec 26-27.

This is a GREAT idea. How much snow cover have you had? On guessing just 1 or 2"? Not sure where in the area you live but my brother who lives right in the city has just had a few coatings-1" that seemed to melt the same day. he did have a few inches with that dec event but said it didn't last.

Thanks for the suggestion! I have a lilac bush I'm getting rid of in the Spring. I was torn on putting another kind of conifer or sugar Maple in its place. I love sugar maples in the fall but I may go with this. Right now I have noble fir (mature) white pine (young) Norway spruce (young) blue spruce (baby) balsam fir (baby, it was the one "not pictured" in my Christmas pic a few posts back). Neighbor has a nice stand of 3 white pines too. I do have two crimson maples out front so I'm not ALL boreal lol.

This is no joke. Last Winter Chicago had a white Halloween, and Detroit had a white mothers day. It was the very end of mothers day but it still counted lol.

Thanks. and wow thats awesome. I don't recall seeing a tree like that .

i would definitely not call it a trend yet, but I also mentioned recently how since our epic winter stretch ended in 2015, winters actually seem to be getting longer from start to finish with a way too long period of weak sauce during the meat of winter. Different areas of the sub have received several October and may snowfalls in recent years.

DTW had heavy snow to 1/8 mile on April 17th and snow on 5 days in May last year. id do it again

hell yes! I'm working on getting a little boreal forest in my backyard. I have one big fir and then smaller spruces and pines I've recently planted. Took these pics on Christmas. have one more not pictured

Theres always room for pessimism but I will leave that to the usual pessimists. A few things to remember especially as we've been stuck in this stagnant pattern for so long. We do not need a map to be full of blues to get snow in midwinter. It's about that time for the annual sun angle comments to laughingly start but like it or not, February has been a better snow month for this region than December for a while now. The euro weeklies looked decent to me. A few things that interest me... the signal for above average precipitation in February. This is seen not only on the euro weeklies but especially on the cfs. The cfs temperature scheme changes rapidly run to run but its wet look is pretty consistent. Another thing to note is when you look at certain runs of the cfs or euro weeklies, including their control runs, some of them show very impressive cold later into February, whether it stays North of the border or dives down into the heart of the US. Before everyone carries on with the it's always 10 days away mantra, if you recall for the longest time Canada was an inferno on those maps run after run so at the very least a source of real cold seems to be getting closer. I mean the models have been terrible in every sense of the word but still, if we're going to look at them, it's not a bad look.

Even though it's low skill range the euro weeklies for February seem to have a little less nino and a little more Nina look with warm to the South and cold to the North. Our sub for the most part looks pretty average temp wise with some periods of active weather.