michsnowfreak

Snow & Graupel showers all day yesterday. Its amazing how many days snow falls in a Great Lakes climate, even in a subpar winter as this. At only 30.4" we definitely sat on the sidelines this winter, and in fact this is my 24th winter measuring snow and only 3 have had less than this in those 24 years (not that its over for sure)....but yesterday was the 73rd day since October 20ths first flakes that snow has fallen this season. Still some dirty parking lot piles but they are on the way out.

Had a whiteout snow squall this morning. Came out of nowhere. Dropped 0.3" in minutes. There was another snow squall warning but the warned squall was less impressive than the unwarned one lol. Now im headed north for one more trip to see their unusually deep snowpack!

I am as hardcore a winter weenie as they come. Just because i disagree with your grading or your stance on chicago winters doesnt mean im not a huge winter weenie. I love every flake from the first in Oct to the last in Apr. You will never hear me say, like many others do in here, that they like snow but are ready for warmer weather, or that they are at the point of wanting big storm or spring, or that they hope the dirty snow is washed away to start fresh since its getting dirty. And i take a trip north every winter. I still stand by my fact that our region gets more winter than most (here we usually get a bit more snow than chicago but chicago usually a bit colder), but i also love taking my yearly trips north knowing that im a 5 or 6 hour drive away from some of the best winter in this country. And i would love a subforum get together! EDIT- fwiw I see the midatlantic subforum also has a grade thread and they pretty much grade by their climo, at least most of them.

You have good points but also some i disagree with (in a friendly way of course :)). For one, any decoration, coffee mug, etc is showing a winter scene, sort of a snapshot in time; it does not imply any longevity or length of time. I was not fond of this winter at all, but had dozens of days where i saw a courier and ives scene in my own backyard. Any place that has winter gets scenes like that. I am someone who LOVES snow and LOVES Christmas (my absolute favorite time of year), but our culture is very skewed when it comes to that. The deep winter snow scenes start when christmas is everywhere by late October, when even the upper peninsula is often times still bare of snow. We are told Christmases should be white, and then on December 26th bam. Its done. Culture is ready for warmer weather (grossss lol). The reality is Christmas is the FOURTH day of astronomical winter. The dead of winter is a solid month later. I guess we are going way OT. Theres nothing wrong with looking at winter objectively, i just dont understand what the heck the point of grading it is then. I definitely place a lot heavier emphasis on WINTER (ie snowcover) than actual snowstorms, but you have some here who put heavier weight on snowstorms. For example, some would grade a winter that featured two huge snowstorms but had bare ground half the time much higher than a winter that had constant snowcover but no storm over say 5".

Well said and I agree 100%. I don't think its necessarily off topic, just using an example. To use another example, and again I'm not picking on beavis I'm just throwing this out there as an example. He tries to make it sound like Chicago only gets 3 months of the year to see Winter and they never see it the entire 3 months. Well picture someone from the South coming up to spend a year in the southern Great Lakes. They come from a place where a Winter frost or freeze is the top story on the news, now they're staying in a place where the length of time between the 1st and last frost lasts an average of 7 months. The trees are bare for a solid half of the year. Once the 1st snowflakes of the season are seen, the last will not be for another 6 months. And this is not exaggerating, this is just fact and goes to show that objectivity works both ways.

Where did you move from? To each their own with how they judge things, but I guess I just don't understand the objective thing. You may not be as over the top as beavis, as basically his version of objective is a Winter that does not exist outside of the mountains. But without using your climo as a guide, it's a complete free-for-all. I could bring someone from Tennessee up here for an average Winter and they would think they had gone to a world of endless cold and snow. I could bring someone from the keewenaw peninsula down here the same year and they would say, you call this winter? Obviously you had a great winter, but im a bit surprised surpassing 80" smashed a seasonal snow record.

I never like grading this early, but we always discuss grades about this time lol. With several A to A+ winters recently (2013-14, 2014-15, 2017-18)......This winter gets a C here. If we dont see anymore snow (which I HIGHLY doubt), I will be changing to C-, and if we get some big late season snowstorm I will change to C+, but the winter deserves to solidly sit in the C range regardless. Sitting at 30.1", I need another foot to hit avg, so very unlikely, but below is an explanation why it still gets a C. This grade is based soley on what happens weather-wise imby. I do not subtract anything for sitting on the sidelines (like we did this winter) just as I dont add anything when we do better than many surrounding areas (if thats the case, Id be giving unfair kudos to winters that dont deserve them, consider how we lucked out snow-wise in some of the milder winters lately). The good: ~November was snowy. Never saw so many Novembers hours with the snow coming down. ~Jan 19th snowstorm of 6.1" was a good "old fashioned" snowstorm with lots of drifting and sparkling. This was the best storm in what was a snowy second half of Jan. ~Ended up with a 3.9" surprise snowstorm Jan 26/27 when less than 1" was forecast. A 3.2" snowstorm followed on its heals 2 days later as a welcome to the historic arctic blast. ~3 ice storms this winter. I was actually up north during the worst one, but pics I saw from my area were incredible, and I came home to ice everywhere. Not the biggest ice fan, but its definitely a nature masterpiece. There IS more to winter than snow, whether I like to admit it or not lol, and this ice proved it. ~Jan Arctic blast. I took a walk the day before it got dangeous. Walking around in a 5-6" crunchy snowpack while winds are howling straight from the arctic, so cold the trees creeked...call me crazy but I loved it. There were several other impressive cold snaps this winter, but none came close. The bad/ugly ~I get that we are prone to thaws. But some of the thaws this winter were particularly cruel in that they would come on the heals of very cold weather, and stay JUST long enough to melt all or most of the snow before freezing everything up. Overall snowcover days were below avg. Since mid-Jan, there has been SOME snow on the ground most of the time, but outside of a 2-week stretch of 4-6", its mostly been 2" or less. This is a far cry from the deep snow depths in recent winters. ~Dec to mid Jan was as ugly as it can get here. After the snowy Nov subsided, from Nov 30th thru Jan 16th we saw a TOTAL snowfall of 0.9". It was mild, but not exactly some raging torch. It just would not snow, and it proved that we are not invincible here lol, because after years of seeing snow in any pattern and any situation, that almost 7 week stretch it just would not snow. Naturally we were squeezing out frequent flurries, but rarely anything that stuck. The indifferent: It was a very active, potpourri type winter overall. Snowstorms, ice storms, wind storms, record cold snaps and huge thaws....an absolute roller coaster. Definitely not a boring winter. I wish we had winter grade threads every year. Would be fun to look back on, especially the better winters lol.

Yesterday was an incredible sunrise. This is 2 in a span of 3 days, but yesterdays was far superior.

You are correct that Detroit did better than Chicago in 2013-14. Here it was the 4th coldest cold season on record, broke the all time seasonal snowfall record that had went unbroken for 134 years, and absolutely SMASHED every snowcover and snow depth record that existed for Detroit. That winter is an A+++++. I have a feeling if you lived here it would be knocked down to A- because it hit 40° for a few days after a historic cold snap (even though it did not fully melt the snow here, obviously it shrank the depth). If you were a teacher beavis, i dont think you would pass a single student

As for grading the Winter, I have to think about it some. I really want to see if we get a late season snowstorm or not before I give a final grade. However my grade will land somewhere in the C range. My snow fall season to date is 30.1", which means I would need another foot to get to normal. The insane lack of snow from December through mid January, including a green Christmas, is a huge no no. It's also been frustrating to see the best snows hit other parts of the sub instead of my own. The fact that my area has been lucky numerous years lately still does not give THIS year a pass lol. And of course we did have several maddening thaws that decided to pop along just long enough to melt all our most of the snow and then it got cold again. Those are definite cons. However there have been some pros too. I can never recall so much snow falling in November. It seemed to be snowing constantly. The last half of January was quite exciting with several nice snow storms and a historic cold snap. I saw 3 ice storms this Winter, in addition to 1 ice storm in April last year which means I had 4 ice storms in the span of one year whereas previous to that it had been years since I had seen 1. Im not actually a huge fan of ice storms but it's a definite Winter occurrence that should certainly count towards Winter excitement lol. The Winter also saw several nice cold snaps. Obviously the Arctic blast at the end of January was the king of cold snaps. It was so cold that even beavis was able to admit to a 2 day cold snap. But besides that there were several other decent cold shots throughout the season. I enjoy the cold and think it's invigorating.

I have noticed this a few times Don lol and they usually correct it and if not I always call them to correct the error haha. What I think happens is that sometimes they mix up Detroit and their own office. I know at the end of the day they have a sheep where they keep track of the 6 hour obs for the 4 main climate sites. DTW (Detroit) DTX (White Lake) FNT (Flint) MBS (White Lake) I have seen on a few occasions where whoever is putting in the climbo at the end of the day will erroneously add up the DTW number for the DTX number or vice versa. If you look they have corrected the 3/6 climate back to 0.1". There has been a T in the 6 hour obs for days with the frequent flurries and snow showers so it was probably just carelessness in not seeing that an 0.1 fell overnight 3/6.

I can safely say you are probably alone with the way you look at things lol. Using examples ranging from Atlanta to the snowiest parts of the upper peninsula is not helping the cause lol. This is like telling a 5 year old they have to take a college exam and being frustrated that they fail it every time. You are lucky enough to experience more Winter than a HUGE majority of the world population, but because you are not in the top 99 or 100 percentile you have basically admitted you will never be satisfied with Winter.

As I was headed to work this morning, it almost looked like a snowbow with snowflakes falling through the rising sun. Very cold first week of March, now we warm up.

Wanted to share 2 pics from yesterday. One was a beautiful sunrise. The other I thought was funny...this one mall, they haul and dump all the snow in the back (rather than pushing it into piles like everyone else). So its a sea of unsightly dirty and ancient snow from the entire winter. With a bit of fresh snow it actually gave the optical illusion of a mountain range

A cold brisk breeze the last few days has been quite invigorating. Off and on lake snow squalls have periodically left fresh dustings. The March sun angle has been no match for the feel of deep winter cold, but its clear that this will be about it for big cold until next winter.

Got 1.5" of snow yesterday. Was quite unexpected, a convergence band set up RIGHT along the water as we were fringed from the snow to the south. Just 5 miles west of me had barely a half inch. DTW only 0.3". Roads turned into ice rinks as temps plummeted.

Detroit got scraps of snow this Feb while other years had record Feb snow, but I guess Ma Nature is giving us a break. Our great run of Febs...is it over, or a 1 year hiatus? These are the top 12 snowiest Febs, records to 1880. In 2007, you would see 1986 in 5th place. Its now 12th. 1 38.4 1908 2 31.7 2011 3 28.4 1881 4 28.0 1900 5 27.6 1926 6 27.0 2010 7 26.4 2015 8 24.2 2008 9 23.5 2013 10 23.4 2014 11 21.0 2018 12 20.8 1986

Where were you in 2011-12? lol I hated it. Of course there were some snowy days but definitely the least wintry winter ive experienced. Still quite cloudy if i recall, but what winter here isnt lol?

Yes. 96.2" was my backyard, Detroit had 94.9". But yes...it was INCREDIBLE. Records were smashed left and right for cold, snow, and snowdepth. Snow was blowing and drifting everyday with the relentless arctic winds. I had a whole records page of it. There were 34 MORE days with double digit snow depth that winter than the previous record-holder.

lmao. And you are asking someone in Michigan about sun, thats bad And actually, it was only sunny off and on yesterday, and cloudy the day before. Again, shows how the solar is really increasing. There are piles in this lot near me I have my eye on. Theres about 5 in this lot like the ones pictured below, they are big right now, but get no shade. Will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to go.

The increasing Sun angle has been evident the last few days. By this evening there was still solid snowcover in the shade, but it was patchy in the sunny spots, and it has not even been super Sunny. There are actually some parking lots with pretty respectable snow piles.

Wow. 2013-14 is a Winter that will probably never be matched locally for its severeness. The worst Winter of this decade was 2011-12, lol but this is definitely on the lower end for me rather than the upper end.

Fingers crossed.

As a random side note, some parents with school age children are actually looking at this as a harsh Winter. I have a big snow bias, so when you add in how spoiled we've been in recent years and how frustrating this winter's been, I'd be inclined to laugh in the face of anyone calling this anything close to a harsh Winter. But a combination of several perfectly timed snowstorms, 3 ice storms, life threatening cold and a few other intense cold shots, I heard that most school kids have had so many "snow days" that they have to make up some of it before summer. They've had more days off then recent winters were we've had 2 and 3 times as much actual snow fall, makes no sense lol. It does serve as a reminder though that there is more to Winter than just snow.

I think it's pretty common sense that the farther North you go the colder it averages, and the colder it averages the better snowcover retention. But if you're going to live that far North, there are definitely areas of North central Michigan that a snow lover would want to avoid. In terms of simple total inches that fall, even Detroit averages more snowfall then some areas of north central Michigan, (Mount Pleasant and East Tawas) for example. If you take the area of enhanced average snowfall from Ann Arbor into Detroit's Northwest suburbs, they actually average more snow than quite a bit of North central lower Michigan outside the snow belts, and I think they may even average the same if not a few inches more than the banana belt of the UP! But naturally the retention is better in the North. Look at Buffalo. A typical Winter will see almost 100" of snow but NOT have a Winter long snowcover uninterrupted. In a cold dry Winter East Tawas may only see 30" of snow but not see the grass for months. There is definitely variety depending on what you like, but as a snow AND snowcover lover it's a no brainer my dream climate is Bos.