OHweather

Some subtle features evident on satellite helping our lake effect peak in intensity tonight...unfortunately winds on land are backed to the southwest so it's struggling to push south into more of Cuyahoga and southern Geauga. Basically, subtle sources for ascent and convergence are aligning near and just downwind of Lake Erie as we approach the diurnal maximum in lake-induced instability. This is allowing Lake Erie's lake effect event to peak. Activity may shift slightly farther south as surface troughs over Michigan move southeast across the lake. It's snowing pretty good and I think the warnings will marginally verify in a few spots (probably southern Lake or northern Geauga, and southern Erie or northwestern Crawford), though it probably won't be a very widespread 6"+. This event isn't dropping quite as much as the instability and snow growth could support. Looking at a radar loop and surface obs, some limiting factors are evident. It is a dry airmass and winds are strong with gale warnings over the lake. This is limiting residence time and pushing the snow fairly far inland. However, winds over land are backed pretty far southwest, about 240 degrees, while winds in the lake effect clouds average closer to 280 degrees. This leads to a fair amount of shear, which is limiting band organization somewhat. Winds over the lake are much better-aligned, so I think if the winds were lighter we'd see more focused bands closer to the lake that could drop higher totals. Because of the instability and very efficient snow growth this is a nice little event, just not huge because of the limiting factors (really, lighter winds would've made a big difference).

I'll phrase my response to that as: Given the nature of the snows this year (it's immediately settling or melting once it's on the ground) it's been easy to "under-measure" snows in Northwest Ohio if you wait until the synoptic times (i.e. 0z, 6z, 12z, 18z) to measure. Being at an open air field never helps when there's wind either. It's possible there's been a bit more snow in Toledo than the 14.1", though I'd also say it's somewhere in the ballpark even if it's a conservative number.

A bit over 4” since Sunday night here, with about 3.5” of that since yesterday afternoon. Not bad. Glad a snow event finally panned out.

Late Monday afternoon through early Tuesday strikes me as the kind of setup where a mesoscale surprise happens somewhere from the central lakeshore counties and Cleveland area points east-southeast towards Trumbull and Mahoning Counties and into western PA. Really good lift and instability under an upper trough as a surface trough drops southeast across the lake could cause quite an enhanced band to come onshore and then "train" along the surface trough axis, leading to a localized swath where moderate to heavy snow lasts a few hours. Could see a swath of locally over 4" of snow. It will be quite convective and should easily accumulate as the sun sets.

Areas where the bulk of the snow occurred during the daylight today mightily struggled...we used fairly low snow ratios to come up with the forecast but it was still way too much snow outside of the higher terrain. Had an inch or so here based on what's left in shaded areas. I don't know enough about the climate stuff discussed on the prior page off the top of my head to chime in, but will read through it and see if I can come up with anything.

I was on the desk today and one can see where there are advisories now in our CWA. Can add that the reason midnight shift didn't issue more advisories was due to feeling the set-up is fragile (due to temps) and the snow accum forecast uncertain more so than not thinking the forecast would warrant one if it held. Nothing major changed today (the forecast held) so advisories were expanded. Snow was still 24 or so hours out early this morning so midnight shift didn't necessarily need to issue advisories yet. I can see an argument that maybe not issuing just for Lucas (which some may have found misleading) and holding off altogether would've been better, but Toledo was completely boxed in otherwise and they felt confident enough that Lucas was pretty fail safe which is why they did what they did.

To both of these points, soundings off of Lake Michigan do support some marginal lake enhancement...there's a conditionally unstable layer up to about 900mb and while it isn't much (or into the DGZ), it's modeled to be saturated which if accurate would at least contribute some precip production. Since flakes are being made aloft and seeding the lower level lake enhancement, those low clouds will be able to make flakes and add some amount of snow. It won't be a ton, but over the course of several hours maybe is an extra inch or two. Models briefly have a rather similar look off of Lake Huron so there probably will be some enhancement, but it's similarly marginal...and the synoptic precip starts shutting off quicker so the lake enhancement may not last long off of Huron. Since it won't be that intense it may just not be able to add more than an inch?

To your point, an argument could be made that there should've been a Wind Chill Warning (along with or perhaps instead of a Winter Storm Warning) since the cold was just as big of a hazard, sure. Unfortunately, it's not entirely consistent when offices issue cold headlines separately from or included in other winter weather headlines (some offices try not to issue both at once, others sometimes issue both at once). I think in that case the Winter Storm Warning was locked in more than a day out when the snow looked somewhat more impressive. In our area we figured about 2" of that snow led to enough blowing snow to necessitate a Winter Storm Warning, though we had prolonged 40-55 MPH wind gusts which may have been a bit stronger than what you had.

The pre-Christmas storm was absolutely worth Winter Storm Warnings btw...it wasn't much snow (yes, less than expected), but it was blowing around quite a bit for a day and a half with brutal wind chills. There was a prolonged period where travel was hazardous in any kind of open/windy area with dangerous cold causing infrastructure issues. It was a distinctly elevated risk to life and property for those not prepared for the conditions and lasted a solid day and a half. It was worth the warnings even if the impacts weren't as significant as what looked possible a couple days out. For this one, it's the short duration and marginal boundary layer that's the issue. The lift and moisture are good, agree with Stebo there should be some banding on the east/northern flanks, but it just won't last long and won't be extremely efficient so it'll be hard for many to get 6"+. It'll snow hard and be a wet/picturesque snow (though not quite as wet as last Friday's) but the totals will mainly be in the 3-6" range IMO. The area that could *locally* get 6"+ is near the western Lake MI shoreline where some lake enhancement will be in play, especially if banding can pivot over that general area. That'd be enough for a narrow 6"+ lolli just inland from the lake in WI or NE IL.

Going away would imply that it was ever here! I actually think this could be a warning-level snowfall for the primary snowbelt (and probably Cleveland metro too) if we see the southern low track advertised by the GFS and Euro, with at least a good few inches of synoptic snow Friday followed by wrap-around and some lake enhancement Friday night. However, the NAM/RGEM/CMC are a little farther north with the low track and bring a dry slot and some rain up to the lake even in northeast OH for a few hours Friday afternoon and would maybe more of a sloppy system with probably more of a casual advisory snow. The blocked pattern over eastern Canada and the north Atlantic at least leaves the door open for the southern track, but the bologna is sliced pretty thinly. Curious to see what today's 12z runs show. Suspect the NAM/RGEM are too amped but could see some sort of a compromise solution in which the GFS/Euro tick somewhat warmer.

Euro just bumped south. Friday is getting interesting.

Was looking at the HRRR positive depth change, it did pretty well yesterday morning with the max swath (and maybe was just a tad too low on some on the fringes in eastern IL?). I thought the rates/QPF could support12”+ lollis where the band would pivot between N IN/SE MI/S ON (figured when rates were really heavy ratios would come up enough to allow for that kind of accumulation) but it seems like about 11” of concrete was the most anyone could muster.

Guessing it's mainly because their focus is on the severe wx in the Ohio/Tennessee Valleys as opposed to not expecting this/not thinking it's worth an MD.

I wouldn't have bet money on the 70mph gusts in IL on the north side of the low ahead of time either, but throwing out 50mph and hoping that holds when there was a pretty coherent hi-res signal for at least 60mph (with the HRRR consistently advertising the potential for 70+ exactly where it happened) is pretty blegh given the borderline rapid deepening and very anomalously low MSLP values...that were fairly well-advertised.

Frankly was miffed (and still am for some areas from NE OH into NW PA/SW NY where wind headlines STILL haven't been hoisted) at how conservative some offices have been with wind headlines on this one, outside of offices south of the Ohio River where warnings went up much earlier. Maybe when we're setting record low pressures it's a good sign to just issue the darn wind headlines. Hi-res models had gusts as high as what's been measured...I get that sometimes they're overdone but it's rare that a <980mb low isn't a giant wind bag.