luckyweather

Laid down 3” this morning before the wet bulb got too high. Still building the base, with these 20 degree lows I can make more than the afternoon sun eats up, although I know I’m on life support here. For sheer novelty purposes I’ll keep reporting here periodically how it’s going. If every single day that conditions here supported snow it actually snowed, how long would we have snowcover? I’ll be able to tell you soon. Obviously bad science as that’s now how things work and things like surrounding snowpack albedo etc aren’t in play as this is literally only imby, but hopefully you guys find it a little interesting. Hoping to push it into April and who knows from there.

Low of 21 on my pws ne of RFD. Wet bulb between 18-20 is allowing my snowgun to lay it down efficiently this morning. Putting a pretty white coat on to try to hold this pack as long as possible. I measure 30” on a slope, so I’m in good shape to hold for at least another week, maybe way longer if we can dodge a few typical March bullets.

The trifecta of continued covid wfh, making snow and building my base whenever possible from Oct - Dec, and sustained cold and snow since 2021 rolled in have allowed us to build something really special. Our backyard (now full yard) terrain park is I’m certain in peak shape right now, although a little more cold and snow to close out Feb would be most welcomed. The base in the original backyard part of the park is around 36-48”, a combo of man made snow and moving snow from other parts of the yard and grooming it. The backyard pipe is 8-10’ tall, each wall of it is around 20-30’ long, so just an incredible amount of snow there. The kids have progressed tremendously and each and every neighbor kid has picked up skiing and boarding, every day at 2:30 the park fills up and they are out there until dark, even with the bone chilling last few weeks, out there everyday. I know this stretch has been hard on a lot of folks and I feel a little bad because it has been abso-f-in amazing here.

evergreen tree wells in sub alpine areas that get deep powder dumps take several lives each year. The nature of the canopy causes a void under the tree that’s like a Venus fly trap for a skier or snowboarder who skis too close to the tree. I would guess the op’s observation is a smaller scale manifestation of this phenomenon.

we need a volcano eruption right around March 1, and with this snowpack, wa-la, your wish is granted

everything he “models” is long range so my money is on teleconnections a la beiring sea rule or lezak recurring cycle or an “all blend” of both making “Brian’s proprietary model” ™™copyright 2021 ps no diss Brian, while your maps are vague with farmers almanac levels of leaving yourself open to being accurate no matter what happens you have had some ringer level hits this season

Of course we will have spring and summer, but sensible weather is just going to get weirder and I think our idea of the traditional neat seasons is over. ice albedo feedback cycle keeps getting later and later, this year was the latest on record. our seasons are the product of a complex system and when the system parameters change of course the system output changes. Judah C says the new normal is go big or go home as the (global climate) system tries to rebalance.

Krupps Cam is still kicking... https://johndee.com/ncn/twinlakes_ncn.htm

PV will get weird in March and April as has been the new pattern and sag down to give you some cold air to connect with gulf moisture to give you guys some monster heavy wet storm totals that will melt in 24 hours or so. The days of being able to maintain any sort of a snowpack at 40 north are firmly over I’m afraid.

I honestly didn’t think we’d get the column saturated when I went to bed around 12, just couldn’t force a flake out of it. Must have been some magic in that old top hat as I woke up to a healthy inch/inch and a quarter snowpack refresher here NE of RFD.

over/under on likelihood of event caliber that allows you to write a special post event article? https://www.weather.gov/lot/2011blizzard

like was mentioned yesterday, RFD always does reasonably well, I feel like I get lucky more than my fair share. feeling okay with trends being in lot northern tier, although I do think biggest totals will be between I88 and I80. So with that I need to boost my snowpack. Laid down a nice manmade base with the consistent cold leading up to Christmas, then Mother Nature filled everything in and has kept fairy dust refreshing me a 1/2” to an 1” at a time. Given today’s cold I figured better be safe and make sure I can hold on to my snowpack until Memorial Day, so I’m making snow for the first time since Christmas. Hopefully we get lucky over the next 96 hours or so and I end up with a ridiculous base. I’ll post pics if it happens.

whatever happened with your greenhouse thing you built in the OG Morch? Up in Saukville right? iirc you kind of got ran out of here with all the constant torch talk....

Winter lovers unite in the war of trees. Boreal forest for the win.

always been a dream to go to Hokkaido and ski the famous japow

To be fair my anecdotal feeling is from this past year or two. Several of the severe threats in the spring/summer they didn’t discuss, warnings were late or non existent, etc. We have a handful of mission critical “properties” in the ILX cwa, tors are an annual threat and we get a hit or near hit pretty much every year. While I live in LOT I read the ilx afd’s daily during severe season, it’s just one of those things where you can just feel something is up. Maybe it was covid issues etc manifesting in the office operations, maybe I was being too critical. I don’t mean to be too hard on them/the guy, probably shouldn’t have said anything.

To be fair my anecdotal feeling is from this past year or two. Several of the severe threats in the spring/summer they didn’t discuss, warnings were late or non existent, etc. We have a handful of mission critical “properties” in the ILX cwa, tors are an annual threat and we get a hit or near hit pretty much every year. While I live in LOT I read the ilx afd’s daily during severe season, it’s just one of those things where you can just feel something is up. Maybe it was covid issues etc manifesting in the office operations, maybe I was being too critical. I don’t mean to be too hard on them/the guy, probably shouldn’t have said anything.

I keep looking for a zzzz or bank clock reference in the LOT afd’s but you haven’t thrown us a bone yet...

Not to be mean, not knowing the guy at all, but my mind immediately went to wondering if some new leadership may be the cure for that office.

a Lake Superior sized and shaped donut hole

Took me a while to get the science dialed in, I’ve spent the last 3 months laying down mostly ice, but I finally got it a few weeks ago and with last weeks cold was able to lay down a nice base with my homemade snow gun. The past few days are eating into it, but it looks to hold on for the most part until Christmas when the cold should give me a chance to refresh. Can’t just rely on ma nature for the fz precip. Pic is of some little jumps in the “terrain park” the kids have been jamming on.

Ma nature isn’t giving up the goods here in N IL / S WI, but she’s finally delivering a little cold. Granite Peak up in Wausau opened last week, now the S WI hills and even Chestnut in Galena IL are getting a base layer down, just about everybody is opening some limited terrain this weekend. Chairs spin at Alpine Valley tomorrow.

Outright trolling.

LOT AM discussion: Strong southerly flow ahead of the surface low has already advected 60 degree dewpoints into northern IL While heating will be limited by cloudy skies, cooling aloft will result in steepening midlevel lapse rates and modest instability (though impressive for our region in November in spite of MLCAPE holding mostly under 750 J/kg) is expected during the afternoon and early evening. The CAPE has some vertical extent to it, and has shown some increase over the past few days where it was appearing to be fairly minimal. Thunderstorms will first develop during the afternoon across northern MO into eastern IA. Deep layer flow will generally be parallel to the cold front, supporting a more linear storm-mode with line segments/QLCS development expected, with this line spreading eastward late this afternoon into north central IL, and into the Chicago metro toward evening. Combine these forcing mechanisms with the fact that we are coming out of a record breaking warm streak here in early November. We have been overperforming on temperatures, underperforming on clouds, and could see record highs yet again today. This pattern with a negative tilted trough, strong upper jet and associated low/mid level winds, strong cold front, and a deepening low to our northwest in the presence of a warm and modestly unstable airmass is an ominous one. With all this in mind, a slight risk for severe weather has been posted by the Storm Prediction Center. This is not unheard of in November, but not super common also. Damaging winds is the first concern The forecasted tornado risk area is fairly large in the 6z issuance from SPC. We will attempt to target some of the messaging for this, as there is likely a higher concern in northwest Illinois and into north central Illinois. This area is juxtaposed in an area with the best combination of forcing aloft, near the low track and approaching cold front that will overlay the narrow instability axis. Strong winds will still accompany the line of storms as it moves east, but instability will wane a bit with eastward extent suggesting some weakening as the line gets into northwest Indiana. Winds may become locally backed ahead of the low even though models are not depicting strong turning of the surface winds. Still, forecast soundings depict enlarged, curved hodographs given the strong low level wind fields. Speed shear is present along with some directional shear above the near surface layer, leading to 0-1 km SRH values greater than 250 m2/s2. As a result, a few tornadoes are possible.

They were who they were all along. This event just gave a gruesome way for them to visibly identify themselves. I hear “but muh liberties” and I translate that to “but muh right to be self centered”.