frostfern

Even the lake effect weak sauce. One of the bigger storm fails of all time. I couldn’t give two shits about wind and cold. The fact that there isn’t even anything to look at in fantasy model ads insult to injury.

Non-lake-effect big-dogs are rare as they are in most places in the Midwest. Chicago has been more lucky the past decade as far as getting the bullseye on the larger storms, but that wasn't always the case.

The main overrunning warm-conveyor is missing the US entirely, unfortunately. It's hard to squeeze a ton of moisture out of the cold-conveyer wrapping around from the north, but the lakes will help some hopefully. With such a deepening system there will probably be some intense frontogenesis bands on the back side pulling moisture off the lakes.

A lot of what's boosting totals here is lake enhancement. It's unfortunate the main WAA thump is so far north.

If it's the GFS, then yes. Everyone rides it when they like what they see and trashes it when they don't. When the ECMWF has a bad run in someone's back yard it's .

https://media.tenor.com/XeoO92P0kQQAAAAd/ice-cream.gif Someone post this. F’n file size limit.

I will lol. Models will probably continue to us until inside 12 hours.

Welp. Hope this is an overshoot and not a trend.

I kind of hate being right in the bullseye when it's still 100 hours out. It's bound to wiggle one way or another. A shift slightly NW would still be good if it really goes negative-tilt and the stacked low ends up due north. Wrap-around WSW-flow lake effect can really make up for the dry slot in this area. SE shifts seem more common at this range though. I so wish I could lock this exact run in.

Lock’m in.

Nice snowfall here in GRR due to ideal WSW wind direction. Also getting some seeding from mid-level synoptic cloud layers.

Ready 2 see the sun again. Such a garbage event.

This evening is about the coldest it can possibly feel while still being above freezing. Not used to this wind.

So much zzzzzz…

It seems totals around 20" are pretty widespread all along I-131. I-94 south will get a LOT more than 3-4" since this is fluffy snow now.

It feels like it's winding down up here. The peak squalls came through around noon and it's been winding down ever since. I saw a little sun peeking through the clouds even. There's still some nice big dendrites at times, but it's not steady enough to really put down. I-94 is still in the game for heavy snow for a while I think.

You're getting the wrap-around boundary enhancement effect now that a truly arctic airmass is undercutting the lakes. It's kind of a lull here now. I don't know how much more is to come here in GRR. The better focus might be south and west from now on.

GHD 2 was mostly mass south. There was around 7" total.

The latest squalls have pushed the total up to around 11" here. It's getting much fluffier.

I remember December 2008 being extremely active around here. The depth got up around 20" briefly before a rainer around Christmas destroyed it and caused a lot of roof leak issues..

I think it was a result of the DGZ layer being more elevated than normal due to the very warm lake temperature. The seeding process is slower. In a more NW flow scenario it isn’t a problem because the fetch is long enough to overcome the longer seeding period.

The problem is you need a stationary stacked low somewhere near the south end of Lake Huron. That just doesn’t happen. If there is a low there it tends to be on its way north towards Quebec or Hudson Bay. You can get northerly flow for a while with an arctic high, but then the inversion heights are too low and winds too light to get the deep dominant band you need to really dump.

8” depth on the ground here.

Not too surprised. I didn’t hear or see anything but that band was intense for 45 minutes before it shifted more to the south. Hopefully the Saturday event will be more solid coverage. The monster sized flakes today were cool, but it hasn’t been persistent and its a little sloppy and heavy compared to a normal LES event. Its not super dense, but its not that really light 20:1 ratio we sometimes get either. More like 12:1. The next one is supposed to be colder.

Yea. Eastern Allegan and western Barry have had more persistent coverage. There has been a cutoff where to the north its very scattered with a lack of good banding, especially very close to the lake. I think maybe the dendrite growth zone is a little high and being squeezed up against the inversion layer. There is a fairly deep liquid cloud layer and I think that can produce a cellular pattern with dry gaps wherever there isn’t enough upward motion to feed the DGZ, despite ample moisture. It is more W than WSW at this point as well.