frostfern

I agree. I just find it fascinating. Wish I had studied it in graduate school but I got stuck doing tropical meteorology.

I think there's even more factors. Southern stream synoptic events always have a fairly deep saturated isothermal layer below the DGZ while clippers have a very thin one. That isothermal layer seems to favor chunkier plates as opposed to spindly dendrites. They just don't form large aggregates the way pure dendrites do. You still get a lot of bigger aggregates mixed in within the heavier bands, but the abundance plates falling at the same time fills in the air gaps and lowers the ratios even so.

I would take that, but even GRR is now saying the GFS is overdone and going with a lower compromise forecast for the grids.

500 feet of downsloping there.

You mean orientation change.

It might end up being more of a battle ground with snow potential north of I-90. Less boring is good for me no matter what happens.

Would love this to verify, but some of that has got to be non-snow precip.

The local slope and surface vegetation has a huge impact too. Where the taller grass isn't fully matted down it tends to melt quicker because the dry grass poking through warms in the sun and melts the snow around it. Areas near pavement with a lot of tall grass always melt first. Wooded areas that don't have much grass or undergrowth and have a north facing slope retain snow the best.

It looks like the main wave will be inland somewhere around Vancouver by 18z Monday. It still has to loop down through the southwest at that point, which can be tricky to forecast. The more subtle northern stream portion will be headed due south over the northern Yukon.

It's hard to say what the average is. It's only 4" in more urban zones, but it's around 8" in the woods some places. The 16" of 20:1 lake effect fluff from early January didn't melt evenly. At one point it was totally gone some places and compressed to around 4" others. The 3" of concrete snow a couple nights ago added quite a bit to the piles even though it didn't add a lot of depth as it soaked up some light rain and drizzle the following day. There's a lot of really thick ice on my driveway as I didn't get a chance to shovel all the slush off before it froze hard. The light dusting that's been falling today somehow managed to make it even more slippery to walk on. Even the dog keeps flopping on her belly. Yea. It's kind of a weird setup with rather light winds but decent lake instability.

Yea. The OP Euro doesn't phase the jets at all, while the GFS phases too late and too far south for my liking. I really should stop obsessing over OP runs while the ensembles are still all over the place. The parent wave is south of Alaska at this point.

The crusty snow here varies from 3" in open fields to as much as 8" in some shady spots where the late January base never fully melted.

Would like a real storm for once this year. Tired of being nickle and dimed on the fringe of events missing south. Two years of this nonsense. Rather just have a rain storm at this point.

I see earlier runs have a small shortwave diving down from BC into the rear of the cutoff. The major southern stream low kicks off when it rounds the base. Later runs that's completely gone.

I think the southwestern upper low being slower to eject is also part of the problem. The models always struggle if there is not a major upstream event over the pacific to force it out.

Severe outbreak looks more certain than anything else with this system.

Yep. Nice trowel track for SW MI too.

Well, 00z GFS is farther south with mostly snow here. Euro has an ice storm followed by dry slot for SW lower.

The most probable disappointing outcome will be either a strong miss NW or a much weaker miss SE. It just doesn’t seem to have the amount of cold behind it compared to last time.

Yikes!

Some very heavy bursts of snow this morning. It's just not accumulating particularly fast as it's about as wet as can be without changing to straight rain.

I'm ready to see some weenie snow maps. OP Euro and GFS are putting out a swath of concrete with the trailing wave.

Bring it. The roads need a good cleaning from the salt and sand residue.

It looks like more of a lake-enhanced event here, but the air aloft is not very cold due to the PV being well north. Good clippers this late in the season around here need to have much steeper lapse rates. The GFS has a better front-end thump a couple days later, but ECMWF has nothing as of now.

That's accurate. Really got screwed by the sharp cutoff.