frostfern

Oh boy. I'm as excited about spring flooding as I am about getting covid-19. Cursed thread. If it's a side effect of a good spring t-storm outbreak fine. Snow melt flooding is about as exciting as hemorrhoids.

Southern zones do better with the long strings of weak waves... a big system will change it over to mixed garbage. Being way north of the average storm-track in this pattern I'd prefer a big-dog event to getting repeated fringe dry 1" accumulations. Being greedy though.

Very high ratios become possible with temps in the teens, but it depends on way more variables than just surface temperature. Lake influence almost always fluffs up totals. Pure synoptic events tend to be denser most of the time, but sometimes really good dendrite growth conditions happen in a band and you get something like last night.

Euro has trended a little more west on tracks 16th and beyond... but at this point I'm just jonesing. There's too many waves to know which one will really cut.

Long range has been looking good forever, then they become nothing as time approaches. It was the 12th, then the 14th, then the 16th, now the 18th or later. Rather just be surprised by something.

Narrow FGEN bands can sometimes squeeze out what limited deeper moisture there is, but it will be 50% shallow lake moisture.

Chicago stealing all the lake enhancement this year. ZZZZZ.... IMBY.

I can see places like Gary, Indiana getting dumped with a deformation-band / lake-effect combo. Widespread snows look meh. Boring on this side of the lake except far southwest corner maybe.

That dendrite aggregate stuff has a knack for sticking to things despite being dry. Also piles up perfectly on benches and deck railings, provided the wind isn't too strong.

Don't know if mother nature is more offended by premature storm threads or you calling her a b.....

New southern meso has developed a nice eye. Coolest thing ever.

There are two meso-lows now. Northern one is dissipating while the southern one intensifies. Southern one now has an eye.

You are close enough to the lakeshore that a mesolow can make landfall and dump. Small area south of Grand Haven may get crushed if it moves east. Don't know if it will though. There's an easterly land breeze pushing the band offshore on the north end. Seems pretty stationary. GRR is way too far inland. Even if it were to move east it would dissipate.

Stunning offshore mesolow. Like a mini snow hurricane. One of the cooler things to see on radar.

This is really cool...

Mesolow band offshore from Holland is absolutely dumping over the lake. Too bad it isn't moving inland. Frustrating.

18z was garbage, but 00z is at least looking more like the ECMWF. Will probably regret staying up to see it tomorrow morning... but whatever.

The problem is the more non-boring weather and weenie model runs we get, the higher the expectations get. It's like heroin. Dammit.

Or just wait until the event is less than 48 hours out... Usually at that point you can at least know whether the waves are going to phase and blow up into a legit storm or remain a strung-out dud. Can still get screw-zoned with last-minute track-shifts though.

Yea. It's way more complicated than temperature. The highest ratios seem to be from shallow clouds with a cloud-base dewpoint around 10-15 degrees. When dewpoints at the cloud base are in the single digits or lower the snow gets more dense again as you have mostly diamond dust plates. It's lighter than a wet snow, but denser than fluff. Lots of drifting decreases the ratio as well because the aggregate flakes get broken up into individual crystals and land flat. Snow that has blown off the roof can be especially dense even when it's cold. Wind-sculpted cornices can be rock-hard and exceptionally dense, probably because the loose flakes all blow away leaving very dense semi-fused crystals behind. Also, snow that forms in really deep strong updrafts is denser due to rimed flakes. Light-intensity lake-effect is more fluffy than the stuff that falls from really intense bands. It seems a bit of a nonlinear curve. Very weak vertical motion will produce mostly plates due to supersaturation not being great enough for dendrites. Moderate vertical motion will produce big dendrite flakes that form aggregates and really boost the fluff factor. Extreme vertical motion leads to rimed flakes and eventually graupel, which is dense.

18z GFS is whack.

Expectations went from 0 to 100 over the past week.

5G waves aren't in the models yet.

Then it's the other way around when spring comes. Warmth always gets farther north faster the farther west you go.

Yea. The initial burst of snow Thursday night reminded me of a spring snowstorm out west, like in the mountains of New Mexico or Arizona. There was graupel mixed in with the flakes at times. I wasn't surprised it started producing lighting when it moved farther east, the convective elements got deeper as they moved east.