frostfern

About 3" total here. It came down good for brief period late last night. Just lacked duration due to lack of back-end deformation snows being all to the southwest. It's added on top of 4" remaining from the last system so there's finally a decent snowpack. Hopefully we get some more to add to it.

I'm hopeful for a good WSW flow lake-effect pattern. Frequent waves rotating around a nice arctic lobe would be nice. Still a lot of uncertainty though.

Here it just went from virga and flurries to pouring snow. I think the dewpoint jumped up 10 degrees in 20 minutes. Went from 16 degrees to 26 degrees. It's a plate-dominant snow with mostly smaller flakes, so not accumulating super fast. Definitely reducing visibility though, especially since the wind is picking up.

Well, the snow finally started reaching the ground here. Had a solid 2 hours of virga and flurries.

Something I've noticed is that the ratio can depend as much on wind and crystal structure as temperature. Dendrite-dominate lake effect that falls straight down in light wind can be much higher ratio at 30 degrees than wind-blown plate-dominant synoptic snows at 27 degrees. I have seen 14:1 ratio with massive aggregate flakes even with a temperature of 30, provided there isn't a lot of wind and the depth is only a few inches. Of course, once you get a depth of more than 4 inches, even dendrite-dominant large-aggregate snowpack will compress quickly to a 10:1 ratio if the temperature is anywhere near freezing. It's usually under 4 inch snowfalls that can have a lot of variability based on crystal structure and wind. Once you get a lot of depth there's more compression due to weight and so the ratio's become more purely temperature dependent.

Still dealing with "heavy virga" overhead here. Getting some pixie flurries with composite 25 dbz overhead.

Thunder-sleet seems to be a more common phenomenon. Had quite a lot of lighting with ice storms in Feb 2019.

Have to live somewhere with a north-facing hill then. Weird how it often makes a difference even after dark.

LOL. Since when do we care about accumulation on salted roads. I assume most of us are not the age where we are praying to get days off school.

Had a virga band sitting overhead all afternoon here. Mix of virga and filtered sunshine.

It's definitely dry here at 28/18. Was hoping to add at least a little to the snowpack. It looks like the backside deformation zone will be closer to you later tonight into tomorrow morning. Here the front end is all we're going to get as the upper low is forecast to fizzle as the energy transfers to the mid-atlantic. I'll be surprised if I eek 2 inches from this. You'll probably do a little better as you'll at least have a decaying deformation band overhead for a little bit of time.

Hopefully adiabatic cooling can force the line back south if the lift intensifies.

There is a lot of low-level dryness. Areas closer to the lake seem to be overcoming the virga onset quicker.

The front end is 100% virga here so far. There's been some radar returns aloft for a while now but the low level dryness is eating it all on the way down. Not that I'm expecting more than 1-3" here.

I can skip any repeat of the February 2019 ice-mageddon. Did a number on my poor trees. Just give me snow damnit.

Hoping we finally get into a classic clipper train with arctic intrusions after the rainstorm on the 4th. It's been a long time. Lake ice on Lake Michigan is still minimal so enhancement looks good.

It's been remarkably boring. Maybe set a record for the amount of non-sticking 35 degree snow lol.

It's the same thing a lot of places this year. Good totals in the mountains but not much elsewhere due to marginal boundary layer coldness. The Adirondacks got dumped pretty good too.

Well, it looks like it will at least be less of a snooze-fest than the winter so far. It looks more like a roller-coaster-ride than a winter lock-in though.

Surprised I didn't make people salty saying I'm happy to get some LES from this. The phantom synoptic event on the ECMWF messed up the Christmas Eve LES scenario by turning the wind too northerly as happened almost all last winter. I think last year set a record for the number of completely snowless cold outbreaks here IMBY. It made me understand Chicago people better. Here in the snow belt cold usually comes with some snow but last year was really frustrating.

I actually prefer the GFS. Rather get rain on Christmas Eve followed by an arctic blast out of the west that's guaranteed to give at least some sticking snow than a thread-the-needle synoptic event with the low deepening too far east for good lake effect. Last year was just awful in terms of zero notable lake effect events in West Michigan... then a couple unwanted wet slops well after the first spring thaw. Ugh.

Decent wishcast for GRR. The last one that looked like this at this range dumped 2" of rain and zero accumulating snow though. Previous runs had better lake effect events for me on Christmas day. Would really prefer the main low to move closer to James Bay for westerly cyclonic wrap-around. This coastal-low dominant crap brings cold with little LES.

Yea. I don't think it was a situation where there was a deep warm intrusion aloft as there was not much in the way of sleet or mixed precip anywhere. The lowest km or so just needed to be a few degrees colder and it would have been a very significant dumping. I was holding out hope that the models might be wrong but no such luck. Perhaps if the same pattern had occurred later in the winter with an established cold boundary layer in place. I remember March 2, 2002 was a decent surprise wet dump of snow.

Not sure. I think it was just a sharp gradient. GRR and MKG also got narrowly missed. Frustrating as there was a lot of H2O coming out of the sky. It just never changed over, not even towards the end. When the temperature finally got below freezing the precip stopped. Maddening.

I think the northern periphery will make up for the lack of triple digit temps with horrible humidity. Missouri and Iowa are going to see the highest actual temperatures because it's been dry there.