frostfern

About 2" from yesterday evening through last night. Long duration light dust. Not overly fluffly like the last snowfall. More just powder. The main back-edge defo-band tonight should have bigger flakes... hopefully. Bright sunshine now in the break between waves. Weird that the other side of the lake is stealing all the lake effect this year.

I can see the thumb getting good totals despite being further north. Lake Huron influence will amp up the flake size.

Well, long range now is more than 24 hours lol.

That it's a long-duration event with two periods of light snow might pump up the numbers. If they clear the snowboard after every inch you might end up with a sum of 4", even though it's only 3" additional on the ground at the end.

I'm calling 3" here total in GRR on 0.2" liquid. Hope I bust low. I just don't buy that it will be super high ratio. Will probably be mostly small flake dust as fringe synoptic events tend to be under cold conditions. Lake influence areas will get better flake size and fluff.

I think the main source of uncertainty is over the the North Pacific. It has good potential to trend NW if it comes off the Southern Rockies strong. The pattern won't really be the same anymore over North America since the cold dome will be modifying some just because they days are getting longer. Models just aren't sampling the source region for the upper jet streaks diving down the west coast very well. It's not really an issue just affecting one model. All of them have been sketchy lately at long range.

Only far SE Ohio is at risk of mixing. Track hasn't shifted that much. It's just potentially sharing the wealth more on the NW fringe.

Well, if it can go strong nagative tilt and not lose energy to the coast it can throw a defo-band pretty far west. Everything is so up in the air now that the track keeps changing even with the next event. Exhausting.

Snowing pretty good under the back edge. Might add a little more if the lake band makes it inland with the arctic front.

Heavier burst here now. I think there might be a Lake Huron connection going on. Elevated easterlies coming in.

Does anyone have the corresponding maps from the Euro and Ukie? I'm blocked by the paywall. I think the jet buckling like a whip is the key to the weenie run being closer to reality. It has to do with the evolution of the speed max diving down the Pacific Coast. If that speed max slows down the eastward progress of the longwave trough, there will be enough northward rebound behind the departing OV system to produce a deeper more north tracking low. The longwave trough effectively splits in two, and the low can ride up in between. The problem is if that streak doesn't dig down enough to hold back the western end of trough, the whole thing will just slide east, leading to weaker more positively tilted system that gives the OV more snow but misses IL/MI.

1.5" here. Has the consistency of lake effect, but steady light snow rather than showers. Lost 3" on the total depth just due to compacting under the sun yesterday though.

Depends as much on a favorable jet streak alignment as the wave emerges onto the southern plains. If it doesn't deepen fast enough it will miss south again.

Probably won't know until late Monday. Same old.

How about we melt the snow with a nice dry sunny stretch first?

Light snow, but decent flake size.

Waiting for the Euro to stop being trash though.

GFS with two weenies in a row.

All it takes is one warm sector with convection.

Time for me to fold.

It seems like most the models agree that energy will transfer to the coast. That's the major problem. I don't know if the GFS handles precip placement as well as other models though. It seems to miss bands that occur away from the low back in the cold air. At least that's a bias I have noticed in the past. A few people may get lucky with a defo-band hanging back overhead for a while even as the surface low transfers to the coast. Maybe wishful thinking.

If the NW trend is possible this year.

As typical, the next system is another long-range tease on the euro. Could it trend NW without the PV? And no other system riding it's ass too close? If none of these produce it's time to punt.

Late February 2014 looked like this here... even after some melting and compression. I was out west during peak depth though. The problem is this year hasn't had the lake effect with the cold. Lake enhancement has all been in Wisconsin and Illinois.

That was a problem briefly in 2014. 3-5" of snowpack water didn't cause any major flooding later on because the thaw was very dry. 2013 didn't have as much snowpack, but there were a few major early spring rainstorms and April was bad. It seems like it only takes one widespread 2-3" rainstorm to cause significant flooding if the ground still has frost after snowmelt. When the frost and snow is gone but little green-up has occurred it seems to only happen with two or three of those widespread 2-3" rain events in close succession. Soil is somewhat sandy here though so that helps a little when the ground isn't frozen.