frostfern

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.

This year Lake Michigan is upping snow totals on the Wisconsin side more than the Michigan side.

Seems like something will happen. It's just a matter of what and where.

Suppression is better for the southeastern forum. You'll have the possibility of a better low to dump in the OV, maybe as far northeast as DTX. Just Alek and me will get whiffed.

An occluded mess with a big-ass dry slot shutting things off early. Most of the moisture is shunted east.

I this case the farther NW solutions are weaker, quicker, and less phased. The optimal big dog phase location is a whiff southeast for me. Just can't win.

We're seeing a trend to a nothingburger.

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.