frostfern

Moderate snow here, but accumulating very slowly because its a degree above freezing.

Its finally coming down at a decent rate here. Its a little granular though. Not really sleet but small grainy flakes.

This is frustrating. Doubts creeping in.

That confirms what the radar was showing. I noticed watching snowstorms over the years that changes between sleet and snow often go in cycles. New returns begin as sleet, then transition to heavy snow as the warm layer that temporarily moved in aloft gets lifted and cooled.

Normally that kind of thing would be caused by a collapsing MCS, but it moved west-to-east which is not the right direction. Its a mysterious thing.

That’s so weird. I can’t really speculate what the source is. Seems related to the brief drying that’s now filling back in. Looks a little sleety initially.

There is some dry over the Ohio valley too, N of the convection. I said N Illinois but I really meant the whole area. Just don’t like seeing the initial zone that clobbered Chicago shrink rather than expand.

Hope it does because at the rate its moving that dry bubble is going to be crossing lake michigan before the virga currently overhead reaches the ground. I know its way too early but these things make me pull my hair out.

Kind of upset about the big gap over N Illinois. Is convection robbing the moisture or what? It has to fill in once the low really starts deepening.

Ready 2 b bonecrushed.

Definitely lots of tree stickage. Thankfully the late-hanging leaves are all off by this time of year. I don’t know the species, but I have a few shrubby trees on the border of my yard that seem to hang on to their leaves until mid-December, and last year a bunch of branches broke off in the pre-Thanksgiving storm.

It was around 5” here in the grass, 4” on the driveway. I can confirm awful to shovel, especially after putting it off and driving on it. There was some light drizzle yesterday evening during the dry-slot lull, but it was ripping fat flakes the rest of time, even with temps around 33.

I picked up around 5” here, but it was quite variable. Places with lots of blacktop around didn’t accumulate as much compared to surrounding rural areas. Oddly, the rooftops of parked cars seemed to accumulate the most.

It looks heavy and wet followed by flash freeze and wind with lake effect white-outs. It will be the worst driving conditions in a long time no matter what the totals are. Any change-over to rain will just make the ice situation worse when the cold hits.

Its most likely to happen as local enhancement during a synoptic event IMO. Lake Huron definitely contributes to upping totals locally on the east side of the state. It would be more rare to see lake effect bands from the east in the core of an arctic airmass though IMO, as east wind tends to be dry in that scenario (high pressure to the north causes strong subsidence). I suppose it could happen but I not aware of any major cases. Would be interesting.

I want a thing with a big blade to brake off packed down snow and ice. Snowblower is kind of useless if you procrastinate and pack the snow down hard by driving over it. With winters lately I’m used to just driving over the snow and waiting for it to melt. I was not sure it was going to melt before the coming cold so I had to chip it all off manually so that it doesn’t become a skating rink. I somehow injured my rotator cuff shoving the shovel into the ice. Ugh. Maybe should have salted it first to get it softer.

I don’t know if I’m getting old and weak or just don’t remember what it’s like to have to shovel. I am hurting today.

Is anyone following the unusual storm that caused extreme flooding in Greece? The storm caused up to 20 inches of rain in 12 hours! Its wild for a place that normally gets 25 inches annually. A cutoff low wrapped an “atmospheric river” of extremely humid air originating from the southern Mediterranean into one of the more mountainous portions of the Aegean coast. Its hard to find detailed meteorological info on the event.

I'm kind of annoyed I didn't just stay home now. I missed a really insane positive CG barrage right over city. My dad told me the picture frames in the house were all crooked because the thunder shook the entire house. The tornadic portion was a ways north, but there was apparently a lot of lighting bolts well to the south. Everyone has commented the thunder was unusually loud and seemed different from normal. I wish I knew some way to get archived lighting data.

I was looking at archive from RadarScope. It costs like $15 per month for the Pro version, but I only upgrade before a good event then cancel the next month. That's cool that thomp2mp found a site that offers it for free. It looks like there were broadly rotating supercells out ahead of the main downdraft / wind-shift line that was moving south. The data shows rotation passing over the area, but it looks like its mostly ahead of the downdraft where the damaging winds are shown coming from the north. Was there two different events, one from the south, then another from the north? The exact time would be helpful. I think if there was a tornado in your area it was probably a shallow gust-nado type that the radar might not detect. The way the line was absorbing rotating elements definitely gave the wind a boost in some areas. The Williamston and Comstock Park tornadoes were both a result of downdraft-dominant segments catching up to and absorbing supercells. I normally think cell mergers are not helpful for tornado formation, but in this case it looks like they caused a temporary boost. The mergers did limit the track lengths though, thankfully. There probably was enough shear and overall energy for a major long track tornado if a more discrete cell had formed somewhere and remained separate.

On radar it looked at least as strong as the Gaylord tornado last year. Only a tiny part of that path was rated EF-3. The trailer park wreckage was horrific and deadly, but it was only rated EF-2 since that’s just what happens to trailers in a tornado.

Where do you live? It seems there are only two locations being evaluated in the GRR region, Webberville in Ingham County and Belmont in Kent County. Reviewing the radar loops both of them were associated with brief supercells being absorbed into the line from the front.

Oh no! You didn’t lose any trees did you? There were trees down everywhere in southern Ionia CO. I ended up south of Portland and it was developing on top of me before I could find anywhere with a view. The area was so woodsy and branches and limbs were everywhere. When I got back to I-96 I thought I was home free but then there was 1.5 hour traffic delay from trees across I-96. I didn’t dare try an alternate route. There was a tornado warning back at my parent’s place and the sirens went off. They went to the basement, but the possibly tornadic circulation was quite a ways northeast and none of us even lost power.

Big tree across I96

Stuck in a traffic. Debris on the road.