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Northern Ohio Obs/Discussion Part 2


Trent
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The snow started around 6:30 or 7pm last night. Tough to measure but I'll go with 3.2" as of 6:30am. We'll see what today brings. The radar should start to blossom as winds turn more northerly. Huron bands are tough to come by but this is an ideal set-up. It will be interesting to see where is sets up today.

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As feared, strong northerly wind component is keeping the best snows inland from me. You can see the flare ups occurring south of the turnpike in Lorain and Cuyahoga County and then along the higher elevation east of 271. 

If a Huron band develops, someone will jackpot nicely. 

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12 minutes ago, NEOH said:

The snow started around 6:30 or 7pm last night. Tough to measure but I'll go with 3.2" as of 6:30am. We'll see what today brings. The radar should start to blossom as winds turn more northerly. Huron bands are tough to come by but this is an ideal set-up. It will be interesting to see where is sets up today.

Yep that sounds about right, I was between 2.5-4".  

I can't remember having a good setup the past several years for a Huron band.  Seems PA always does well with them.  Should be interesting. 

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14 minutes ago, Trent said:

As feared, strong northerly wind component is keeping the best snows inland from me. You can see the flare ups occurring south of the turnpike in Lorain and Cuyahoga County and then along the higher elevation east of 271. 

If a Huron band develops, someone will jackpot nicely. 

The lakeshore really needed the synoptic snow to come through. The lake effect setup looks good tonight, especially where the Huron band sets up, but the stronger northerly winds will remain an issue near the lake. 

I see that about 650 schools or almost all of them closed in NE OH today. Certainly different than 5-10 years ago when Solon wouldn't close for a 6 or 8" snow overnight...

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45 minutes ago, OHweather said:

The lakeshore really needed the synoptic snow to come through. The lake effect setup looks good tonight, especially where the Huron band sets up, but the stronger northerly winds will remain an issue near the lake. 

I see that about 650 schools or almost all of them closed in NE OH today. Certainly different than 5-10 years ago when Solon wouldn't close for a 6 or 8" snow overnight...

It really is amazing how little it has to "weather" for things to close these days. No doubt there's much more hype and sensationalism with weather than there was before social media existed. The irony is that the snow we've experienced the last few years has been some of the tamest in several decades. Just imagine if we actually had a widespread 10"+ event!

It sucks that the synoptic snow didn't reach its full potential, but model trends yesterday morning hinted at that. Unfortunately the hi-res short term guidance last night around 6pm started to look quite favorable, which proved to be overdone. But it is funny how hard it is to buy a decent synoptic storm around here this season.

I'm not throwing in the towel just yet on the lake effect. Surely the favored locales will end up doing well. Radar looks great right now. 

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2 hours ago, OHweather said:

Every ob around you reported snow by like 8pm, and I'm not 10 miles from you and it was definitely snowing, so you're severely exaggerating. With that said, the synoptic snow did underperform...I have close to 3" in NE Summit County, was hoping for a little more.  Every LSR from CLE so far has been 2-3.5" for north central and NE Ohio, which is a couple of inches lower than I would have hoped for. 

 

I swear, it still looks like you can see the grass to some extent. It has snowed since I last posted, but not too much. Maybe 2'' since the last six hours.

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Central and Eastern cuyh county as well as Medina county have been under that lake enhanced band for several hours. Good to see the airport get in on some of the action....if they measure it correctly. ...    Need the flow to back a little to get it more east. 

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I got a little less than an inch of LES this morning and my total is at 3.8" here.  Looking through the reports most areas got 2-4", with parts of far eastern OH squeaking out 5" and a few spots mainly close to the lake in the Cleveland area not seeing 2", possibly due to the wind literally blowing it all away.  CLE got 1.4" through 12z.  So far a couple of inches behind forecast.  The lake effect this morning has been more robust than the models showed, but I think some dry air is really eating away at it at the moment so we'll see how it responds over the next couple of hours.  Over the last hour or so the Lake Huron response has increased and a potent vort max is poised to move over Lake Erie later this afternoon into this evening so I expect a similar marked increase then too.  This afternoon it may flare up a little bit as instability increases but the big increase should be this evening as better lift arrives and as instability gets to be significant.  The Huron connection is currently moving inland near Sandusky (with clouds with it evident with it down to near Bellefontaine) and will swing east towards the Cleveland area by early evening...we'll see where exactly it sets up...probably on the east side or Geauga County.  Even outside of the main Huron band I think multi-bands should produce moderate snow in the higher terrain of the primary and secondary Snowbelt.

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Earlier this AM in Chesterland, there were almost bare places with grass showing with other places over 6" deep.  Wind, of course...  My WAG is around 3" as of 8 am.  Been snowing pretty hard in Solon.  Interesting with the higher sun angle, it looks as if the sun is trying to come out.  Again, hard to say how much has fallen because of the wind and probably, a stronger sun evaporating (not melting) some of that snow since the moisture content is low.

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1 minute ago, OHweather said:

A spotter 2N of Chardon reported 4" new since 7am and 8" storm total so far. The few inches of snow that accumulated on pavement here is actually starting to melt on its own despite half decent snow still falling thanks to the high sun angle most likely. 

Seems that the clouds are pretty thin too.  I remember Dick Goddard saying that LES clouds were normally pretty thin.

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22 minutes ago, LakeEffectOH said:

Seems that the clouds are pretty thin too.  I remember Dick Goddard saying that LES clouds were normally pretty thin.

For the bigger events they're normally a good 10k feet tall but at the moment they're definitely not as there is a fairly low inversion. Tonight they'll be a little taller I'd reckon. 

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It doesn't look like CLE will be adding that much to the seasonal snowfall total unless a Huron band decides to hit the west side later. I didn't really get that much snow after this morning (less than an inch). The radar looked way better than what was falling, but the heavier returns were just east and south of the airport. 

The guidance QPF for this event was extremely overdone. We're probably around 0.15" liquid on the west side. 

Edit: Perusing the webcams on Wunderground, there's one in Brookpark that shows the relative lack of snow near the airport/west side rather well. Looks like 1-2" on the ground at most. 

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About 5" here thus far (2" of LES today)...been just a little bit south of the best snow all day but it's come down moderately on several occasions.  The hi-res NAM and NMM keep the Huron band on the east side...the HRRR, RAP, and ARW keep it over CLE or a bit west for much of the night.  With a NNW wind I'd expect it to be east of downtown, but winds over Lake Huron may have a bit of an easterly component, keeping the band over the western portion of Lake Huron, possibly causing it to come in a bit west of expected here.  I'd overall bank on it coming in on the east side, and I think it may be close to me...I'm selfishly hoping it's pretty on top of me.  I'm optimistic for big totals with the Huron band tonight...most conditions seem to be a go.  Given good lift with the closed upper low and plenty of moisture and instability I'm bumping up to a general 3-6" additional this evening through Wednesday morning in the higher terrain from northern Medina County points east, with 6-12" where the Huron band affects the most.  There could be one last flareup Wednesday evening as one last little trough moves through that could produce 1-3" in he Snowbelt.  For locations near the lake, really the only area that will fall well short of expectations, the Huron band could produce a few quick inches in a narrow corridor, but I don't see them getting anything notable outside of the Huron band.  We'll see what happens...

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The Exeter, Ontario radar shows the Lake Huron bands (currently multi banded) starting to look a bit better this hour. We'll see what that translates on this side of Lake Erie in the next hour. I'd imagine there won't be a single primary band here until those bands in Ontario consolidate first?

I ended up with about 2" total from the synoptic last night and lake effect today. When you look back at all the "storms" over the past few years here, it really is astonishing the number that busted. This must be the most difficult place to forecast snow in the US, especially based on population.

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