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2017-18 LES Season


josh_4184

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12 hours ago, OHweather said:

Some of the eastern region offices (Cleveland, Buffalo, Binghamton) will still issue Lake Effect Snow Warnings for this winter, but advisories from those offices (and all offices) are only Winter Weather Advisories now.  I suspect it's only a matter of time before the eastern offices lose their Lake Effect Snow warnings, but that's unsubstantiated conjecture on my part. 

Now that it's over I will say that the situation between offices in Michigan especially was a mess and at times almost childish.  From what I heard GRR led the push the eliminate lake effect products starting a few winters ago and APX eventually caught on.  MQT and DTX (and LOT and I believe IWX for a time) kept issuing them, which created some situations (especially in the UP where there's one APX country next to all MQT counties) where there would be a winter storm warning for one county from one office next to a lake effect snow warning for the neighboring county for another office.  I know some media mets hated that if it happened in their market.  There was also a time two winters ago when GRR, after not issuing a lake effect product for at least a year, issued a lake effect snow advisory out of the blue(while APX issued a WWA).  I asked a met I know what happened and he said from his understanding a forecaster at GRR was irritated at something in the office and issued the lake effect product out of spite.  It's funny how a product type caused issues for two solid winters, and I personally am irritated that the consolidation camp won.  It screams to me trying anything to fix a system that isn't necessarily broken and not thinking it through.  Consolidating products will do absolutely ZERO to make the public pay more attention, and more educated users (and heck even some the public) in lake-effect-prone areas know the difference between synoptic snow and lake effect snow.  Perhaps this is the wrong train of thought and is me taking out years of customer service frustration, but if higher priority users in LES areas that use weather info were confused about the products, which I'm sure was the case somehow, that's on them to learn the difference because it's such an easy thing to do that would make everyone else's life easier.  

I liked the separate headlines for lake effect events vs. synoptic events. Most people around here seem to assume that any time it snows, the "lake effect is involved."  Thus the separate headlines probably don't matter. I mean much of the time, the lake is involved in some way. But, as you know from living in a lake effect area as well, it is often pretty simple to determine whether a snowfall is lake effect or synoptic just by observing moisture content, fluff factor, and compaction.

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Saw the first flakes of the season! Currently 34° and snow! Rain and heavy at times all night transitioned to snow little over an hour ago! Light accumulation on cars and grassy surfaces. Beautiful to watch come down. Had to wake up early so I wouldn’t miss it, but totally worth it! Can’t wait for LES to start kicking in!

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2 hours ago, Aleksey said:

Saw the first flakes of the season! Currently 34° and snow! Rain and heavy at times all night transitioned to snow little over an hour ago! Light accumulation on cars and grassy surfaces. Beautiful to watch come down. Had to wake up early so I wouldn’t miss it, but totally worth it! Can’t wait for LES to start kicking in!

'grats on scoring your 1st WMI flakes, and let's get #buried this winter! Only seen flurries so far, it's all staying north of 94 so far this morning. 

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50 minutes ago, josh_4184 said:

Picked up close to 6" so far, was getting hammered, 1"+ an hour on my way into work, roads were pretty bad. 

Morning from the UP! 

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...(um) Halloween!

Heavy snow from 930 until 3 or 4 then let up.  6.2" fell here .59" liquid.  MQT had nearly 6" as well.  At the foot mark for the season already! :D snow!

IMG_3432.thumb.JPG.a9aae0672a9f73cdd730af6be27f0ab8.JPG

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1 hour ago, weatherbo said:

Morning from the UP! 

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...(um) Halloween!

Heavy snow from 930 until 3 or 4 then let up.  6.2" fell here .59" liquid.  MQT had nearly 6" as well.  At the foot mark for the season already! :D snow!

IMG_3432.thumb.JPG.a9aae0672a9f73cdd730af6be27f0ab8.JPG

Ha, trick or treating should be interesting tonight.

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2 hours ago, RogueWaves said:

'grats on scoring your 1st WMI flakes, and let's get #buried this winter! Only seen flurries so far, it's all staying north of 94 so far this morning. 

Man it was something else! Heavy lake effect snow squalls from about 9:30-10:30. I wish I could post a video to show you guys! Huge wet flakes! 

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7 minutes ago, blackrock said:

Nice, guys! We have been getting snow/graupel/sleet showers all morning (and yesterday evening.) The lake is certainly making it tough to see complete dendrites though. GRR continues to say only "rain showers" today, but the precip has been pretty much in wintry form all morning.

Agreed! We’ve had winter Wx all morning and very heavy at times just east of GRR. It’s been a beautiful sight! Can’t wait for LES to start cranking up! 

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2 minutes ago, Aleksey said:

Agreed! We’ve had winter Wx all morning and very heavy at times just east of GRR. It’s been a beautiful sight! Can’t wait for LES to start cranking up! 

You're already in Lake effect season. :) Your best LES usually comes at the end of November and December. Then, as the lake gets colder and starts to freeze up, my LES season really kicks in during the months of December and January.

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39 minutes ago, blackrock said:

You're already in Lake effect season. :) Your best LES usually comes at the end of November and December. Then, as the lake gets colder and starts to freeze up, my LES season really kicks in during the months of December and January.

Yeah I can’t wait! Once January comes we get those clipper systems and heavy snow storms! 

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1 hour ago, OHweather said:

Even up north, any substantial accums in October seem like a bonus (though I know it's not extremely rare).  Glad some areas were able to cash in.  Now let's do it again in a few weeks (with a slightly different wind direction down here) 

Average snow for the entire month of Oct at MQT is 6"... after today's snow I think they stand at 8.8".  So yeah, def a nice start to the seaon!

It's weird, snow already feels normal again.

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3 hours ago, weatherbo said:

Average snow for the entire month of Oct at MQT is 6"... after today's snow I think they stand at 8.8".  So yeah, def a nice start to the seaon!

It's weird, snow already feels normal again.

That's a pretty good month.  3 weeks of warmth and a lot of dry weather followed by enough snow in one week to push you above normal for the month.  

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On 11/1/2017 at 10:00 AM, IWXwx said:

Nice pictures. It's like a whole different world. Down here, a majority of our trees have leaves and they are mostly still green.

What is really crazy is that my office in Bellaire about 25 miles to my west looks like this outside. Its amazing what a few miles closer to the lake and much less elevation do to to the weather up here

 

 

22894292_10210136372305351_4376923529952509841_n.jpg

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Wind and snow combined should make this interesting! Could see a foot.

Better chances of snow for all areas on Wed night as shortwave
crosses and cold front drops through ushering in push of chilly air
with h85 temps dropping blo -13c on Thu morning then toward -20c by
Thu night. Large scale lift and moisture with the shortwave along
with NW winds and delta t/s over 20c will set stage for round of
potentially significant lake enhanced snow for areas favored by NNW-
NW winds. Enhancing factors to the lake effect snow includes
cyclonic/converget low-level NNW-NW winds with wave of sfc low
pressure forming on the front by Thu morning over eastern Lk
Superior/eastern U.P., minimal shear due to unidirectional flow in
the convective layer and stronger lift within the DGZ suggesting a
fluffier snow. Gusty northwest winds 20 to 30 mph near Lk Superior
and the higher SLR snow favors blowing snow and reduced vsby as
well. Overall a period of moderate to heavy lake enhanced snow seems
likely along with poor vsby due to blowing snow. Confidence is
increasing in need for winter weather headlines for late Wed night
through Thu night/Fri AM time. 

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1 hour ago, weatherbo said:

Wind and snow combined should make this interesting! Could see a foot.

Better chances of snow for all areas on Wed night as shortwave
crosses and cold front drops through ushering in push of chilly air
with h85 temps dropping blo -13c on Thu morning then toward -20c by
Thu night. Large scale lift and moisture with the shortwave along
with NW winds and delta t/s over 20c will set stage for round of
potentially significant lake enhanced snow for areas favored by NNW-
NW winds. Enhancing factors to the lake effect snow includes
cyclonic/converget low-level NNW-NW winds with wave of sfc low
pressure forming on the front by Thu morning over eastern Lk
Superior/eastern U.P., minimal shear due to unidirectional flow in
the convective layer and stronger lift within the DGZ suggesting a
fluffier snow. Gusty northwest winds 20 to 30 mph near Lk Superior
and the higher SLR snow favors blowing snow and reduced vsby as
well. Overall a period of moderate to heavy lake enhanced snow seems
likely along with poor vsby due to blowing snow. Confidence is
increasing in need for winter weather headlines for late Wed night
through Thu night/Fri AM time. 

Not as bullish down my way but could see some decent LES as well.

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APX seems a little more interested in the LES parameters later this week, may get a few inches. Ready to try out the new snow blower. :snowman:

Quote

SHORT TERM...(Tuesday night through Thursday)
Issued at 311 PM EST Mon Nov 6 2017

...Accumulating snow, windy and cold Thursday...

Rather quiet weather will continue through Wednesday evening as
surface high pressure ridges in from the west. The weather is then
expected to go downhill after that as an arctic cold front moves
through northern Michigan early Thursday. This should result in a
period of snow and wind along with cold temperatures Thursday. Add
in some lake enhancement off of the Great Lakes as over lake
instability really takes off (lake-850 mb delta ts of well into the
20s) and things could really get interesting. This could potentially
easily lead to a few inches of snow accumulation across some areas
(mainly in the snowbelts along and west of interstate 75).
Temperatures will be a little milder Wednesday with highs in the
upper 30s and lower 40s. Temperatures on Thursday should be falling
through the 30s on into the 20s by evening. We may even have some
blowing and drifting snow issues Thursday depending upon how it all
plays out.

 

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1 hour ago, blackrock said:

Local mets are starting to discuss the possibility of our first couple inches of Lake Effect Snow coming Thursday into Friday here along Lake Michigan. Regardless of whether we do get the snow or not, this is going to be a good week for getting the ground colder for future snowfalls to last longer.

Strong to extreme delta T setup.  Inversion heights not spectacular but could be a nice little warm-up for the season.

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