December 2023 General Discussion

[mississaugasnow]

This is the normal in cm. I converted to inches for this discussion. You can see the bottom right says based on data from 1991-2020

[Powerball]

On 12/15/2023 at 8:36 PM, Stevo6899 said:

As long as it's not a snow noreaster for I95 cities..

On a related note...

 

[rainsucks]

pretty strong signal on the long-range GFS for a potential storm around the new year timeframe. Been doing it for several runs now, lots of snow with it too.

[weatherbo]

Well looky there.

 

[hawkeye_wx]

Yesterday's system put 0.33" in my gauge.

[bowtie`]

0.69" of the liquid variety overnight and this morning as the majority rotates east of me. Now to see what the backside drifts down to us.

[cyclone77]

12 minutes ago, hawkeye_wx said:

Yesterday's system dropped put 0.33" in my gauge.

About identical here with 0.32".  Up to 1.87" for December.

[WestMichigan]

2 hours ago, weatherbo said:

Well looky there.

 

Areas closer to the lakeshore here are supposed to get 2-4”. Not enough westerly component to bring it my way. 

[DocATL]

Areas closer to the lakeshore here are supposed to get 2-4”. Not enough westerly component to bring it my way. 

Well I guess we know it can snow somewhere in the Midwest in December albeit in lake effect areas.

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, DocATL said:

Well I guess we know it can snow somewhere in the Midwest in December albeit in lake effect areas.

This year we had snow on Halloween, snow Thanksgiving weekend....and assumably no snow Christmas week.

[Brian D]

1.39" of needed precip over the last couple days. Looks like 1-3" of snow being reported in some locales north of me. Best shot at any decent snow for me is looking like Christmas. As I told my grandson, it's going to be close call for a white Christmas. 

[cyclone77]

It's too bad the Ravens/Jags game ain't gonna be in Baltimore this evening.  Will be heavy rains for much of the evening there.

Heavy overcast persisting here today.

[sbnwx85]

WSW here for 3-7” of lake effect on Monday. Models show best snows will be a county to my east in Elkhart. Gonna be fun with 40 mph gusts.

[OrdIowPitMsp]

Pretty hefty snow squalls in Duluth this evening. Canal Cam shows the wind really whipping. 
 

 

[hardypalmguy]

Well look at that. Another top shelf record could fall. Loving this warm December. Palm tree weather continues.

[HillsdaleMIWeather]

IWX expanded the lake effect advisories to another row of counties 

God I miss iembot on twitter at times like this, I just learned the bots are available on Mastodon at least 

[sbnwx85]

Now in “wait and see” mode. NWS official forecast puts my workplace in the bullseye. The meteorologists at my workplace put the bullseye further east.

[OHweather]

I'm not a Lake Michigan lake effect expert...I'm legitimately curious to see if the band can become focused enough to produce 1"+ per hour rates for a length of time or if the stronger winds will lead to a more general spray of moderate snow. The instability and synoptic support are robust, so if a focused band can develop rates of 1-2" per hour would result and the warnings would work out. However, some models struggle to focus a band in the face of the 40 knot low-level flow. Somewhat "marginal" surface temperatures and daytime timing of the heaviest snow could limit accumulation efficiency if it's more of a general spray of snow, so while there'd be poor conditions and some travel impacts accumulations would struggle to verify a warning. It feels like nasty travel conditions are likely to carry well inland in squalls, so the expansion of the advisory seems like a good move...I just don't have a great feel on how widespread any 6"+ totals would be. 

[cyclone77]

Just had a 3 minute burst of flurries.  That will be our highlight for this event.

[IWXwx]

7 hours ago, OHweather said:

I'm not a Lake Michigan lake effect expert...I'm legitimately curious to see if the band can become focused enough to produce 1"+ per hour rates for a length of time or if the stronger winds will lead to a more general spray of moderate snow. The instability and synoptic support are robust, so if a focused band can develop rates of 1-2" per hour would result and the warnings would work out. However, some models struggle to focus a band in the face of the 40 knot low-level flow. Somewhat "marginal" surface temperatures and daytime timing of the heaviest snow could limit accumulation efficiency if it's more of a general spray of snow, so while there'd be poor conditions and some travel impacts accumulations would struggle to verify a warning. It feels like nasty travel conditions are likely to carry well inland in squalls, so the expansion of the advisory seems like a good move...I just don't have a great feel on how widespread any 6"+ totals would be. 

It may have been decided to make a more blanket coverage of the worst condition areas, even if it doesn't technically meet warning criteria. The alternative would be issuing an Advisory, then having to issue long-lived, multiple Snow Squall Warnings for the affected area.  However, their morning disco doesn't give a clue as to why they went this route.

[WestMichigan]

8 hours ago, OHweather said:

I'm not a Lake Michigan lake effect expert...I'm legitimately curious to see if the band can become focused enough to produce 1"+ per hour rates for a length of time or if the stronger winds will lead to a more general spray of moderate snow. The instability and synoptic support are robust, so if a focused band can develop rates of 1-2" per hour would result and the warnings would work out. However, some models struggle to focus a band in the face of the 40 knot low-level flow. Somewhat "marginal" surface temperatures and daytime timing of the heaviest snow could limit accumulation efficiency if it's more of a general spray of snow, so while there'd be poor conditions and some travel impacts accumulations would struggle to verify a warning. It feels like nasty travel conditions are likely to carry well inland in squalls, so the expansion of the advisory seems like a good move...I just don't have a great feel on how widespread any 6"+ totals would be. 

I can't speak for the south end of Lake Michigan where they can get a pretty long fetch but in my area high winds like they are forecasting seem to never lead to decent snow amounts.  The bands either get pushed too far inland, they don't stay on one place, or the dendrites get broken up resulting in a very fine snow.  I guess we will see how this one works out for those in far SW Michigan and Northern Indiana.

[OHweather]

1 hour ago, IWXwx said:

It may have been decided to make a more blanket coverage of the worst condition areas, even if it doesn't technically meet warning criteria. The alternative would be issuing an Advisory, then having to issue long-lived, multiple Snow Squall Warnings for the affected area.  However, their morning disco doesn't give a clue as to why they went this route.

We can issue Snow Squall Warnings on top of an Advisory (can not do warning on warning), although I’m guessing in practice you won’t see many offices doing them for longer-lived features like lake effect bands when the forecast and longer fused headlines can cover the threat. I certainly don’t have any issue with IWX and GRR going for warnings given the setup. On my quick thumb through I noticed some models really struggled to focus a band and had less snow so I’m curious to see how it ends up playing as an outside observer. The activity is intense right now but probably needs to consolidate more at some point to reach the forecast amounts. Unfortunately with lake effect, as we all know, to get lead time on warnings sometimes you have to go for it before you’re 100% confident in order to have a desirable POD (percent of detection) and lead time. In this case it’s not like it won’t snow and have impacts so I doubt anyone is going to fret the warnings too much in the end, I’m more curious about how the amounts pan out. 

1 hour ago, WestMichigan said:

I can't speak for the south end of Lake Michigan where they can get a pretty long fetch but in my area high winds like they are forecasting seem to never lead to decent snow amounts.  The bands either get pushed too far inland, they don't stay on one place, or the dendrites get broken up resulting in a very fine snow.  I guess we will see how this one works out for those in far SW Michigan and Northern Indiana.

Yeah that was my concern as well, as that’s what often happens off of Erie with strong winds. But I’m curious if the longer fetch can help overcome it or not. The winds may start backing off with fairly favorable conditions still in place for a time the first half of tonight but look pretty strong through today. 

[Lightning]

1 hour ago, WestMichigan said:

I can't speak for the south end of Lake Michigan where they can get a pretty long fetch but in my area high winds like they are forecasting seem to never lead to decent snow amounts.  The bands either get pushed too far inland, they don't stay on one place, or the dendrites get broken up resulting in a very fine snow.  I guess we will see how this one works out for those in far SW Michigan and Northern Indiana.

When I lived at Houghton (MTU) the best LES events seem to come with 10-20 MPH winds.  To strong of winds and they rarely  produced as forecasted; however; that is when we would occasionally get the big squalls with a few inches in a matter of minutes.   

[Lightning]

Snowing out this morning a lot more than expected.  1.5" on the ground and working on 2".  Quarter to occasional silver dollar sized flakes falling!!  Oddly radar is not all that exciting 

[OrdIowPitMsp]

Low of 17. Had a dusting of snow at work, nothing at home. 

[sbnwx85]

A couple nice squalls have come through in the last couple of hours that have dropped about 1.5”.

[Stebo]

Had a bit of snow action here at work, got down to 1 1/4SM but we are back up to just flurries right now.

[WXMan42711]

lots of squalls passing thru the cincy metro this morning. even had thundersnow reported down in northern ky. hopefully gonna get that here with a big squall passing thru shortly

[mississaugasnow]

Looking like a nice 1-3” event for GTA. With tomorrow also staying below freezing will allow for a nice Christmas feel. 

[IWXwx]

We had a nice convective squall roll through late morning here, with visibilities dropping to a few hundred feet and thundersnow reported to my southeast.  Picked up a quick inch. Since then, we have been getting remnants off of the lake. A primary band looks to be forming, located from just east of SBN to FWA. Those areas could get a quick couple of inches before it migrates.