1/24-1/25 Major Winter Storm - S. IL, IN, MI and OH

[roardog]

It looks like both the 18z euro and euro terminator nudged south. 

[cyclone77]

I'm going 6 flakes for here in the south side yard.  0-3 in the northern.  

[HillsdaleMIWeather]

Inshallah we get a massive north jump on all models at 0z 

[sbnwx85]

18 minutes ago, ILSNOW said:

so you looked at the 18z Euro and then made a call

As good as that 11.2" looks over SB, the Euro is overdoing tomorrow's lake-effect locally. Probably subtract 4" from that for me.

The lake-effect on Monday looks decent though.

[DocATL]

Going 6 final call imby with the long duration lightly lake enhanced graze job

If anyone cashes in it’s those of you close to the lake I’d imagine.


.

[Cary67]

Call of 1.0" here

[AWMT30]

Call of 7" here. 

[Baum]

On 1/21/2026 at 6:14 AM, Baum said:

First call 10”

No change.

[mimillman]

I’ll go 1-2” across most of the metro with 3” lollipops towards the NE because fckin SE WI always somehow ends up with most persistent lake effect

[TheRegionRat]

Going with 6" here.  I'm wondering how that fresh snowpack will affect temperatures? I'm wondering if the forecasted lows are too high? 

[ILSNOW]

going with 3.5 here

[nwohweather]

My call is 2-4” north of the Maumee River and 4-8” on the other side of it for NW Ohio

[Nelson]

1 hour ago, roardog said:

It looks like both the 18z euro and euro terminator nudged south. 

I see what you did there...

[DocATL]

A hair under 1” in Naperville. Dry air wins.

[Baum]

9 minutes ago, DocATL said:

A hair under 1” in Naperville. Dry air wins.

We found the problem.

[Malacka11]

When you are the problem

[CIllinoisSnow]

Gonna go with about 3" final call here in Normal, which is significantly better than what I thought I would get about 2 days ago 

 

[RCNYILWX]

Some of the recent CIPS analogs have included mid February 2021 and 2007. Sure, we could see suppression. As I'm sure most in here remember though, mid Feb 2021 at this lead time was pretty much a whiff for most of the Chicago metro. These juiced expansive Gulf lows seem to have a knack for trending north (maybe due to enhanced downstream ridging due to tremendous latent heat release?).

So the fact that much of the guidance is already bringing accums to the Chicago metro area perhaps should give some reason for optimism here.

Another big wildcard is the SLRs, which could be exceptionally high if lift is well aligned with the already modeled to be very deep DGZ in the very cold airmass. So even Kuchera ratios would potentially be too low. For reference, MDW 3SW had 0.51" of liquid equivalent in 15.7" of snow in 24 hours from 2/15 into 2/16/2021.

So if we see consistency in relatively high QPF getting relatively far north, that would likely imply stronger ascent to generate the higher QPF, which itself would likely support unusually high SLRs. For this element, recommend checking out the Cobb text snowfall output via IEM or PSU (the 18z NAM Bufkit Cobb output showed 30:1 ratios at KMDW).

Finally, the lake enhancement potential could be a noteworthy component of this, as occurred in the 2021 event (see MDW 3SW snow ob above), and back in 2007.

[Baum]

4 minutes ago, RCNYILWX said:

Some of the recent CIPS analogs have included mid February 2021 and 2007. Sure, we could see suppression. As I'm sure most in here remember though, mid Feb 2021 at this lead time was pretty much a whiff for most of the Chicago metro. These juiced expansive Gulf lows seem to have a knack for trending north (maybe due to enhanced downstream ridging due to tremendous latent heat release?).

So the fact that much of the guidance is already bringing accums to the Chicago metro area perhaps should give some reason for optimism here.

Another big wildcard is the SLRs, which could be exceptionally high if lift is well aligned with the already modeled to be very deep DGZ in the very cold airmass. So even Kuchera ratios would potentially be too low. For reference, MDW 3SW had 0.51" of liquid equivalent in 15.7" of snow in 24 hours from 2/15 into 2/16/2021.

So if we see consistency in relatively high QPF getting relatively far north, that would likely imply stronger ascent to generate the higher QPF, which itself would likely support unusually high SLRs. Finally, the lake enhancement potential could be a noteworthy component of this, as occurred in the 2021 event (see MDW 3SW snow ob above), and back in 2007.


 

Thank you for confirming my call. Your insight is appreciated 

[TheNiño]

1 hour ago, mimillman said:

I’ll go 1-2” across most of the metro with 3” lollipops towards the NE because fckin SE WI always somehow ends up with most persistent lake effect

Sorry not sorry. 

[sbnwx85]

Posting for posterity. Should continue to grow.

[sbnwx85]

9 hours ago, sbnwx85 said:

3” final call.

Call looking money.

 

[RCNYILWX]

Thank you for confirming my call. Your insight is appreciated 

Another CIPS analog here that did tick a bit northwest by go time, fairly close in to the event: https://www.weather.gov/lot/2014feb05

Sent from my SM-S936U using Tapatalk

[DocATL]

We found the problem.

.

[wxfromthelook]

3 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Here are the numbers to beat.

-

Maximum 2-day snowfall

pretty decent chance that this weekend ends up in the top 10. 

[sbnwx85]

00z NAM is southeast. More in line with the Euro now.

[McHenrySnow]

4 minutes ago, sbnwx85 said:

00z NAM is southeast. More in line with the Euro now.

The low placement really didn't change. 

[Stevo6899]

4 minutes ago, sbnwx85 said:

00z NAM is southeast. More in line with the Euro now.

Man it's hard to look at those big totals taper off as you head NE. It seems either were battling precip issues or suppression. 

[HillsdaleMIWeather]

3 minutes ago, McHenrySnow said:

The low placement really didn't change. 

If anything the precip shield got a little both more north than 12 and 18Z

[Stevo6899]

Pretty remarkable the differences between  gfs and rgem. Rgem been consistently showing 10+ for most of the metro area.