Here’s the Lake effect snow. As the system that gave us light precipitation on and off the last few days, the last day as the system pulls east, is now adding lake effect snow bands in the synoptic snow. That’s why you see the green bands (lake effect) crossing the darker blue bands (synoptic snow with the low). This typically means that someone, by the end of the day will “hit the jackpot.” Right now, Gaylord is getting some good snow since about 11am…
The picture to the right is out my front window with the large flakes of Lake Effect snow dumping down on us. I’m not looking forward to shoveling since my snowblower took a dump on me again.
2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 460 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 8 trips to carry that many people.
More on the storm for Christmas #holidaytravel…12/20/2014 update
Here’s the latest from the office with this storm…
Quiet weather continues tonight into Sunday, with low cloud cover spreading into the region. A little light snow will fall Sunday night, mainly in areas north of M-32 into eastern upper Michigan, before a strong low pressure takes aim on the region into midweek. That storm will bring mild temperatures and rain Monday night into Wednesday, changing to snow Christmas Eve into Christmas morning, as windy conditions develop and temperatures fall. Hazardous travel is possible Christmas Eve into Christmas Day.
So we watch and wait. This storm is looking interesting and looks like the European model (ECMWF) is winning out on the possible track. I’ll have more tomorrow after church.
Wow! Something to Talk About!…12/20/2014
While I was working on my last string of nights, I noticed a storm that was to move through Southern Lower Michigan around Christmas. Well, that was 3 days ago, and now it is looking like something to pay attention to. The problem a few days ago is the same problem now, a consensus between the models for the track to show the evolution of this system. That’s the problem with strong storms and the models, there is enough going on in the storms to throw the track off that the models don’t pick up in the longer term. I typically tell people I don’t put much stock in my own forecasts out through day 3 (72-84 hours), just because the models can come in with something completely different by the next model run in 12 hours.
So with this storm and the potential impact on the Christmas holiday, it’s time to start following it. 
So here is the storm track for the morning of December 24th. The storm should begin to make a turn to the northeast by this time. If this track is right then it would be snow. I looked at the GFS for the same time, and it looks more west, which would put us into rain before it changes over on Christmas Day.
I also looked at the CIPS Analog Threat guidance, and it shows that when we have a storm that looks like this one we typically run a 50/50 chance in northern Michigan of 6″ or greater of snow fall.
So the main thing is to watch this storm. The track will determine who gets snow and who doesn’t.
Wow! What a November and then Freezing Drizzle tonight…11/21/2014
I know that I have been gone for a while. Most of it has to do with the season, both for work and personally. In the midst of the latest bout of snow that Northern Michigan just had, I was working, so I didn’t get a chance to blog this. I try to get to these things when I can. So with that in mind, here we go with the next storm…
First off, we had a few records that fell for snow fall with the two lake effect events that pushed through northern Michigan. Both were very similar with cold air entrenched in the Upper Great Lakes producing lake effect snow before the cold front then the snow with the front, and finally the west to northwest flow that came in off of Lakes Michigan and Superior. We had one of our busier Novembers that I can remember and I have been at this office for 15+ years. As I said cold air was entrenched, and the last that I saw we were, for the city of Gaylord, having the coldest November on record. This set us up for this one-two punch of snow that has now put most of the Northwest and North Central Lower, and East Upper Michigan into the most snow for November.
The only consolation to this snow is that it has been rather fluffy with 20″ to 1″ snow to water ratios. This means that moving it by shovel has been less than if it had been 18 inches of system snow with its 10″ to 1″ ratio.
This brings us up to what happened. Now, we will discuss what is to happen over the weekend, and while rain sounds good, it does have its problems.
The first problem is that the cold air will remain in the region through the night, and into early Saturday morning, and with the increasing moisture, and forced upward into the highland of Northern Michigan, there will be drizzle, and with the temperatures still below 32°F we will have freezing drizzle. There is some expected accumulation of ice, so there has been a Freezing Rain Advisory (ice accumulations<0.25″). This will cause problems through the night as the Advisory is in affect from 1 am to 7 am Saturday. 
After that there will be a break, it looks like there will be just regular drizzle through the day and Saturday night. However, then the system developing in the Southern Plains will move into the Upper Great Lakes, and bring rain Sunday through Monday morning. The problem will be that the rain will melt the snow and it is looking like the amount of rain will be significant. This will be a system to watch. I’ll bring more through the weekend. 
Thunderstorms today…Snow possible later in the week ….10/27/2014
Thunderstorms will be in and out of the area through the next 24 hours. However, Thursday night and Friday have a chilly air mass so that snow could develop.
Trying a give away embed
Image courtesy of: SnapKnot – Los Angeles wedding photographers
