Wednesday PM – Here Comes the Cold
January 30th, 2013 at 11:59 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
There’s a snowstorm missing us to the west, with light/moderate snow and 30 degrees in Milwaukee at 11 AM. We have light rain and temps. range from the mid 30s at the lakeshore to the low 50s SE of Battle Creek. Another relatively big severe weather day. By noon we already had several tornadoes (cars flipped and significant building damage in Adairsville GA) and 80 reports of wind damage from Mississippi to Pennsylvania. We will have a freeze-up this evening as the cold air comes in…beware of that if you’re driving this evening and the cold air is coming. Temperatures will fall to the teens and lake-effect snow will start up. All of us will have to deal with slick roads and the ground will be white…and many of us will have to shovel/plow snow, with the strongest lake-effect bands producing 6″+ over the next several days. We’ve had a major road collapse from flooding and the roof of the Masonic Lodge caved in last night in Hickory Corners. I’ll update later. For current Michigan weather observations and wind speeds, click here. Here’s NAM model snowfall thru 84 hours, the GFS snowfall thru 120 hours and the HPC snowfall predictions. Here’s WOOD-TV Interactive Radar, looping radar. Check out regional radar, GRR radar, northern Indiana radar, Chicago radar and Milwaukee radar. Here’s the College of DuPage Radar Map, Storm total rainfall, the local warning/advisory map and the National warning/watch/advisory map. You can checkout the latest Grand Rapids NWS discussion, the Northern Indiana NWS discussion (includes the Michigan Counties that border Indiana), the discussion for Northern Lower Michigan, and Eastern Lower Michigan. Here’s the Spyglass Condos Weather Station the S. Haven GLERL station, the Muskegon GLERL station, the Grand Haven Steelheaders webcam and weather station, and the weather station at Holland State Park. Check out the WOOD lightning tracker and U.S. lightning Marantha Webcam at Lake Michigan and links to webcams. Here’s the infrared satellite loop (night) and the visible satellite loop (daytime), Lake Michigan water temperatures. Here’s storm total precipitation for W. Michigan and E. Michigan. Here’s data from the mid-lake buoy (not available in winter) and the Wind Map. Here’s local storm reports from Iowa, Western Wisconsin, Eastern Wisconsin, and northern Michigan. Check out these webcams and the Snowman Cam from Gaylord. Here’s current U.S. temperatures.
1st! Bring on the snow!!
Which snowfall model is the WORST at predicting LES? I can’t remember and I don’t like the NAM’s model for Grand Rapids….
GFS is WORST, they were off by about a foot on the lake effect last week. They just give general areas snow, the NAM pin points it more to the snow belt areas. They NAM was spot on for the lake effect last week, and they are forecasting for the same spots to get the most snow again.
Boo for us in Grand Rapids then, huh!
Well, maybe not. I guess the NAM is 84 hours and the GFS shows 120 hours….Only time will tell for sure!
WE HAVE MAJOR LK EFFECTT SNOWS COMING STAY TUNED….INDYY…
I have tickets to the MSU b-ball game tomorrow night @ 7:00. I have been so excited to go to the game! It was a gift to me. Will I be able to get there? I live in Hastings. Thanks for your great weather reporting!
Just watched the Noon weather, there only saying Ionia will get 1-3In thru Friday. Need more than that for the sled. Guess I may need to head north or toward the lake shore. I know of trails up north, anyone know of any near the lake shore?
The West Loop in Allegan County. Or south of that, from Gobles to Coloma. Last weekend we had enough snowmobile traffic that it looked like up north.
Sweet, thanks!
So if we end up near 20″ for the season by Feb 1, historically speaking this has only happened 12 times in GRR historical records. If you average the total season snowfall for those 12 seasons you end up with about 35″. The highest was 53.7″ and the least was 20″ (which was lowest seasonal record). I do think Feb/Mar will be above average snowfall which Feb usually averages 10-12″ per month. There has been a trend lately in the last decade to increase Feb snowfall totals and heck with the lake effect and clippers coming the next 5-7 days we probably will meet our Feb Snowfall average and will once again produce above average snowfalls for Feb. Of these < 20" seasons (Before Feb 1) 3 happen in the 30's, 3 happen in the 40's, once in Super El Nino Year 82/83 and the rest were before 1920. Finally in those years they tended to be back to back years on low season snowfall, except for the Super El Nino winter. So there is no new normal here, it has happened before and will happen again.
So say we all captain.–BSG
Thanks for the info. It’s easy to underestimate how difficult breaking that 20″ snowfall record will be.
I’m going to say closer to 2 feet of snow by Sunday morning!!!!!!
3-6 for my area…wouldn’t be too bad. I am just glad the rain is tapering off. White River is very high and some roads are washed out from all the rain/melting snow.
The White isn’t at its peak yet, so be very careful!
It should be noted that lake effect can be very fickle and the snow fall amounts this far out are just guesses so do not count your inches until they fall or the could be some disappointed people around here.
temp here is now hanging in around 44° yet
SlimJim
Oh boy, sounds like school closings coming tomorrow and Friday and my dh plane delayed
Just a really strong gut feeling.
Nope – I have faith in the airport! If we could post pictures – I’d send you a picture of my granddaughter standing in front of a GRR “snowblower”. The thing could swallow a minivan! They only have a few runways to keep clear and gobs of equipment – they’ll keep those jets flying!! Schools, on the other hand, have hundreds of miles of roads and depend on the Road Commission to keep them clear.
48 days till Spring and 87 days till opening Bass season!