<–U.S. Warning/Advisory Map (left) and Live radar of W. Michigan. l links: GRR NWS radar, GRR storm total precipitation,  Great Lakes radar, latest surface observations, a surface weather map, GRR NWS discussion, Visible Satellite loop (daytime), Infrared Satellite Loop (night), Here’s Milwaukee NWS radar and Chicago radar, the Spyglass Weather Station (Holland Channel) and the Muskegon GLERL weather station. The 84-hour NAM snowfall map and the 120-hour GFS snowfall map. This could be the biggest synoptic event of the winter for southern Michigan.  Tuesday AM update:   Winter Storm Warning for 6-12″ over 36 hours for snow Tues. and Weds. combined.  The Warning (red colder on the map)  covers all of our area…all of Indiana and Ohio and much of Wisconsin and Illinois.  Here’s the latest Grand Rapids NWS discussion.   Latest GFS plot gives us about 0.58 precip. (it’s been very consistent with this figure) with the snow starting around daybreak Tuesday.   At a 15 to 1 snow to water equivalent – that would be 8-9″ of snow for G.R.  It gives 0.67″ to Battle Creek (10 inches), 0.62″ for Kalamazoo (9-10″), maybe 4-5″ snow up at Manistee (these are 2-day totals).  It may snow a little harder Tues. Night than during the day Tuesday, esp. NE of G.R.  Schools could be closed on Wednesday.  Tuesday PM to Weds. midday we’ll see drifting snow and a still northeast wind.  Snowplowers, salting/sanding may be necessary for the AM rush hour on Tuesday, esp. SW of G.R.  GFS plot has nothing warmer than low 30s through Feb. 24.  The NAO is in the tank negative and the Arctic Oscillation stays negative…evidence that winter’s going to hang on probably all or almost all of the rest of this month and maybe into March…no significant thaws.  Remember I said that the two years that we had the most similar patterns to this year…we had above normal snowfall in Feb.-March with 8″+ snowstorms in both February and March and the cold air hanging around through the first part of March.  This storm will also produce significant snow in the big cities of the East, with New York and Boston getting in on the action this time.  Another storm Friday/Saturday will likely bring snow all the way down to Dallas and maybe Atlanta.  All time biggest 24-hour snowfalls for Grand Rapids in February:  11.4″ 2/3/2007, 9.1″ 2/11-12/1985.  61% of the Lower 48 States has a snow cover this morning.  Also, officially we have only had one day (1/25) since 12/3 when we have not had at least 1″ of snow on the ground in Grand Rapids at 7 AM.

With apologies to Abbott and Costello…an updated Super Bowl version:

Costello: Who was the halftime act at Super Bowl 44?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the group’s name.

Abbott: Who. (more…)

Saints 31-17!  O!  O!  INDYDOG probably hit the ceiling!  Colts!     Leave a comment with your prediction or a comment on the game or a commercial in the game.  With the commercials…remember the goal is to get you to buy the product.      Some Super Bowl Trivia:  The first Super Bowl (1967) was broadcast on both NBC and CBS (with different announcers).  Did you know that the Super Bowl got it’s name from an 8-year old girl?  Sharron Hunt was the young daughter of Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs.  At the time she was playing with a small rubber ball called a “super ball” (anyone remember getting them from the “Fun Machine” at Mr. Fables?). From watching his daughter he got the idea that the pro football championship game be called the “Super Bowl”. Lamar suggested that name to the other owners and they bought the idea!  For some Super Bowl trivia…click here and click here. In most years the Super Bowl is the #1 most watched TV program of the entire year.  It’s the 2nd top day of the year for food consumption in the U.S. during the year – Thanksgiving Day is #1.  The Pittsburgh Steelers have played in the most Super Bowls (6).  Four teams haven’t been in a Super Bowl (Jacksonville, Houston, Cleveland and of course the Lions).  Michigan has hosted the Super Bowl twice…in ‘82 at the Pontiac Silverdome and in ‘06 at Ford Field.  Those are the only two Super Bowls when snow was recorded at the stadium on game day.  Here’s some Super Bowl weather history.  I’ll probably be close to a computer to update during the game, so come back and check in.

A State of Emergency has been declared in part or all of five states (VA – W. VA – NC – MD – DE).  Up to 39″ of new snow is reported (Ekridge)…many reports of +30″ Gust to 78 mph in Tazewell Va.  Half the county is  without power.  Significant structural damage…McDonald’s Playland blown into the street.  Winds gusts of 50-60 mph downed trees and power lines in West Virginia, where flooding has closed some roads.  Officials suspended bus and rail travel in Washington D.C. and fire fighters battled a hospital fire.  As of 2 AM, up t0 18″ of new snow is reported in W. Virginia, 16″ in western Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, 10″ in western North Carolina and in Ohio, 8.5″ in Indiana.  Final totals could reach 20-30″.  Hundreds of accidents are reported in Virginia alone, and there have been at least two storm related fatalities.   It looks like a total of 26.3″ at DCA, with a season total of 53.6″. The record snowfall from a single storm for Washington D.C. was 28″ in Jan. 1922.  The most snow in a winter for D.C. was 54.4″ in 1898-99 with 46.0″ in 1995-96 now in 3rd place.   DCA had 8.7″ of new snow Friday PM and 17.6″ Saturday.  Baltimore/Washington Airport had 7.8″ as of midnight and 17″ after midnight for a total of 24.8″.  Charlottesville, VA doesn’t report snow, but they had 1.6″ precipitation on Friday and .36″ on Saturday, and it looks like it was all snow.  They had 0.31″ in an hour!  Wonder if that’s right.  You could suffocate in snow like that.  27″ in Philadelphia – 2nd biggest snowstorm ever.

You can see in this graph that the Northern Hemisphere snow cover was higher in the decade of the 2000s than it was in the late 1980s and 1990s.  You get a more extensive snow cover from either more snow fall or colder temperatures (where the snow hangs around longer) or both.  I haven’t added the numbers yet, but it looks like the decade of the 2000s was the snowiest decade ever in Grand Rapids.  It also looks like the decade of the 2000s was cooler than the 1990s in Grand Rapids.  More on that later.

Now, we expect scientists to have an open mind and just present the data, without trying to fit the data to a preconceived conclusion.  One way to manipulate data is to pick a favorable start and end time for your graph.  What if you started this graph in 1977 and ended in 1999?  What if you started the graph in 1987 and stopped in 2008?  You could lead the viewer to two different conclusions from the same data.  Note that the very snowy years of the late 1970s were the exception, not the rule.  In those years, we didn’t get the mid-winter thaws and the snow piles got pretty high.  In recent years, we’ve had a lot of snowfall, but thaws have melted the snow down before it came back again.  Also, it’s pretty easy to see that we have trended upward in the past decade.   That’s good news for those who like to get out and enjoy winter sports, festivals and recreation.

<–Holland (Big Red) Lighthouse on 1/30 – picture by PK & J on POSTED (full size is nice!) and a picture of my sister, Ann – cross country skiing in Oak Ridge, Tennessee after arguably the biggest snowstorm in SE Tennessee in 10 years.  On January 31^st seventy percent of the Lower 48 States had a snow cover of one inch or more.  That was highest percentage of snow cover on any day since 2003.  The main storm track remains southeast of Michigan.  Another storm will produce over a foot of snow from NE North Carolina up to Maryland tonight and tomorrow.  A state of emergency has been declared in Virginia. It’s been all or nothing in the U.P.  Painesdale in Houghton Co. has been socked with lake-effect snow off Lake Superior.  They are up to 173.5” for the winter.  On the other hand, Escanaba misses the northwest flow lake-effect.  They report a season snow of only 20.5”.  In fact they’ve had more snow this winter in Asheville, NC than they’ve had in Escanaba.  We should see about 2-4” of snow next Tuesday PM to Wednesday AM and temperatures look a little cooler than average for the next two weeks here in Michigan and across much of the areas east of the Rockies.

The latest from Ed:  “It is possible we will see a spike up tomorrow. The spike line has been crossed in Indy, Indiana and Michigan. It is -2 cents in Indy, but less than a cent in Michigan. Only history should keep it from happening. Wednesday is not the big spike day, Thursday is. Speedway will usually keep an eye on the DOE report and see if that causes the market to change course.  Keep an eye on Speedway in the morning, and the market throughout the day. If Speedway does not go up, but the market does, expect a Thursday spike.

<–Grand Haven lighthouse last Sunday (from Heather Ransom).   The month of January wound up 2.6° warmer than average in Grand Rapids and 0.6° cooler than average in Kalamazoo.   It was actually cooler in Indianapolis in January than it was in Grand Rapids. Indy had 11 mornings with temperatures below +10° and Grand Rapids only had five.  There was only a 10.1° spread between the average high and low for the month in Grand Rapids (avg. max 30.1°, avg. min. 20.0°).  We had only one day that got above 40° and the coldest low temperature was a relatively mild +4°.  The difference was caused mainly by the extra warmth and cloud cover that occurred when the prevailing northwest wind came across Lake Michigan.  The average low temperature in Grand Rapids was 10° warmer than it was in January 2009, when we dipped below zero seven times.

In preparing for his big moment,  Punxsutawney Phil has been feverishly burrowing into the weather data overnight.  His past efforts  a mere shadow of the work that goes into his peerless prognostications these days.  Who thought he would chuck the safe and simple trap of relying on a dark image cast by a television camera light.  Embedded deep in cyberspace, Phil comes upon Bill’s Blog…and what does he see???   The 216-hour European model on the left…with a chilly flow of polar air blasting down from the northern limits of groundhogdom…and on the right, the 216-hour Canadian with a snowstorm raging dangerously close to Michigan, a 1051 mb high descending down from Canada and the promise of a chilly blast to follow through mid-February.  Ah ha!  Phil has his answer!   It’s six more weeks of winter!

<–Live radar of W. Michigan. midday Weds:  The snow has pretty much ended and the clouds will slowly break up some this afternoon.   With (hopefully) the help of a little sun and temps. in the low 30s, road conditions will improve for Weds. PM.   .  A decent snowstorm is going to track just south of us (again!) late this week, with heavy snowfall from Kentucky/northern Tennessee into far NW N. Carolina, Virginia, D.C. and Delaware and lighter amounts of 2-5″ across northern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.  I’m still not seeing any real warm air here for quite a while.   The GFS plots indicate nothing warmer than about 34 through 2/17.  Here’s the usual links: GRR NWS radar, GRR storm total precipitation, National Lightning Map, Great Lakes radar, Storm Total Rainfall, latest surface observations, a surface weather map, GRR NWS discussion, Visible Satellite loop (daytime), Infrared Satellite Loop (night), Here’s Milwaukee NWS radar and Chicago radar, the Spyglass Weather Station (Holland Channel) and the Muskegon GLERL weather station. The 84-hour NAM snowfall map and the 120-hour GFS snowfall map.