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Arctic Oscillation

Bill Steffen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:18:26 +0000

<–forecast for the Arctic Oscillation. In general, when the Arctic Oscillation is positive, it’s harder to get Arctic air into the Great Lakes (note how it was positive in September, negative in October and positive in November so far – matching the weather we had in those months in Michigan). When it’s negative, it’s easier to get Arctic air into the Great Lakes (click the link above). Look where most of the red lines (ensemble members) are headed for the start of December. Bettles, AK so far today has had a high of -39°F and a low of -47°F That’s 40° colder than average. For the last 3 days they are 39° below average.

Weekend

Bill Steffen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:34:48 +0000

The weather looks for all the weekend football games and parades. We’ll see high temperatures in the low 50s (could even make mid-50s with a little more sunshine) and light winds. There could be a little early morning fog. The 41st Grand Rapids Santa Claus Parade starts at 9 AM (a little earlier than past years). I’ll be in the 16th Hudsonville Holiday Parade in Hudsonville. That starts from the Pinnacle Center at 10 AM. They usually have free coffee/hot chocolate, cookies and donut holes for everyone after the parade at the firehouse. The 30th Battle Creek Holiday Parade begins at 5:40 PM (so it’s dark enough to see all the lights in the parade. This is the start of the International Festival of Lights in Battle Creek. The parade has 110 entries. We have high school playoff games on Saturday. We’ll have all your local teams covered with Football Frenzy. The winners get a trip to Ford Field, where it’ll be unusual to actually watch a Michigan team win there. Grand Valley has a 1 PM home playoff match against the Hillsdale Chargers, the only team to beat them (barely) this season. I’ll be there for that game. The Wolverines host #9 ranked Ohio State. I’m sure they’d rather it was a rematch against mighty Delaware St. The Wolverines have only a 3-point win against Indiana to show for the Big Ten Season. The Spartans face a challenge as Penn St. pays a visit. At least MSU is headed to a bowl game. Then we have the Detroit Lions. Both the Lions and Cleveland are 1-8, so the good news is that one of them will get a win. I figure the game will still be 0-0 in the 4th quarter. The Lions will tire out and just plain quit – walk off the field. Eight plays later, Cleveland will score and win the game 6-0. In any case, they’ll be a lot of empty seats at Ford Field and the weather will be nice, so I bet a lot of people skip the Lions and head outside.

Snowlovers Dream – updated

Bill Steffen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:53:16 +0000

<–click the pictures twice to enlarge. This is the 00Z GFS run for Thanksgiving Day. It’s backed off a little on the cold and snow…probably a non-accumulating mix for a while. The second map is for Friday evening, December 4th. Now the GFS has the tendency to take you colder and snowier in later periods and then back off…but…but if that map is right or close, the snowplowers will be rollin’. In any case…the first week of December is going to bring a knock on the door from Old Man Winter.

El Nino peaks in Dec.?

Bill Steffen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:11:40 +0000

<–click the image twice to enlarge. This is a graph of various forecasts for El Nino 3.4 (3.4 refers to a geographic region along the Equatorial Pacific). As we thought, the consensus of the models has the El Nino peaking in about early December and then trending downward. So, this will not be a blow-out El Nino like 1982-83 or 1997-98. We are going to get some cold and snow going here in the Great Lakes. November is now 5.2 deg. warmer than average and Lake Michigan is still relatively warm. The last day cooler than average in Grand Rapids was Nov. 6. But the cold air is lurking in the far north. Bettles, AK had a HIGH temperature of -38F yesterday. That was a staggering 43 degrees colder than their average high temperature.

Thursday AM

Bill Steffen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:03:51 +0000

As I write this at 10:30 AM on Thursday AM, there are a couple hundred geese in Nick’s soybean field across from my house. There’s still a little standing water out there and they are happily splashing around and gleaning what’s left. We have some breaks in the clouds right now, but the upper low will come over us this PM (link is daytime satellite loop), so it’ll stay generally cloudy. Here’s the latest surface weather map and West Michigan radar. The overnight GFS plots have it snowing here Thanksgiving Day. I’m now getting pretty confident we’ll see measurable snow in the 2nd half of next week. We should set a new record in G.R. for latest first flakes (current record is 11/26/1902).

Olympic-sized Snowfalls

Bill Steffen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:28:15 +0000

The Winter Olympics start on Feb. 12th in and around Vancouver, British Columbia. Much of the skiing will take place on Whistler Mountain about 70 miles north of the city. Whistler Mountain has already recorded the snowiest November they have ever had. They report 22″ of new snow in the last 24 hours (I’m writing this Thursday AM) and a whopping 98″ of snow (over 7 feet!) in just the last week! They have already picked up 163″ of snow this season and they report a base at mid-mountain of 91″. On the east side of the Canadian Rockies, Calgary’s Olympic Park also had their earliest opening ever, due to early season cold and snow in October. Mt. Baker in Washington State reports 15″ of snow in the past 24 hours More heavy snow is forecast for the next few days. They already have a base of 80″ at Pan Dome. The biggest problem they have had is high wind events this month. Crystal Mountain in the Cascades opened a full month ahead of last year. A press release from Crystal Mt. said that “every year we pray that we can open on Thanksgiving Day. This year we beat that by over two weeks!” The weather station at the top of Crystal Mt. recorded a wind gust to 115 mph last week and Mt. Baker had a gust to 88 mph. Waves off the Washington Coast reached 31 feet high. The Loveland Ski Area in Colorado had their earliest season opening in 64 years back on Oct. 6, and Arapahoe opened earlier than at any time in the last 40 years. Two resorts in the Sierra Mts. of California/Nevada had their earliest opening ever as did the Las Vegas Ski Area, and Mammoth Mt. in southern California reported their second-earliest opening. Timberline Ski Area in Oregon is already up to 98″ of new snow for the season. It’s also been the earliest opening for ski areas in the Alps in Europe.

186 mph wind

Bill Steffen — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:16:02 +0000

<-click the graphic twice to enlarge. The anemometer on top of Sheep Mt. in Alaska recorded a gust to 186 mph on 11/14. The storm that produced that gust also brought the wind to 95 mph at Cape Spencer and 87 mph at Eldred Rock. The world record fastest non-tornadic wind gust is 231 mph on top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire in April 1934. The fastest wind gust officially in Grand Rapids was 80 mph in the Armistice Day Storm of Nov. 1940. However, we think wind gusts reached 125-130 mph in both Walker and Grand Haven/Spring Lake during the famous 5/31/98 derecho thunderstorm. The fastest wind anywhere in the world in 1956 was during the Hudsonville tornado of April 3, 1956. The tornado was rated F5 on the Fujita Scale with winds over 260 mph. A portable Doppler radar indicated a wind of over 300 mph about 100 feet off the ground in the Moore, Oklahoma tornado of May 3, 1999.

Gas Price Going Up

Bill Steffen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:26:55 +0000

Here’s the latest from Ed: “Comment on the November 1 prediction: Our last price hike was October 27, and prices have been falling slowly but surely since, with $2.39 in Lowell. The prediction was CORRECT.Monday, November 16, 2009, 2:45pm: With Citgo and Rich out of business in Standale, that area of town has become a high-price leader. It has made it harder for me to monitor the situation. Today, for instance, with NYMEX prices higher, the 20-cent margin price is in the $2.70 to $2.75 range, and prices are $2.59 in Standale. Monitoring prices elsewhere in time either requires more driving by me or regular trip to GasBuddy, so I’m not as in tune with things as I have been in the past. If prices were below $2.50 in Standale, like they are elsewhere in town, I’d be predicting a price hike without a sweat. Instead, I have to take some more readings, and I will conclude that a price hike is on its way. $2.65? ” Ed Aboufadel

El Nino

Bill Steffen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:48:14 +0000

The loop of sea surface temperature anomaly for the Equatorial Pacific clearly shows the building El Nino (now weak-moderate). Note that the El Nino has continued to strengthen into at least early November (may have leveled off with the last graphic in the loop – we don’t know yet). You’ll also note that it is not centered at the South American coast, but more out toward the Central Pacific. One of the keys to the winter is what this El Nino does. Nino 3.4 shot up to 1.1 for October 2009. Remember that the cold winters that I talked about had Nino 3.4 values that were a little lower than what we see now (1976 was 0.84 in October and 1977 was 0.73 in October). We’ll be tracking the index over the next few weeks. I think it’s going to peak and then start slowly back down in early 2010. Others think it just keeps moving upward. We have NEVER had a November in Grand Rapids without seeing at least a trace of snow. There have only been six Novembers when we had just a trace of snow. The last time that happened was in 2001. That year we had only a trace of snow in November, then 2.2″ on Dec. 14th, which quickly melted as temperatures shot back into the 40s. Then from Dec. 23 to Dec. 31 we received 51.7″ of snow! It was light, fluffy mostly lake-effect snow that settled down, but we did have 8″ on the ground for Christmas Day and 18″ on the ground by the 28th. Overall that was a warm winter, but we did get well above normal snowfall. We also had a trace of snow in Nov. 1984. Then we picked up 5″ of snow on Dec. 2. That year the Nino 3.4 number was zero for October and falling into negative numbers.

Ski season begins

Bill Steffen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:35:51 +0000

The Michigan Ski Season gets underway this Friday. Ski Brule (often the first resort to open and the last to close) near Iron River will open this Friday, Nov. 20th. Lift tickets are free on opening day. As you can see in the picture, they’ve been making snow and they’re ready to go. Out in British Columbia, where they’re getting ready for the winter Olympics, Whistler-Blackcomb reports a monster snowstorm. Get this: 32″ in 24- hours, 44″ in 48 hours and 76″ in the last week! That’s on a 69″ base! There are six resorts open in Colorado, with Wolf Creek reporting 20″ of new snow in the last 72 hours on a 43″ base. Four resorts are open in California, including Mammoth Mt. Half a dozen resorts are planning to open this weekend in New England, including Killington in Vermont. The past two years have brought very good ski conditions to Michigan and much of North America. The cold air continues to build up north. Bettles, AK had a high of -20° and a low of -34° on Sunday. Both of those readings were 26° below average. Anchorage had a high/low of 8°/-5° on Monday and that was 19° below average. Valdez has had 44.7″ of snow this month (they had 27″ on the ground on the 13th) and Ketchikan has picked up 13.21″ of rain in the first 15 days of November (almost an inch a day). The average temperature for Alert in far northern Canada has been -16°F this month! ADD ON: 1 PM Tues: right now it’s -43 at Bettles and Tanana AK.