With snow showing on the models, there are some new members who probably don’t understand some of the terms developed by weather forum regulars.

Take this short test to see how many you know.

Drunk Uncle (druncle)

A.       The 18z GFS, due to its frequently absurd results

B.      People who stay up all night posting the latest model runs

Fake Cold

A.       Cold air that forms in-place in the PNW

B.      What you tell your boss that you caught so you can stay home watching model runs

Polar Vortex

A.       The low pressure that forms over the North Pole in the winter

B.      What you get from your spouse when you go to bed at 2 am after watching model runs

Clown Range

A.      The Euro after 10 days

B.      The GFS after 10 hours

Pepto

A.       Bright pink on the snow maps

B.      Medicine taken when the models trend north

Eugene

A.       Small city in Oregon where college football coaches are trained for Florida jobs

B.      Driest place in Oregon, except maybe Lake Oswego

Stampede Pass

A.      Washington mountain pass on I-90

B.      Where 15-year-olds are trained in nuclear physics

Back door blast

A.       When frigid air moves in from the east

B.      What you get in prison if you hire Deweydog as your attorney

That’s just a few.  Add your own.

Post your Thanksgiving spread here.  I'm not posting mine yet as we aren't even close to done but would love to see what everyone has going.

Hi all.  I realize this is a pretty localized topic but I thought I'd share.

This is part of a project that I had started working on years ago but then abandoned.  Anyway, I thought I would share some info about this particular occurrence because as far as I can tell, it is one of the top lake effect snow events to occur off of southern Lake Michigan.  

As the thread title says, it happened back in mid February 1958.  The synoptic pattern was not an unfamiliar one for significant lake effect snow events off of southern Lake Michigan, featuring a low pressure system moving up the east coast with high pressure attempting to move into the area.  This set up a long northerly to north-northwesterly low level fetch with some duration.  I will post a series of surface/500 mb maps and 850 mb temperature/wind vector maps covering the period from Feb 15-18.

Obviously it's a bit of a guessing game on what the thermodynamics were like over the lake, but we can figure that there may have been at least some ice coverage due to it being mid-February and it not being an unusually warm winter up to that point.  Assuming water temperatures in the low 30s Fahrenheit, which are common values over southern Lake Michigan at that time of year, it would have resulted in lake-850 mb temp differentials peaking in the mid 20s C.  Based on how the maps below look, it's likely that the band(s) of snow would have been wiggling around some, preventing even larger amounts, but obviously still impressive.

According to CDNS, which was the forerunner publication to Storm Data, snowfall amounts of 40" were estimated around Michigan City, IN.  Although measuring may not have been the easiest (as suggested by how high the drifts got), this estimate seems quite believable as La Porte, IN recorded 33" of snow on just under 3" of precip between the 15th-18th, and they are located a good 15 miles inland.  

The setup was starting to break down later on the 18th with rapidly warming 850 mb temps over Lake Michigan:

Here's a map of snowfall amounts during the period.  It is underdoing total amounts in the band (probably due to the localized nature), but it gives a general idea of where it occurred.  Just add on some.