jaster220

True, but I managed 30 days straight snowcover which NEVER happened living in Detroit metro. This won't be enough for snowmobilers, but will be a decent shot of real wintry conditions while it is, after all, winter.

This could be a last-minute surprise over-performer! APX much more bullish on totals for here. Since its not targeting GRR's backyard, they're going with lower amounts. Nothing new but GRR's disco does have a couple of nuggets:

I forgot, they don't light the real mountains for night skiing like in the Midwest.

53F after work and still 51F here at this time. Our snow is on life-support lol. Feels like that first big warm-up you usually experience in March up here. Can we get a normal winter please and thanks, instead of all this rampant extremes.

Beautiful snow amigo! Those western mountains are really amazing. But I did not see one soul working or skiing. Is the snow so bad nobody can really get up there right now?

Maybe one of the few, but 30th day with snow OTG for mby. As usual, the wooded areas have survived the best, while open and wind-prone areas are either open, or partially so. APX's snowcover map must be based on satellite sensing and broadly smoothed as they show almost all of NMI with at least 1"+ and yet as I drive north every day through Roscommon county there is almost no snow along the open right-of-way and wetlands along Houghton Lake. Not as snowless as @Madtown's pictures but very bleak compared to here in Clare county where it still looks and feels more like winter. The road that goes along the east side of the lake here is mostly wooded and I'd estimate 3-4" remains there in the shade.

I've had bee infestations twice at 2 different homes. German Hornets in the ceiling rafters right above the Master bed and they broke a 4" hole, fell through and swarmed the house. Fortunately NOT when we were asleep. We came home one evening and as we entered from the garage we saw a few flying (it was night so they were not too active - another lucky strike). But it was a Sunday night and only one pest control outfit would even answer the phone. They were not the Pros, not insured, and left us a mess but they fought it out and at least we got our house back. Found dead ones in every corner of closets for a couple years after. And that was the easy one, lol. At the Marshall home, regular yellow jackets built a nest in the kitchen wall and after it got large enough, they started coming into the house and flying around. Cabinets and our fridge along that wall made it very difficult to see how exactly they were entering. Wasn't excited about having to rip cabinets off the wall to find the hole either. I moved the fridge and found no opening, so figured it must be under the rear of the cabinets - uggh. Try living without a usable kitchen, see how long that works out. Decided to move the fridge for another look in desperation and when I did there was half a bee head squashed between the linoleum and the bottom of the trim. Apparently, when the fridge was in place, the weight pushed down on the flooring just enough to allow to crawl through and take flight. Probably had swatted about 800 dead by this point and the wife was at her end. Had set off bug bombs and such but it wouldn't last, just kill the current batch. This was Sept 2014 and it was very mild and they were crazy active. After I calked that area, we were finally done with bees in the house. Final step was a can of regular bee spray, with a long enough length of tube from the hardware store, and after dark I shoved the hose in the opening by the sill outside where they were flying into and emptied the can as directed. Then used that expanding spray foam in a can along about 10 feet where the siding met the foundation (pre-Civil War home here). Took about 3 weeks to gain victory. One of the worst home-owner experiences ever. Good luck with your situation. Sounds like you have a handle on it, and some good advice regarding the "dust".

K, thought that's what I was reading @Grizzcoat has alluded to this BS

Meaning what exactly? Someone smoothed the curve at the expense of actual reality?

++FROSTY overnight up here. Normally this will burn off shortly after 9 but after noon it was still going strong. The middle photo is Dead Stream Swamp on the west side of Houghton Lake. It's lower elevation and the fog was still noticable in that stretch. Otherwise wall-to-wall sunshine is finally visiting The Mitt!!

Must've developed just a tad too late for up here. Did not take time to look into reasons tbh. Glad for yby amigo

Meanwhile it was a complete bust up here. APX was calling for 2-4" and I didn't see 3-4 flakes fall and when I headed out at 6 am there was just a 34 deg mist wetting the roadway. Disappointed but glad you guys downstate got a nice surprise out of this. Models didn't handle things very well. I do remember posting back in November that the cold pool of air just east in Canada would at some point deliver a surprise snow. Congrats!

This map illustrates well the differences between SMI and NMI when it comes to snow cover retention (or lack thereof). Amazing how the invisible boundary between wx zones is represented very well where the red is prevalent. It is very difficult to maintain long stretches of snowcover in SMI, let alone continuous like we nearly had in 13-14. Whereas in NMI it is the exception like this strong Nino when melt-offs can happen.

Temps are unusually even N to S acoss the Mitt this evening as snow approaches from the west/NW

While we have some down-time from storm tracking mode, this is well worth the watch. Always fascinated and puzzled me how/why so many poor souls perished in relatively modern times (vs pioneer era Children's Blizzard of 1888 for comparison) during this fierce storm. Not to mention the sailors lost due to numerous ships sinking on Lake Michigan in reported 50 foot seas.

..meanwhile, back at the (winter) ranch Latest 18z NAM trends indicate a more intense "burst" of snow in my region around 3 am. I will, of course, be asleep so don't expect any person confirmations, lol.

DCA hit 80F a day ago which was a 1st for January there. Not denying any climo trends but remember, in early January 2014 Hell had more snow OTG than MQT! Weird stuff happens in the Wx Dept.

One snow shower this PM. My forecast looks like winter for a day.

@Niko "Mitt hit" with this clipper tomorrow night/Tuesday morning should increase your (our) total.

What would be more fitting for this winter than a KC vs Detroit SB?

Looks the place to be in the new pattern will be upstate NY into E Canada. Could be historic there.

@westMJim I remember John McMurray as a rather subdued TV Met on channel 12 in Flint. Must have been interesting to hear him notably excited for the big bliz on WJR. My father listened to WJR (and sometimes WWJ) always in the car. But being mid-week we were not traveling, just doing regular school and work routines and I never saw/heard one forecast prior to the 26th "day of infamy" for the LP of Michigan. I was 13 then and wouldn't buy my NOAA weather radio (at Radio Shack in the Eastland Mall) until 5 years later. And, I was in Davison then, one of low-ball areas mentioned. Conditions were still bad due to blowing and drifting but it technically wasn't even a Big Dog via snow totals (8-9") let alone top 5 in that category. For Genesee Cnty I think the 67 bliz stands alone as a CAT-5 storm (20+ inches). After two such huge storms for SMI in 11 year span I wonder if/when we will ever see another? There was something special in the pattern cycle during roughly a 20 year period (65-85) that brought arctic HP's down in the perfect spot for SMI snowstorms to over-perform. It may take that same pattern recycling before it happens again. I really appreciated your write-up and the news information about the GR area impacts. Fills-in some more puzzle pieces in my reconstruction of a "Storm Story" episode for SMI's biggest and baddest blizzard. It would be neat if Jim Cantore did an actual episode on historical events like that one. I have such a video (from a hunter's perspective) on the Armistice Day blizzard of 1940 that I will post later.

Black Ice this evening up here. Grocery store lot is a skate rink. With 2-3" fresh snow yesterday, plow banks are 2 to 3 feet along the highway. It's really nice to see after 4 winters mostly without deep snow.

".who thought MSP would struggle this much??" I did. I picked ORD to beat MSP in the contest thread. I also made a post about 6 weeks ago saying that they would not see much snow this season.

Yes, both the photo and the video. That is when I leave my place and head south to the x-way. The state road crews must have been so focused on 127, they ignored M61 and it got that hard packed 2" layer that is now locked in place due to the cold. With traffic it is getting very slick under the tires. They need to get some sand on it before more accidents happen. There's hills here too, it's not all flat. Detroit sits atop a large salt mine and during winter, the streets are white from the excessive salt usage not snow. I don't care for that and all the slush that comes with, so I'm fine with not salting here, but they should deploy sand which, oddly they have on the side road hills, just the state highway apparently being ignored. We are kind of on the fringe.