January 2024 Observations and Discussion

[Tom]

1 minute ago, gabel23 said:

It was crazy Tom, I remember it really well! Even Hastings NWS mentioned how bad the models were up until the day of the storm. Here is their write up and what they said: 

Forecast-wise, this storm provided quite a challenge, as some areas ended up receiving at least 2-3 times as much snow as originally forecasted 1-3 days before the event. Part of this had to do with the storm track shifting a bit farther north, but also, computer forecast models were unusually inconsistent until the "last minute", when it finally became apparent that it was going to be a fairly major storm especially for the eastern half of the local area. 

 

In other news, this month looks like the best opportunity for a lot of us on the forum to see a winter for the ages! I'm pumped with what Jan. will bring for all of us!

Boom!  That's it...thanks for digging that up...well, here's to tracking more Beasts down the road!  Let's manifest a memorable JAN for all!

[mlgamer]

Here's a look at today's snow moving in. A preview of things to come? 

 

[bud2380]

The GFS just loves KS & MO right now.  

 

[bud2380]

Absurd totals.

[Hoosier]

Started a storm thread for the 11th-13th

 

[Jayhawker85]

34 minutes ago, mlgamer said:

Here's a look at today's snow moving in. A preview of things to come? 

 

Can’t wait to go home and see the snow on the ground in Lawrence.

 

Nothing has fallen yet here at state line 

[hawkstwelve]

Man, the 12z CMC was a buzzkill pretty much across the board for up here. Luckily the 12z ICON, 12z UKMET, and 12z GFS all disagree with how it handles the various systems and all give me much more snow than the 2 inches the CMC shows. Hopefully it's just a one-off and not the start of a trend.

[mlgamer]

12 minutes ago, sumweatherdude said:

But if KC does end up being somewhere near the sweet spot this year, it will have been a long time coming.  We've averaged 20% below normal snowfall over the last 10 years.  Only two of the last 10 years have been significantly above normal.  We've had 4 years that were less than 50% of normal and 2 years where we got less than 30% of normal.   At some point, we have to be in the sweet spot.

Amen. It has been a long time coming...so hopefully it does get here! lol

[hawkstwelve]

12z GEFS remains relatively unchanged for up here while the CMC ensembles were a little more of a step back. I do see a slight tick south in both models with the heaviest totals, so there may start to be a trend of suppressing systems further south than it initially looked like.

Ultimately, lots of time to go and a lot of systems are on deck which means a lot of details to iron out.

[Tom]

I'll share in the Weenie Maps...The next Big Ticket storm the following weekend is going to dump Feet of snow up near Sunrise Ski Resort.  The 12z GFS over the next 10 days is showing a Lolipop total of 109"!!  Not gonna lie....I'm freaking stoked!  This pattern has wicked potential!  The fun thing about this is, not only is hard to get all the players on the field to produce great winter storms, but to be able to track them out of the SW and then to deliver the goods out in the heartland makes it that much SWEETER!  Let's Freaking Go!

 

[Money]

Amount of storms coming up is ridiculous 

[hawkstwelve]

12z Euro not looking quite as nice for next weekend's storm. Kind of breaks it up into two, one that goes further north across N SD/ND/MN and one that just stays hugging the Rockies.

[bud2380]

Euro hammers Missouri again next week after the early week system. Hard to fathom missing two straight storms south of Iowa given the current lack of snow cover to the north. Hoping models trend back north. 

[CentralNebWeather]

12z Euro 

[hawkstwelve]

Still some big swings going on with next weekend's system.

[Black Hole]

8 minutes ago, hawkstwelve said:

Still some big swings going on with next weekend's system.

Presumably as the big PV lobe over the NW combines with the extending Pacific jet that will force the storm track north again like we saw here. Of course that could change, but it does make sense to me. 

[Clinton]

3 hours ago, mlgamer said:

Here's a look at today's snow moving in. A preview of things to come? 

 

Nice big flakes I wasn't expecting this over my way.  It has me supper excited for next week!

[Black Hole]

3 hours ago, sumweatherdude said:

I agree these are absurd totals, and very likely well overdone.  But if KC does end up being somewhere near the sweet spot this year, it will have been a long time coming.  We've averaged 20% below normal snowfall over the last 10 years.  Only two of the last 10 years have been significantly above normal.  We've had 4 years that were less than 50% of normal and 2 years where we got less than 30% of normal.   At some point, we have to be in the sweet spot.  It would be ironic if it's this year because I was extremely close to taking a job in MPLS this summer.   

That probably describes a lot of the central Plains region. Look at this from Tulsa going back to the 2015-2016 season we are 30.4" below normal. So over 8.5 seasons we are almost 4 entire seasons below normal, or in other words 57% of normal snowfall. Somethings got to give, and this pattern is the best bet for both us in ages.  

 

Here is KC, for comparison. 112.4/151.7 = 74% of normal. (i.e. observed/average for that same period)

 

[hawkstwelve]

Missed this model over all the other ones this morning but the 13z NBM had a big bump up in totals for up here compared to it's previous run. A lot of this fills in after next weekend's system. It shows 10 inches here, which is easily the highest this model has been all season.

[mlgamer]

33 minutes ago, Clinton said:

Nice big flakes I wasn't expecting this over my way.  It has me supper excited for next week!

Yeah, me too! I just measured a solid 1.5" on the ground from this first system to set the table. Even got added to the WWA to boot...lol!

[Clinton]

3 minutes ago, mlgamer said:

Yeah, me too! I just measured a solid 1.5" on the ground from this first system to set the table. Even got added to the WWA to boot...lol!

Snowfall rates here can't overcome the warm ground but congrats.  Enjoy that sweet spot of yours, these storms sure seem to find you this year and a big dog is lurking.

[CentralNebWeather]

NWS Blend. 

[hawkstwelve]

12z GraphCast had a pretty large jump in total precip amounts for my area and surrounding spots when compared to the 00z run. A lot of the orange/red comes from next weekend's system, which it shows starting to hit around Friday. Until then, these areas are mostly in the various shades of blue.

At 10:1 ratios that is 15-20 inches for up here. Previous run had 8-12 inches.

 

[hawkstwelve]

18z GFS is about as close to a "spread the wealth" run as you can get. 

[james1976]

18z GFS dries up the Wed-Thu clipper but then brings the stronger storm right after it further north.

[james1976]

MSP is at 5" of snow so far this season. Last season at this date we were at 48".

[Minny_Weather]

20 hours ago, james1976 said:

It's not a significant event but the light snow event Fri nite-Sat for the TC has slightly increased from under an inch to 1-2 inches. Lol. Local met mentioned the increase on the 10pm news tonight. Take any positive news we can get!

I'm 2 hours west of the cities but the snow floodgates just opened up way before they were supposed to here and it's accumulating easily. I think this could be an overachiever.

[Minny_Weather]

It's pretty amazing how different radar returns look from what the models have been spitting out. Definitely not nearly as much dry air and even S MN is seeing snowfall.

[CentralNebWeather]

01z Blend. 

[jaster220]

23 hours ago, Clinton said:

GFS with a pair of storms from the 12th-15th.  This map is at 10:1 ratios will be better than that for most.

With this map and that WPC d8-14 map showing another snow swath, it reminds me of Jan '79 that buried Chicago and other regions like NMI with several systems in a row. 

[Clinton]

18 minutes ago, jaster220 said:

With this map and that WPC d8-14 map showing another snow swath, it reminds me of Jan '79 that buried Chicago and other regions like NMI with several systems in a row. 

Baatardi has made lots of comparisons to this pattern with '78 and '79.  That was a good January.

[james1976]

969 L in Illinois next Friday night on the GFS

[hawkstwelve]

2 minutes ago, james1976 said:

969 L in Illinois next Friday night on the GFS

One member goes crazy with a 943mb right over N Michigan. Wow.

[Hoosier]

3 minutes ago, hawkstwelve said:

One member goes crazy with a 943mb right over N Michigan. Wow.

Hall of fame worthy

[hawkstwelve]

Euro digging the cold down a bit better next weekend. Wind chill values look downright frigid.

[westMJim]

Looking back at 2023

The highest reading was 93 on May, 31^st , August 24^th and September 5^th. The lowest was 8 on January 31^st The average H/L was 61.8/44.5 The mean for the year was 51.0 that is a departure of +1.7. 2023 was the 9^th  warmest on record at Grand Rapids. The last last low of 32° or lower was on April 27^th. The first day with a low of 32 or lower was on October 23^rd for a growing season of 199 days.  There were 10 days of 90 or better, that is +2 days above average. There were only 8 days with highs below 32° that was well below the average 43 days. There were 72 days when the lows were below 32°, that was well below the average of 123 days. There were no days with lows of below 0 that is below the average of 3 days.  There was a total of 37.43” of precipitation 30 year average is 34.36” there were 146 days of 0.01” or more that is average. There were 78 days of 0.10” of more 74 is average. There were 23 days of 0.50” or more 22 is average and 7 days of 1.00” or more and that is average. The most rain in 24hrs was 2.81 on August 14/15. There were 5230 HDD’s -1103 below average and 641 CDD’s -349 below average so even though 2023 was the 2^nd warmest on record the energy use was below average. The highest wind speed was 53 MPH on February 15^th the sun was out a total of 48% of the time. There were 154 clear days, 100 partly cloudy days and 110 cloudy days. For the year there were a reported 30 thunderstorms. 35 days with heavy rain, 127 days with light rain, 4 days with fr rain. 5 days with heavy snow, 50 days with light snow. Fog on 190 days visibility lest that ¼ mile on 31 days.  The annual mean of 52.4 at Muskegon was the 2^nd warmest the mean of 51.2 at Lansing was the 3^rd warmest and the mean of 50.1 at Grand Rapids was the 7^th warmest. So that is 2023 in review.

[OKwx2k4]

So, Euro and GFS both going to an outcome I anticipate with a snowpack locked in to my North. Really feel as though we may see something pretty radical over the ozarks of Oklahoma and a few other areas what havent yet gotten snow getting to participate in the next 10 days with the rounds of weather and solid cold anticipated.

[CentralNebWeather]

07z Blend 

[Sciascia]

Not sure what’s more unbelievable: The 0z GFS painting 30+ inches at ORD in the next 192hrs, or the 0z and  the 6z GFS painting 30 inches there in back to back runs. 

[gimmesnow]

13 hours ago, james1976 said:

MSP is at 5" of snow so far this season. Last season at this date we were at 48".

Even if you can make snow with the latest technology there is no snow. There's an app that tells you how much snow base ski resorts have compared to average. All the resorts in SE Wisconsin are at like 35% of their normal base for this time of year. And that's with making snow. This winter has been so bad they've only been able to make about a third of the snow, and keep it, than they do on average. That said I don't know what's going to happen even if the PV verifies since all the resorts here already spent a ton of money blowing snow just to stay open with 5 inches of base.

That said Chicago schools being out for the first week of January might be a saving grace because the resorts were packed.