While the D.C. area may escape the Brutal Arctic Attack on Inauguration Day, the rest of the country will be in the DEEP FREEZE depending on how much snow is OTG.
Post 18th, the pattern is looking pretty D**n good as the COLD is Locked in and the opportunities for Snow across a lot of our members that have seen SNOW on SNOW, appear to be in a good position to get more for the 2nd half of JAN. As I have opined before, a SW FLOW pattern and/or SPLIT FLOW should begin to evolve. We have seen some back n forth of the modeling over the past few days, it appears to me, the EPS/GEPS and some GEFS run that are starting to hang a trough back in the SW/CAL region.
The Cutoff Trough which will spin for a few days offshore of SO CAL (14th - 17th), is a quintessential part of the LRC that produced in both cycles. This time, however, we will be in Cycle # 3 and to a heightened degree, we will likely have much more Arctic Air to work with.
Some weather history for January 10 in Southern Lower Michigan.
1982: Extreme arctic outbreak brings record cold temperatures and massive lake effect snow totals. Muskegon has their snowiest calendar day on record with 22 inches. This contributes to the all-time record monthly snowfall of 102.4 inches (8 and a half feet!) at Muskegon for January 1982.
2009, a strong low-pressure system tracked east along the Ohio River, producing 6 to 9 inches of snow along and south of M-59. Snowfall totals quickly tapered off north of M-59. Some of the higher snowfall totals reported included Ann Arbor 7.9 inches, Brighton 9.0 inches, Carleton 8.5 inches, Ferndale 9.0 inches, and South Lyon 9.0 inches.
2004, the temperature in the cities of Bad Axe and Richmond dropped to -9 degrees. This turned out to be the coldest air of the season.