Snow system headed towards the region, trying to cross into Indiana right now, and it will take a few more hours before it gets into the region. I am still going to head steady with snow fall totals from this system (2-4 as being the regional average) and so I am not going to alter that much with this system. The only I may do is adjust the timing of the final inch of snow for tomorrow morning, but in general…2-4 in Toledo, 3-5 in Fort Wayne with about 1-3 in Detroit. We’ll come back to this in a moment. But first, it was another cool morning in the region again, and some of you may be wondering how low those temperatures got? Well let’s take a quick look.
It started out chilly this morning in Toledo with that being the coolest location. Temperatures this morning were hanging around 1°F at the Express Airport, in fact I measured 1.7° this morning around 4.15 this morning, and I haven’t checked it since. Now that isn’t bad for a seasonal low, and it is a lot better than the 15° we’ve been looking at since the 3rd of January. Cleveland didn’t hit it as hard as I would have liked, but nonetheless they bottomed out with 8° this morning. Detroit saw 4° this morning while Fort Wayne reached 3°. Erie hit 16° while Buffalo only dropped to 11°. Did anybody get below zero? Not in the region, but if you were up in Green Bay, Wisconsin this morning it was -9°.
The snow on the ground this morning coupled with the early clearing in the west allowed for some good radiant cooling to occur. The winds were not gusty after midnight and the air flow did come from the northwest, so all of that equaled out to a nice cool morning for those in the west. These are just some of the unofficial numbers; we’re going to have wait another few more hours until the official numbers for this morning come out. So back to our snow system. Snow being reported in Madison, WI this morning as this system continues to head towards the region. It is coming in a weird angle as it moves through Iowa and into Illinois, but that is to be expected. Wave of low pressure is causing this, and this wave is going to almost do a perfect “wrap-around” of the forecast area.
Right now, I am basing times mainly off of SREF (with a few tweaks here and there) and probably after this update I am going to switch over to using the charts for the timing as well as visual forecasting, so expect there to be a few tweaks in the forecast, mainly for time adjustments. Now let’s go ahead and take a look at this system for a moment:
Starting with the surface, we can see this system is mainly an upper level origin, nothing showing up on the surface charts.
850-mb showing the system a bit clearer, we’re seeing a good area of warm advection taking place around this system which is allowing for the system to continue on moving and producing snow.
Luck fully the 0°C line at the 850-mb level is still down in northern Kentucky, so using this I feel no need to transition system into anything other than snow. System drawing its moisture from the south, in accordance with the 850-mb moisture transport, and we’re seeing that the moisture is getting somewhat pushed up against the cooler, denser air to the north (mainly due to a surface high pressure sitting in the region right). Moving up to 700-mb charts,
we’re seeing a well defined mid-level trough showing up just to the west of all this snow which is to be expected. Good moisture within the trough and around the trough. Flow shows a little bit of ridging in the region, allowing for a near perfect path through the region. 700-mb temps reaching to -2°C all the way down to Atlanta. 500-mb level, system is barely visible using isotachs.
Relaying mainly on vortices (spin of air parcels) to pin point overall location of disturbance. Switching on up to my favorite, the 300-mb level,
we see a mess of gusty winds, with no defined jet streak save for one over the region headed east. We have a weak one trying to get organized just a couple states to the west of the snow shower edge, but that one is weak with winds only gusting to 100-kts over Nebraska (for it to be decent, it’d be about 120 or 140-kts). Checking with divergence, looking at decent values over the western half of the region which corresponds not only to the path of the system in a way, but as well as the intensification of this system. It will not get much stronger than what it is now, because values of divergence haven’t changed much since this morning. Back at the surface, critical thickness at the surface confirms that the precip is going to be all snow.
Checking with our dear friends the computer models, things are strangely in agreement today, so again, I will go with visual forecasting and use models solely for guidance (just to make sure I don’t post a forecast for tonight that says 70° and sunny). SREF showing snow fall totals between 1-3 inches, it is trying to hint at a small possibility of 4 inches over the western half of the region, but after looking at this system I will go with 2-4 inches of snow for the region. The reason for Fort Wayne having 3-5 inches is a few quick bursts of brief intensifying and overall location could give you about an inch. However, you might not get that extra inch tomorrow morning, so you’ll see more than likely the same amount as the rest – just at a different time.
So this is really going to be a fun system nonetheless.
So again, no major changes to the forecasts at this point. I’ll keep you updated as always, and if anything changes drastically before my next Update – which will be at 5.00 p.m. to allow for more forecast edits – then I will update you sooner. But for now, I am Timmy Albertson and that’s the weather! Keep checking back for updates because I’ll have them for you as always.
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