A major winter storm is going to affect the chicagoland area starting late weds night and lasting all the way into friday. This will only add to the harsh winter we have had already and most likely push my winter snow total above 30" and its only early january.
Lets start things off by looking at a WV loop.
http://weather.cod.edu/loops/US-WV.loop.html
Currently, our shortwave, or alberta clipper is moving southeast across canada and will be in north dakota by tomorrow morning/afternoon. from there it will continue to slide southeast into IA and make a turn more to the east as it moves across IL/IN. This is a very impressive storm system is going to have a ton of dynamics with it. One of the problems or things that is going to hamper even more snow accumulations is this thing is going to be completely cut off from any gulf moisture due to a high pressure out ahead of it.
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/namer/gfs/12/images/gfs_ten_024l.gif
The strong dynamics plus the high snow ratios, possibly nearing 30:1, due to the artic air associated with this system, will help off set the moisture problems and still will allow for significant snow accumulations.
LOT has all of the chicago area under a winter storm watch starting tomorrow night and going until thursday evening for snow accumulations of 7-9". another problem that is going to be a factor is the wind on the backside of this storm. there could be gusts to 25-30mph. And with 6" of very fluffy snow, there is going to be alot of blowing and drifting of the snow which will create ground blizzards, espcially out in rural area.
another impressive point is that there is going to be a fairly deep DGZ which will allow for really good snow growth to occur and with such impressive dynamics, wouldn't be suprised to have some convective snow due to the good lapse rates that will be in place.
right now I think the heaviest snow totals will be along and north of the track of the H7 low, which looks to be from around cedar rapids, IA to chicago where lake enhancement should aid in higher totals as well as the possible lake effect snow on our side of the lake thursday night and friday. I know some other people and I have been talking about the LES setup on 1/22/05 on the backside of strong clipper that brought widespred lake effect snow to the chicagoland area and gave me the most I have got from LE. Still hard to say exactly what will happen but I think someone in IN, west of the friday night/saturday event, could get rick rolled from a nasty band.
most models are spitting out around .35"-.45" liquid eqv. and with 20-30:1, you can do the math. for now I am going to go with 6-10" across all of the area with more the closer you get to the lake as lake enhancement will have more of an effect. wouldn't be suprised to see some totals near a foot close to the lake and down towards the southern tip of lake michigan near the IL/IN border.
will most likely do another post tomorrow afternoon or evening. new 0z NAM putting out .40"-.50" QPF with a nice lake band on the backside.
http://www.twisterdata.com/index.php?prog=forecast&model=NAM&grid=221&model_yyyy=2010&model_mm=01&model_dd=06&model_init_hh=00&fhour=57¶meter=PCPIN&level=48&unit=HR&maximize=n&mode=singlemap&sounding=n&output=image&archive=false
Matt
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
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