Upper air loops of the 1967 Chicago Blizzard

Skilling getting a lot of info for this storm to go on the Tribune weather page for tomorrow so thought I would put up some loops really quick.

Whats amazing is how slow it moves once you reach 12z on the 26th.


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Quick snowstorm update

Moderate to heavy snow continues across the area with the heaviest of it confined to along and south of I-88 down to the I-80 corridor around Morris/Joliet. Snow will continue for several more hours before beginning to taper off late this evening.



Have just over 4" down now and probably a few more to go so my 5-8" forecast from last night looks good.

We have another storm system for sunday night/monday but this one looks warmer and we should melt atleast some snow as we get into the mid 30's with some rain before changing over to snow monday morning.

Old Man Winter..."I'm back" in the words of MJ

Well it took long enough but winter is finally going to show its face tomorrow, better late than never. This isn't going to be as long as it could be cause I'm just too tired. Anyways, our first significant snowfall of the season is due tomorrow and tomorrow night....FINALLY! I've only had 2.1" thus far which is WAY WAY below average by this date in winter.

As usual, taking at the WV loop of whats going on.

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/satellite/displaySat.php?region=EVV&itype=wv&size=large&endDate=20111020&endTime=-1&duration=12

The southern stream wave is located over the eastern US with sfc low currently located over the IN/OH border down to 996mb which will slowly drift north later tonight and move into MI. As this is happening our main player is the deepening/amplifying trof over the central plains that will continue to dive southeast into MO and continuing to intensify as it then heads east during the day through southern IL tomorrow and into IN/OH tomorrow night.

0z NAM with our strong upper level system by tomorrow evening




Associated with the feature is a strong cold front with very cold air behind it. The front right now is closing in on the ole miss river southward through MO with much stronger winds behind it as well as light snow and temps in the teens and 20's. Whats amazing is we have only had a few events where we are in the 50's one day and a big snow and 20's the next day.



Snow will continue to increase in coverage to our west just behind the front and shouldn't get here till around 9am or after.



Once it gets going though it wont stop till the early morning hours on friday, the long duration nature of this event is one of the things is going to help pile up the snow. The heaviest period of snow should be from around 12-7pm tomorrow.



Another thing that is going to help snowfall production as well as size of the dendrites is what we call the DGZ (dendritic growth zone) This is a zone roughly between -10 and -20 degrees C in the atmosphere and typically where your best snow growth is located. The deeper the layer is, the better snowfall production we have. Thanks to Victor Gensini for putting this image together off the WRF. As you can see the temperature is in the layer from around 600mb down to 900mb which is extremely impressive.



For totals I am still riding my 4-7" call area wide with possibly higher amounts near the lake due to lake enhancement. Rush hour tomorrow afternoon is going to be hell so drive carefully.


Matt

Big 0z Euro phased event next week

Between being bored and thinking it was a cool loop, I thought I would put up a quick animation of the 0z Euro run tonight showing the northern stream wave diving southeast and phasing with the cut off low in the southwest as it slowly tracks eastward across the southern plains.

Where have we seen this before? Geez. Anyways, the models have been throwing around this solution for a few days now with the Euro being most consistent with this happening or atleast trying to phasing somewhere over the central/eastern US.

GR level 2 radar loops of strong tornadoes-Joplin and Greensburg to start

With the current boring weather pattern I thought I would put together a few radar loops from different strong tornado events. I will start off with two monsters that happened in the last four years.

5/4/07-Greensburg EF-5

One of my favorite tornado events of all-time to go back and look at. Analyzing the entire synoptic and even more, mesoscale setup is amazing to me and how the hodograph dramatically near dark, left split after left split after left split then BOOM. The loop of the Greensburg supercell and its associated strong tornadoes is probably my favorite 4 hour loop of all-time. Whats amazing this the amount of occlusions and new mesocyclones that went on to produce more strong tornadoes, some at the same time. As you can see in this loop, the mesocyclone and Greensburg tornadoe starts to occlude just before hitting the town of Greensburg and begins to turn north and eventually northwest while the new meso really intensifies just east of town.


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5/22/11 Joplin MO EF-5 (Joplin marked by the red dot)

The environment suggested the possibility of strong tornadoes in southwest MO but what amazes me is how quickly it spun up and you can get a sense in some of the videos of it showing it going from a funnel to a full blown wedge in seconds. You can also see the insane debris ball as debris was lifted up into the tornado aloft and picked up by the radar.



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12z Euro run Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) aka The New Hotness

I'm bored so thought I'd throw together a quick loop of this run showing a major snowstorm during the first weekend of December. Yes it most likely will not verify and the system in model land is still two weeks away but I couldn't resist. But...this run which goes out to 360hr is very active with enough cold air to work with.

"Control run of the 51 member ECMWF Ensemble Predition System. This is not an ensemble mean"

Saturday, October 29, 2011

0z GFS run...a run for the ages for next weekend

Well the models have been progging a trof in the Western US by late this coming week and have been advertising some serious cold air up in Canada to come on down into the northern plains with a strong wave developing and pushing northeast into the central plains bring up lots of moisture with it. And due to the extreme cold air entering the U.S from the north and alot of warm and moist air from the south, this is creating a serious baroclinic zone for this possible storm system to feed off of and track along. I won't get into serious details because its still 7 days out and lots can and probably will change in model land but some of these images are just insane..

H5 vort and winds showing the 120kt mid-level jet and very strong wave, the 80kt LLJ, 60 dews getting up into IA and northern IL and the 983mb sfc low in northwest IA.

It doesn't get more impressive than this for a system to produce both good severe weather and an impressive snowstorm on the cold side.