A narrow band of snowfall greater than 6″ in 12 hours is expected about 100 miles north of the track of the surface low. That would be near or just north of I-96 in Michigan. Snowfall rates in the heaviest snow area will be high enough to accumulate during the daytime, even in late March.
Over Michigan, November and December featured well below normal snowfall. The first 2 1/2 weeks of January seem to be making up some of that deficit. Over the rest of the CONUS, seasonal snowfall mostly remains below normal.
A rapidly deepening storm tracked Texas on Thursday afternoon to the northern Great Lakes by Saturday morning. The storm brought 1 to 2 feet of snow from Nebraska, across Iowa, Wisconsin then into Michigan. Strong winds accompanied the storm then the coldest air in several years followed the storm with dangerously cold wind chills over most of the Northern and Central Midwest. That cold air caused heavy lake effect snow in Michigan, near Buffalo New York and over the Tug Hill Plateau in the Adirondack Mountains, down wind of Lake Ontario.
This storm brought heavy snow to the Midwest and parts of the Great Lakes, then there were damaging winds over the eastern Seaboard, as well as flooding. Severe storms and over a dozen tornadoes occurred over the Southeast sections.
My actual forecast remains unchanged. I mostly updated the ENSO slides and added monthly model forecasts from the ECMWF and the CFSv2.
CPC’s forecast for this winter has not changed significantly in the past few months.
The QBO should allow for more arctic air to reach the CONUS once we get into January and February.
I am thinking snowfall will generally be below normal over Michigan, however sections of the East Coast, from North Carolina to Maine could have well above normal snowfall since El Nino’s favor Nor-Easters (Coastal Storms). When we get into a cooler pattern in January, I’d expect to see some heavy snow events along the east coast. See slide 48 for details.
There was a southern stream shortwave that brought 1 to 3 inches of snow to the southern Great Lakes on Sunday. However most of the snow fell from lake effect as the coldest air of the season crossed the relatively warm water of the Great Lakes (mostly in the 40s) Monday into Tuesday. The heaviest snowfall was were the west to northwest wind was forced up-slope over northern Lower Michigan but even more so over the Tug Hill Plateau of western New York were over a 1 1/2 feet of snow fell.
themarinocast 