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Midweek Radar and Links
Posted:Wed, 18 Dec 2013 04:33:23 +0000
We’ll start a new thread with radar and links. Cool and active weather pattern continues into next week. Looks cold for the period between Christmas and New Years. More on that in the thread below.Links: Grand Rapids radar, Northern Indiana radar, Chicago radar, Detroit radar and Milwaukee radar. Here’s the College of DuPage Radar Map (pick any radar in the U.S.), College of DuPage Grand Rapids radar, the West Michigan Lightning Tracker, National Lightning Tracker, the local warning/advisory map and the National warning/watch/advisory map, and a surface weather map. You can checkout the latest Grand Rapids NWS discussion, the Northern Indiana NWS discussion (includes the Michigan Counties that border Indiana), the discussion for Northern Lower Michigan, and Eastern Lower Michigan. Check out Storm Total Rainfall (until they reset it). Here’s the Spyglass Condos Weather Station the S. Haven GLERL station, the Muskegon GLERL station, the Grand Haven Steelheaders webcam and weather station, and the weather station at Holland State Park. Check out the Maranatha Webcam at Lake Michigan and links to webcams. Here’s the infrared satellite loop (night) and the visible satellite loop (daytime), Lake Michigan water temperatures (summer). Here’s storm reports from SW Michigan, Northern Michigan, NE Illinois, SE. Wisconsin, Upper Michigan and E. Michigan. Check out the wind and wave height at the South Mid-Lake Michigan Buoy, the North Mid-Lake Michigan Buoy, the buoy at Big Sable Point near Ludington, the weather station at Manistee Harbor and the weather station on the beach at St. Joseph. Here’s Michigan wind gusts from MesoWest, data from the MAWN agriculutural weather stations and Weather Underground (data at the bottom from private weather stations. Check out the webcam at Krupp’s Resort, where they are pushing toward 2 feet of snow on the ground. Check out the cold temps. on the U.S. Low Temperature map. Here’s the morning run of the NAM forecast snow amounts. Here’s a live look at the Houghton Bridge.
We’ll have to watch for ice jams on Michigan rivers as the cold air settles in next week. Here’s some river water temps. Also, many inland lakes will be icing up in the next 10 days. Beware of early thin ice. Check out our new Lakes and Rivers Webpage.
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Weds. Thread in Random Order
Posted:Wed, 18 Dec 2013 03:05:14 +0000
Click on the picture to enlarge. This image from Jack Martin shows the ice mounds already built up at the Lake Michigan shoreline. Check out the cold coming for the week between Christmas and New Years! Great forecast for those of you who might get skis, a snowboard, a sled or skates for Christmas! The early Weds. AM run of the GFS doesn’t give G.R. a temperature warmer than the upper 20s between Christmas and New Years. It also give G.R. a low of +5 on Christmas Eve and +2 on 12/27. It gives G.R. 0.68″ for the weekend (Sun.) storm with freezing rain to snow. I won’t stay up for the European model, but someone will likely leave a comment on that. Florida, much of Mexico, Cuba and Central America warmer than average for the 3rd month in a row. Record heat in parts of Australia with 114 at Esperance – warmest ever in Dec. Check this out: Lake Michigan ships encountering early ice: ““I don’t recall it ever being this early. We are having to have some ice breaker assistance to get in the last remaining vessels of the year.” WOW! Check out this picture…on the road to Jerusalem – still thousands without power in the Middle East from heavy snow. 126-degree temperature spread in the Lower 48 states today…from 88 at Burbank CA to -28 at Saranac Lake NY. Here’s a pic. of Comet Lovejoy taken from the Alps of SW Austria by Gerald Rhemann. Tues. AM European weekend snowfall forecast. Evening run of the NAM (caribou) for G.R. shows .01″ rain at 33 deg. for Thu. pm…1.3″ snow Thurs. night…and 0.07″ rain Fri. night – that’s as far out as the NAM goes. California wildfire destroys 15 homes. Global number of hurricanes trending downward since the 1990s. After 10 days, Continental U.S. average temperature climbs above average (though global average temperature remains slightly above average). December cold in U.S. leads to record draw of 208 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Check out this picture of the Geminid Meteor Shower from The Pinnacles in Australia. Check out the duststorm in W. Australia. Here’s recent snowfall from SW Michigan, N. Michigan and the U.P. Grand Rapids is now 5.5 deg. cooler than average for Dec. and we still haven’t been above freezing since Dec. 5th. Video of Mt. Etna erupting.
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From Tennessee
Posted:Wed, 18 Dec 2013 02:57:26 +0000
Tues. Evening. Monday morning we left Aurora, Illinois in the AM…heading for Tennessee. There was a significant solid snow cover (4″+) all the way down past the Ohio River. We must have seen over a dozen places where vehicles had spun off into the median from the snow Saturday between Indianapolis and Cincinnati. That’s not counting the spin-offs that got pulled out right away and the snow covered up the tracks. The expressway (going the other way, fortunately) was blocked at one spot where a tanker had overturned in the median. They were trying to pump out whatever was inside the tanker before they uprighted it. We drove into the evening darkness. We passed through a warm front, with the lowering cloud base as we drove south. We hit fog around and just south of Indianapolis. We went thru the warm front around the Ohio River and the temperatures bounced up from the mid 20s to the upper 30s. Despite the warmer air…there were small waterfalls coming off the rock-cuts along the expressway that were frozen. About halfway through Kentucky, we drove into a spectacular clear sky, with the full moon to the east and the bright planet Venus to the west. The full moon made the ice waterfalls sparkle. My wife and I spelled off driving. We managed to find the most expensive gas station ($3.28) with the filthiest bathroom. When we came off the expressway to turn toward Oak Ridge, gas was $2.98. There were five stations along the road within a mile and I’ll bet competition keeps the price low there. Today, we went a couple miles east to Lake Melton, which is the backed up Clinch River. There’s a straight stretch where they have a lot of rowing competition. Last year, I saw a group from GVSU down here. Tonight, we had a nice dinner of shrimp, rice and peas and my (94 1/2-year-old) mother played some Christmas tunes on the keyboard (she performed in USO shows during WWII). The forecast calls for a partly sunny high in the upper 40s tomorrow (Weds.)…a mostly sunny upper 50s on Thursday and temperatures could come close to 70 here over the weekend before the cold air pushes back in again. My mother’s condo area has been landscaped with holly, pansies and other plants that stay green in the winter. I saw several dandelions blooming today. There are quite a few cardinals, bluebirds and robins that provide a colorful addition to the ornamental trees. We walked to the local supermarket to get a few things. We met a very nice elderly man who turns out is a retired scientist from the Oak Ridge Laboratory here. He went to Michigan State and was totally geeked by the MSU football and basketball teams. Gayle and I got mom her membership for the Chicago Botanic Gardens, a gift certificate from the local supermarket here, some flowers and a few food items from Michigan. Mom’s already received a lot (two dozen maybe) of Christmas cards and we looked through those. She has a back porch that faces south and is enclosed on 3 sides. With the full sun and shielded from the wind, you could sit out there today in a sweatshirt and enjoy the outdoors. My mom does not have a computer or connection…so I’m over at my sister’s for a brief time. My sister has two (big) dogs and five rescue cats.
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Snowicane!
Posted:Mon, 16 Dec 2013 07:24:41 +0000
Shiverin’ Snowman – Look at the “snowicane” that formed over Lake Superior Sunday (from the Marquette NWS facebook page). They say: “A mesolow can be seen (shown in the blue circle), which is a smaller scale low pressure system that commonly forms on the Great Lake during the winter time. This is primarily what has been responsible for the strong gusty winds and heavy snow bands that have been pushing into areas along the Marquette and Alger county shorelines. The system even has sort of an awesome eye near the center of rotation. This image was take around 1:30 pm EST.” -
This clipper system means business
Posted:Mon, 16 Dec 2013 06:33:43 +0000
This clipper system means business. I won’t stay up to see if NWS issues advisories. I’m on vacation this week, so I’m not spending my usual time analyzing weather. Clipper systems like this often manage to squeeze out available moisture, have high snow to liquid ratios and often overperform model guidance. This will be a combination of the clipper and lake-enhancement. Look for a general 1-4″ with the heaviest band in the 4-7″ range (mostly NW of G.R.). Here’s snowfall from the overnight NAM (caribou) thru Tues. evening: 1.8″ Lansing, 2.1″ Kalamazoo, Jackson and Mt. Pleasant, 2.2″ S. Haven, 2.4″ Gr. Rapids, 3.3″ Holland, 3.6″ Cadillac, 5.6″ Ludington and 6.1″ Muskegon. The GFS (caribou) has 2″ for G.R. and it doesn’t get warmer than 34 on Thurs. Muskegon gets 4.1″ on the GFS (caribou) with the wind up to 24 mph at midday Tuesday. Keep up with the latest StormTeam8 forecast and with 24-hour News 8 for the updated forecast, and the latest on road conditions and school information.9 SSW of Gaylord reports: “CALENDAR DAY Sunday TOTAL OF 16.0 INCHES. 12 AM SNOWDEPTH OF 22 INCHES.” Alba in Antrim Co: “17 INCHES IN THE LAST 12 HRS. SNOWDEPTH 25 INCHES”. Frederic in Crawford Co: “M9.2 INCHES IN 3 HOURS! NWS EMPLOYEE 540 PM. SNOW DEPTH 20 INCHES. East Jordan had 11.5″ in 12 hours. Here’s snow totals from the U.P. – another half a foot at Marquette and Houghton.
Links: Grand Rapids radar, Northern Indiana radar, Chicago radar, Detroit radar and Milwaukee radar. Here’s the College of DuPage Radar Map (pick any radar in the U.S.), College of DuPage Grand Rapids radar, the West Michigan Lightning Tracker, National Lightning Tracker, the local warning/advisory map and the National warning/watch/advisory map, and a surface weather map. You can checkout the latest Grand Rapids NWS discussion, the Northern Indiana NWS discussion (includes the Michigan Counties that border Indiana), the discussion for Northern Lower Michigan, and Eastern Lower Michigan. Check out Storm Total Rainfall (until they reset it). Here’s the Spyglass Condos Weather Station the S. Haven GLERL station, the Muskegon GLERL station, the Grand Haven Steelheaders webcam and weather station, and the weather station at Holland State Park. Check out the Maranatha Webcam at Lake Michigan and links to webcams. Here’s the infrared satellite loop (night) and the visible satellite loop (daytime), Lake Michigan water temperatures (summer). Here’s storm reports from SW Michigan, Northern Michigan, NE Illinois, SE. Wisconsin, Upper Michigan and E. Michigan. Check out the wind and wave height at the South Mid-Lake Michigan Buoy, the North Mid-Lake Michigan Buoy, the buoy at Big Sable Point near Ludington, the weather station at Manistee Harbor and the weather station on the beach at St. Joseph. Here’s Michigan wind gusts from MesoWest, data from the MAWN agriculutural weather stations and Weather Underground (data at the bottom from private weather stations. Check out the webcam at Krupp’s Resort, where they are pushing toward 2 feet of snow on the ground. Check out the cold temps. on the U.S. Low Temperature map. Here’s the morning run of the NAM forecast snow amounts. Here’s a live look at the Houghton Bridge.
We’ll have to watch for ice jams on Michigan rivers as the cold air settles in next week. Here’s some river water temps. Also, many inland lakes will be icing up in the next 10 days. Beware of early thin ice. Check out our new Lakes and Rivers Webpage.
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Monday
Posted:Mon, 16 Dec 2013 05:42:05 +0000
I’m writing from a motel in Aurora, Illinois. We drove down yesterday to see Daughter #1, drop off a couple of Christmas presents and hear the Fox Valley Orchestra (daughter #1′s sig. other is a lead cello player). They performed their annual Christmas/Holiday concert. The auditorium was about 95% full, a good turnout. Then we had dinner at Two Brother’s Roundhouse (lots of trains and train memorabilia around here). We leave this morning to drive to Tennessee to see my mother for a few days. I’ll try and post once a day. On the way down we saw no fewer than 8 flocks of geese, all heading south. One flock must have had 100 geese. It’s cold here. I had 15 on the car thermometer when we pulled into Aurora. We did see one car that spun off into the median on I-196. It looks like the Sunday snow was about as expected. I went 1-3″. Here’s the NWS totals.
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Snow Showers
Posted:Sun, 15 Dec 2013 07:55:41 +0000
Sunday/Monday – I’ll leave radar at the top of the blog with the snow showers continuing. There’s an early Sunday model discussion in the thread below. Slick roads at times today and tomorrow.Links: Grand Rapids radar, Northern Indiana radar, Chicago radar, Detroit radar and Milwaukee radar. Here’s the College of DuPage Radar Map (pick any radar in the U.S.), College of DuPage Grand Rapids radar, the West Michigan Lightning Tracker, National Lightning Tracker, the local warning/advisory map and the National warning/watch/advisory map, and a surface weather map. You can checkout the latest Grand Rapids NWS discussion, the Northern Indiana NWS discussion (includes the Michigan Counties that border Indiana), the discussion for Northern Lower Michigan, and Eastern Lower Michigan. Check out Storm Total Rainfall (until they reset it). Here’s the Spyglass Condos Weather Station the S. Haven GLERL station, the Muskegon GLERL station, the Grand Haven Steelheaders webcam and weather station, and the weather station at Holland State Park. Check out the Maranatha Webcam at Lake Michigan and links to webcams. Here’s the infrared satellite loop (night) and the visible satellite loop (daytime), Lake Michigan water temperatures (summer). Here’s storm reports from SW Michigan, Northern Michigan, NE Illinois, SE. Wisconsin, Upper Michigan and E. Michigan. Check out the wind and wave height at the South Mid-Lake Michigan Buoy, the North Mid-Lake Michigan Buoy, the buoy at Big Sable Point near Ludington, the weather station at Manistee Harbor and the weather station on the beach at St. Joseph. Here’s Michigan wind gusts from MesoWest, data from the MAWN agriculutural weather stations and Weather Underground (data at the bottom from private weather stations. Check out the webcam at Krupp’s Resort, where they are pushing toward 2 feet of snow on the ground. Check out the cold temps. on the U.S. Low Temperature map. Here’s the morning run of the NAM forecast snow amounts. Here’s a live look at the Houghton Bridge.
We’ll have to watch for ice jams on Michigan rivers as the cold air settles in next week. Here’s some river water temps. Also, many inland lakes will be icing up in the next 10 days. Beware of early thin ice. Check out our new Lakes and Rivers Webpage.
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Sunday Snow
Posted:Sun, 15 Dec 2013 07:50:26 +0000
Sunday AM – The Winter Weather Advisory covers the lakeshore counties, the next set of counties inland from the lakeshore counties plus Calhoun and Osceola Counties and runs thru 7 pm. It’s going to be a cold and windy day. The models have temperatures trending slightly downward today, with the NAM at 16 most of the day and the GFS at 17. The NAM (caribou) gives G.R. a high of 23. Needless to say, the snow will be stickin’ to the roads and blowing around some. The GFS and NAM both have the wind up around 18-20 mph midday to early afternoon and that will cause some drifting. We’ll see lake-effect snow showers. The NAM (caribou gives G.R. and Holland about an inch of snow today, Muskegon 0.7″ and Lansing 0.2″. The model gives G.R. another 1.9″ on Tues. and Holland another 1.6″. It gives nearly continuous snow to Cadillac with a total of 7″ by Weds. morning.The models are backing off some on the degree of milder air later this week. The Euro. and GFS have G.R. peaking around 38. Stay up with later forecasts. We’ll get some rain (GFS 0.53″ for G.R., Euro. 0.20″, there is the chance of a little of that being freezing rain. It looks too warm aloft for snow) Thurs. PM/night. The GFS takes us back to the upper teens/low 20s on Sat. the 21st, while the Euro. hold’s back the cold for a day. The Euro. has a high of about 15 on Monday the 23rd with a low on Christmas Eve morning in G.R. of -9 (the Euro. has tried to put us below zero on a couple of occasions this month and that hasn’t worked). The Euro has a low of about -6 Monday am (the 16th), while the GFS keeps us in the mid teens. It’s too far out to put any stock in it…but the GFS would have it snowing lightly Christmas Day morning with temps. reaching the low-mid 30s.
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Saturday Snow
Posted:Sat, 14 Dec 2013 07:29:57 +0000
Saturday Evening – 10:15 pm – first, some more pics. of the first snow in 112 years in Cairo, Egypt. We’re in a lull right now…the snow has ended temporarily and the wind has died off…but the wind will increase tomorrow and the snow showers will redevelop. I had a nice foot drift across my driveway this PM. The snow has pretty much ended, just few flakes to the east of G.R. and Kalamazoo. The wind will veer around from NE to N then NW and finally WNW. When the wind comes off the lake, the temperature may go up a couple degrees. The wind will ramp up tomorrow and we’ll get snow showers…Sunday/Sunday night accums. will be a dusting south of I-94 to as much as 3″ north of G.R. The wind will probably be strong enough to put the heaviest snow inland from the shoreline. The clipper for Mon. PM to Tues. AM looks interesting. We could see a shot of several hours of fairly decent snowfall in areas that get snow with a SW wind (NW Kent, Newaygo Co.). Radar’s at the top of the blog. The models are pretty similar, giving G.R. about 3 – 3 1/2 inches of snow during the day with some drifting. The fastest wind is midday at about 20 mph. The models give G.R. about an inch of snow Sunday and another inch (or two at the most) from Monday into early Tuesday. The Friday precipitation is mainly rain, with the GFS taking us to 40 Friday am, then back to the low-mid 20s Saturday and lots of highs in the 20s for the rest of December. The European takes the temperature to the 44 around daybreak Friday with 0.20″ of rain. We’re only above freezing for 24 hours, then back into the teens and 20s and the Euro. gives G.R. another 3-4″ of snow around the 22nd…so I’m still thinking White Christmas. I’m working the evening shift today. Catch me at 6 pm, 10 pm and 11 pm.Climate notes: The last 8 days have averaged 10.4 deg. cooler than average in G.R. The last 11 days have had only 7.9% of possible sunshine. The last temperature above freezing in G.R. was the evening of Dec. 5. Check out the snow in Saudi Arabia! Here’s unusual heavy snow in Cyprus. Marquette had 7 consecutive nights with lows of 0 to -10. From the 6th through the 13th, the warmest temperature was 13. Since Nov. 15th, Marquette has had only one day when they didn’t get at least a trace of snow. Atlantic Mine has 30″ on the ground. Talk about lake-effect snow…Redfield, NY had 44″ of snow in 48 hours and a total of 71″ for the week. Constableville NY reports 56″ of snow in the past week.
Links: Grand Rapids radar, Northern Indiana radar, Chicago radar, Detroit radar and Milwaukee radar. Here’s the College of DuPage Radar Map (pick any radar in the U.S.), College of DuPage Grand Rapids radar, the West Michigan Lightning Tracker, National Lightning Tracker, the local warning/advisory map and the National warning/watch/advisory map, and a surface weather map. You can checkout the latest Grand Rapids NWS discussion, the Northern Indiana NWS discussion (includes the Michigan Counties that border Indiana), the discussion for Northern Lower Michigan, and Eastern Lower Michigan. Check out Storm Total Rainfall (until they reset it). Here’s the Spyglass Condos Weather Station the S. Haven GLERL station, the Muskegon GLERL station, the Grand Haven Steelheaders webcam and weather station, and the weather station at Holland State Park. Check out the Maranatha Webcam at Lake Michigan and links to webcams. Here’s the infrared satellite loop (night) and the visible satellite loop (daytime), Lake Michigan water temperatures (summer). Here’s storm reports from SW Michigan, Northern Michigan, NE Illinois, SE. Wisconsin, Upper Michigan and E. Michigan. Check out the wind and wave height at the South Mid-Lake Michigan Buoy, the North Mid-Lake Michigan Buoy, the buoy at Big Sable Point near Ludington, the weather station at Manistee Harbor and the weather station on the beach at St. Joseph. Here’s Michigan wind gusts from MesoWest, data from the MAWN agriculutural weather stations and Weather Underground (data at the bottom from private weather stations. Check out the webcam at Krupp’s Resort, where they are pushing toward 2 feet of snow on the ground. Check out the cold temps. on the U.S. Low Temperature map. Here’s the morning run of the NAM forecast snow amounts. Here’s a live look at the Houghton Bridge.
We’ll have to watch for ice jams on Michigan rivers as the cold air settles in next week. Here’s some river water temps. Also, many inland lakes will be icing up in the next 10 days. Beware of early thin ice. Check out our new Lakes and Rivers Webpage.
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Weekend Sports
Posted:Sat, 14 Dec 2013 06:09:43 +0000
Grand Valley has a semi-final playoff game at undefeated Northwest Missouri State at 3:30 pm. The game is on ESPN3 (internet) and on radio on the ESPN (96.1 in G.R.) Grand Valley radio network. The other Saturday football game is the Army – Navy game at 3 PM on CBS. Navy is 7-4 this year (losing one game in OT by a point and only losing to Notre Dame by 4 points) and favored to win. Prior to that at Noon, CBS has basketball with #1 Arizona St. at Michigan. MSU at Oakland is on ESPN2, with Notre Dame at Indiana (ESPN) and Central at Dayton at 5. Western is hoping to upset Missouri Sunday evening. The Lions are on Monday Night football hosting the Ravens. We may get the Bears/Browns (where it could be snowing) for the early Sunday game. Sunday Night Football on WOOD is Cincinnati at Pittsburgh. WOOD also has a father-son golf tournament Sat. late afternoon.
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