Chris's Corner - CHANGES ARE COMING AND NOT JUST IN WEATHER

Might be more than Cape got in 1977

Or more than St. Louis got in 1982.   I'm sure you're trying to bait me in.  Technically, you're right.  It WILL be more than what Cape got in the blizzard of 1977, which dumped 11 inches of snow but also met the full blizzard criteria.  You probably meant 1979, but all 3 of the winters in the late 1970s were amazing to Missouri.   I had heard of classmates venturing out on the Mississippi River ice gorge in 1977 for a bonfire.  I didn't partake in that craziness (although I've done some other crazy things in high school).  I think that was the start of my penny poker fun at friends houses.  Not until this past year at my class reunion, did I realize who had gone out there - some classmates whom I never suspected would do a thing like that.  Being out of school for an entire week each of those 3 years gave us some opportunities to do some crazy things.   It is almost never heard of to miss an entire week of school back then...maybe some outlying school districts.  We always laughed when Perryville would cancel classes -  the next statement was always "and the Meyer bus line will not run".  That always struck me as funny because of course the bus line isn't going to run...there's no school. I guess in reality the Meyer bus line served other purposes.  Maybe Perryville was all big city and had mass transit, but I don't know. 

And of course... that much snow at this time of year over such a broad area of the upper Mississippi Valley ups the ante for spring flooding on the Mississippi River. Especially if we throw one or two heavy spring rains on top. THANK GOODNESS our rivers are currently running so low down this way. But that will definitely change in as we move into Spring.

I checked the qpf for the twin cities and models were suggesting somewhere around 1.3 as of last night. The wfo afd speaks of high ratios, but im not too sold on the high ratios due to the winds. Not sure their physics are different than ours. It does appear to be a healthy dendritic growth zone though, and they dont have an arch, so yeah, they could be in for it.

12z rgem has nearly 3.5 inches of freezing rain in southern Michigan.

Wow

That EC run I looked at must have been a fluke for MN...the GOOFUS is way more robust and certainly supports the 18"+ forecasts I'm seeing. Must be nice.

Closer to home, I see that the SPC jumped on board with the strong/severe storm threat tomorrow. Thinking there may be a few hailers developing along/N of the warm front before another fast moving around of storms sweeps through mid-day or early afternoon with a wind and tornado threat.

I think with the nao, the potential is there for one or two once in a lifetime n'oreasters to impact the the big east coast cities.

-AO, -NAO, and -EPO on the weeklies is what I read.

Nice combo

The back-to-back major SSW events are going to break the pattern.

Tropospheric coupling is just taking until the beginning of March.

Not really seeing the -EPO but the AO looks to flip negative with a strong west-based -NAO setting up according to the KING.  This looks like a lite version of what we saw in December.

It's close to getting negative by the anomalies but the stubborn troffing over BC isn't really what you want to see for a -EPO and it's downstream effect. It does look active though and the -NAO should help with cold penetration deeper into the US so at least there's some potential there. It seems like models are starting to pick up on the effects of the SSW event(s) finally.

Mainly a wind threat, but also a non zero tornado threat per the discussion

Just 8.5 months until a potential November surprise snow!

We experienced the Jan ‘82 two day event… 17.4 and 20.0 inches. Shoveled the roof multiple times. Only things moving were snowmobiles taking medical personnel to hospitals and booze runs. So quiet and eery… I’ve got traffic cams loaded watching the before and after. Always fun to watch MNDOT plowing the interstates.