Somewhat Important Note:

Due to the popularity of the blog, I receive numerous Facebook requests before potential snowstorms. Although I am flattered that you want to follow me on Facebook, I would ask that you not friend request me unless you know me in real life. It's nothing personal, I've just decided I don't want too many friends on Facebook.

Thanks, John

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Still sticking with 4-6" of snow...school?

Alright going to make this rather quick tonight, as we're already halfway into the storm, therefore only nowcasting is necessary.

By my measurements, we have received about 3" of snow since the start of the storm. Snow was heaviest from around 4-6 pm, but has since tapered off quite a bit. Current radar shows the main band of snow just to our north (ignore the hole around Pontiac, that's just a radar problem).

Short range, high resolution forecast models support this band dropping a little more south overnight. Therefore, we should get one more round of snowfall. Depending on the length of this second wave of snowfall, we could get anywhere from 1-3" more of snow. I'd lean towards the additional total falling somewhere right in the middle, around 2" more. To leave a window of accumulation open though, I will continue my forecast of 4-6", but drop us out of the "locally higher amounts" as I feel any reports of over 6" will be extremely isolated.

Anyways, on to the prediction. It's kind of a tough call, but I think we will have school tomorrow. I have 2 reasons for thinking this:

1) Snow day level totals will be extremely isolated. With this storm, I bet we'll see widespread 4" totals, numerous 5" totals, but only isolated 6"+ totals. Based on this, I see all the schools that have 4-5" of snow call for no snow day, and then that causes the schools that have 6" of snow to also call for no snow day, because no administrator likes to be the one of the only schools that doesn't close.

2) Roads are bad now, but with snow coming to an end by 4:00 a.m., the road crews will be able to catch up with making the roads serviceable for tomorrow morning.

The bottom line is that a snow day could happen, but I just can't see a good enough chance of it happening to predict it.

Snow Map:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Disappointing.

Anonymous said...

Mad buzzkill schlenman.

Anonymous said...

Well atleast you didn't tell us it was going to be. It seems that I'm increasingly disappointed each and every time a snow day chance comes about because they ALWAYS fail. sigh...Thanks John. :D

Anonymous said...

Congrats! You're batting 1.000 for 09-10 school year.