Just an extremely tough storm to forecast...

I'll be honest, storms like these really make me wish I hadn't brought back the blog for another year, because this is one of the most difficult storms I will ever attempt to forecast. It's 2 days out and there is still an extremely high bust potential for SE Michigan. However, it's not like I won't be forecasting difficult storms for the rest of my life, so I'll get to telling you guys my latest thoughts on this. If I'm right, it's a learning experience, and if I'm wrong, it's a learning experience. So let's go. This post tonight will be a quick one, but I will have 3 more posts out. I would do 2 a day but exam week is next week for me so I need to devote a lot of time to studying. The 3 remaining posts will be out around 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, around 8:00 p.m. Saturday, and my final prediction will come around 9:00 p.m. Saturday.

I do need to get to bed tonight, so there isn't much time for an in-depth look at the models. The conclusion I've come to, however, is that SE Michigan is most likely looking at precipitation starting as rain on Sunday Morning, before turning to snow. The precipitation will then end by Sunday Evening. In my opinion, it is looking fairly bleak for a snow day on Monday. First, I now expect only 2-6" of snow to fall due to rain likely mixing in for part of the storm. The track of this storm has trended well north, allowing for warmer temperatures and precipitation type issues. Therefore, the amount of snow that is going to fall will be marginal for a snow day. In addition this storm keeps trending faster, and I am now expecting the bulk of the precipitation to end by early Sunday evening, which may certainly be enough time to clear the roads. Therefore, I will tentatively set the snow day grade to a D (below average chance but not totally hopeless) for Monday.

I am slightly disappointed in this, as the models seemed to be really zoning in on a nice snowstorm for SE Michigan a couple of nights ago. Hindsight is 20/20 though, and looking back, they were way to inconsistent for me to say things were looking good. That has been the only thing I regret so far with forecasting this storm, as other than that post, I mentioned that the models were all over the place, which they have been. Truly a tough storm to forecast.

I apologize for such a short post but I have to get to bed. Leave your questions/comments below and I'll get to them tomorrow before my next post which will be up at around 5:00 p.m.