You’ve probably heard the forecasts already, watch it advance on radar below:
Animate this image: >>> 
Look at all of the warnings below, the red area from Oklahoma to Lake Michigan is Blizzard Warning while the pink is Winter Storm Warning:
click map for the latest warnings
The synoptic map shows freezing rain ahead of the system, followed by heavy snow. It’s the worst sort of situation.
The NAM snow depth model output for the next 48 hours shows a wide swath of 12-24″ of snow accumulation from near Dallas to Chicago with even more near NYC and BOS.
The plan: stock up and stay home, and make sure you have a backup plan for heat if the power goes out.
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jaymam says:
February 1, 2011 at 12:47 am
Dennis Wingo says:
“Just got to my hotel in Fredrick MD. 24 degrees and freezing rain.”
‘So? In most of the world 24 degrees Celcius is very comfortable.
Most of the world uses Celcius. Scientists and engineers in the US should be using Celcius.’ (sic)
Most of us, laymen yet, are equally comfortable with both measures. Belief that one is “unscientific” seems to me to be an unscientific position in itself. Personally I still prefer the “Centigrade” that I was taught at school, to the irritating “Celsius”. If they had more appropriately called it Linnaeus instead of honouring the man who got it diametrically wrong, I would have been more comfortable with that.
Leon Brozyna says:
January 31, 2011 at 11:46 pm
Must have something to do with the fact it’s still winter.
Just in time for Groundhog Day. Don’t be suprised if Punxsutawney Phil gets a look at all that snow and slams the door to his burrow after telling those silly humans, “Six weeks? Fergit it — you’ve ten more weeks of winter coming and count yourselves lucky. Now let me get back to my nap, fools!!”
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Actually, Punxsutawney Phil is busy in his secret underground climate lab running GCM simulations. He will provide his much anticipated climate forecast product for us tomorrow.
Just outside of OKC, I don’t know how anyone can reliably measure snow depth. The wind has be blowing at 20+ mph all night with gusts up to 45, maybe 50 mph. Parts of my yard still have grass showing, while I can see several drifts that are at least 2 feet deep. What I do know is that we will have the lowest temps in 15 years and will be close to the record low February temperature of -3 F (-19 C), which means as unique and interesting as this storm has been, there have been several like it before and will be again.
Re: Groundhog Day
I’m sure I speak for most of New Jersey, if not the entire north-east, when I say…
Ugh.
Folklore has it that if the goundhog emerges from his burrow on February 2nd and sees his shadow he runs back inside and we get six more weeks of winter. What does folklore say happens if he can’t get out of his burrow because it’s covered in three feet of compacted snow and ice?
Curious in New Jersey.
Ice will be the story here. We got .25″+ ice last night. Another .5″ to 1″+ forecast for later today. Winds to pick up to 40mph on Wednesday so limbs/wires will be falling.
If we get that much ice, then this will be one of those widespread power outages where millions go without power for several days.
To make matters worse, high temps are to remain below freezing for several days so the ice is here to stay.
If you send me your Tax dollars, i’ll promise to stop this!
Full tank of oil, full generator, full snowblower, many tons of pellets, extra gas, a siphon, a full gas tank on the car, plenty of food and water, and most important of all lots of TP.
I think I’m somewhat ready.
All of Northern Indiana has been upgraded to blizzard warnings beginning at 1:00PM today. The forecase is for 12-18 inches with 40mph winds, which are expected to produce 4-8ft drifts. My 40 mile commute home this PM should be interesting.
Drat. Missed it by that much. Got six more yesterday tho.
-41 Celsius with the windchill here right now and all hysterically coming on the heels of environment Canada’s long range forecast of an early end to winter due to AGW. I don’t know how it is in America but here in the windchill swept Canadian prairies, we’ve been just tuning them out altogether since the Church of Climatology’s predictive swing-and-a-miss 1,000,000 ended up overlooking flooding events surpassing even those found in First Nation’s oral histories.
@Beng: There are two storms, one small and way out in front and the “Stormzilla” back around Oklahoma. We (I’m in the Frederick, MD area) just got the ice from the front storm. The big one is coming, but the track looks like it might just slide north of us and the DC area. Time will tell.
My low temp last night here on the west side of Denver was -14 eg F. It is currently a balmy -8 deg F, clear and sunny.
Here locally many of the school districts closed down for the day because it was going to be too cold to let the little kiddies out in the weather. In the 1960’s we had low temps well into the -20’s and they never closed the schools for cold and many of us walked over a mile to school every day.
Our society is getting so risk averse it is getting silly.
My bet is a lot of these kids who were too fragile to go to school in sub zero weather will be out playing in it much of the day.
At least it is cold enough that in the mountains (if the cold air pool is deep enough) the cold might put a crimp on the western pine beetle population.
Note to the weather illiterate, cold is essential to our ecosystem, it controls pests, and is necessary for many seeds to germinate.
Oh by the way, properly dressed kids have no problem playing or walking to school in -20 deg F temps. When it gets below -30 deg F then maybe a school closure is in order, or at least limited outside play time at recess, and supervised waits for the school buses, and teachers checking the kids are properly dressed when they leave to go home.
Larry
To continue with E.M. Smith’s diatribe on measurements, I personally subscribe to the FFF Measurement System. FFF units are Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight, which have the SI values of 201.168 m/40.8233 kg/1209600 s. In English units that would be 660 ft/90 lb/14 days. I suppose that degrees Fahrenheit would fit well with these units, but I prefer degrees Newton as belonging to archaic measurement systems.
I think that measurement systems should be on the basis of normal units from our daily life, so I do support the notion (often used in popular news-writing) of using the size of a football field as a normal area unit. If you start looking, and listening, you will notice this unit being used all of the time. It has never been documented as to which size of football field this refers to, as football fields are somewhat different depending on which country you are in. But a Football Field as a unit would fit in with the FFF units, and is actually about 0.13 square furlongs (or approximately 1/8 square furlongs).
Damage Inc. says:
February 1, 2011 at 6:54 am
Just outside of OKC, I don’t know how anyone can reliably measure snow depth. The wind has be blowing at 20+ mph all night with gusts up to 45, maybe 50 mph. Parts of my yard still have grass showing, while I can see several drifts that are at least 2 feet deep. What I do know is that we will have the lowest temps in 15 years and will be close to the record low February temperature of -3 F (-19 C), which means as unique and interesting as this storm has been, there have been several like it before and will be again.
___________________
Not much has changed in OKC since you wrote that, except that there aren’t any clear spots, now. I’ve no idea how much snow we’ve received, since the howling winds keep shuffling what we have. I’ve seen a couple of wind- driven white-outs from my office window.
I didn’t know that birds shivered, but was watching a Eurasian collared dove that sure was shivering- his tail was vibrating for as long as he sat in view with his feathers all fluffed and waiting for the wind to knock some morsel out of the feeder, which he is too big to access.
I don’t have any proof, but I’m pretty sure this is all Michael Mann’s fault.
A little background on “Thundersnow”.
During the 1980’s I lived about 12 miles from Offet AFB in Omaha. Cold war at its peak. I had geiger counters, supplies, “stuff” in my “survival basement” I had a copy of Glasstone’s “Effects of Nuclear Weapons”.
I’m a single guy. One night, about 3AM, there was a BRIGHT FLASH which illuminated the whole house. “THIS IS IT!” I said. I grabbed stuff, flashlites and went to the basement, waiting for the pressure wave.
Well the pressure wave hit, and it seemed MARKEDLY like a thunderclap.
There were then SEVERAL FLASHES and more thunderclaps.
Looking outside, a pellet type snow began to come down. (About 5″ all totaled!) I went back to bed. SO much for Detant, the cold war, SAC, etc. I needed to sleep.
Having lived in MN most of my life, I’d NEVER seen lightning and heard thunder during the winter. New thing. But common in the real “great plains belt” states.
Max
A Facebook friend referred to Snowverflow, a good term for people and cities without space to dump new snow.
—–
Janice says:
February 1, 2011 at 9:43 am
And Olympic swimming pool for volume, I hope.
When I was at Carnegie-Mellon Univ, the subject of appoximate measurements came up and we concluded that the “melon” would make a good universal unit to measure almost anything with a 1 1/2 digit accuracy. (That half digit is what’s referred to on things like voltmeters that display from 0.001 to 1.999V – those are referred to as 3 1/2 digit displays. That half digit means a factor of 2, the log of which is 0.3, so that display could be a 3.3 digit display….
Pick a cantaloupe, any cantaloupe. Or honeydew. or other melon (except maybe a big watermelon). Use that as the standard for length, area, volume, and mass. For each of those, your fruit is 1 melon long and weighs 1 melon. So is mine, well, okay, it’s pretty close. You could probably work in time and temperature too. (Think of temperature – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a melon that was frozen or one too hot to pick up.)
AleaJactaEst says:
“My request, gentle readers, from both sides of the fence, as a balanced scientist should, is how to frame the approach for my daughter. I have already asked her to get as many of the facts as she can and make her own mind up and not to take anyone’s word for it. I plan to write to the school and indicate my displeasure in the unbalanced approach taken by the literature, but that’s going to be like (snipping) in the wind.”
Dear “die is cast”,
My son experienced similar propaganda in high school. The problem is that if the kids don’t regurgitate back to the teacher what they are fed they get lower grades and or social pressure. My boy bought a lot of the BS until he got to engineering school where he became one of the most critical students re AGW, but not always in an outspoken manner due to the need to pass courses,
It will get worse before it gets better. Best to try to explain to your child why people take the positions that they do and that it is not always based upon facts or even science.
Until we make it “profitable” to be a science skeptic, it will never change. This has been going on for a very long time due to the teaching “profession” being so influenced by their union and left wing politics. The die is, indeed, cast and it is difficult to pull it back.
Feb. 1, 2011, in St. Louis. Light freezing rain fell overnight, under ¼ inch accumulation, sleet began around dawn, only about ½ inch of sleet up to now at 1:15 p.m. Snow is supposed to start any time (actually it was supposed to start around 10 a.m.), but it sounds like the meteorologist are toning the totals down a bit. Over the last two days, the forecasts have been up to five inches, up to eight inches, blizzard white-out conditions with 18 to 24 inches, and now back down to up to five inches. As for now, there is not enough to take out the snow blower, but who knows what might still come?
That must really be some fence on the Mexican border, it stops practically everything that moves!
I wasn’t aware that there was one on the Canadian border also, is that one of those so called “black projects”?
As a somewhat irregular visitor I don’t get to read all of the posts or comments, but I see Joe Lalonde popping up here and at Judith Curry. Now I’m curious.
Joe, I’ve seen your comments re sea salt and changes since 1940, but that’s all I’ve seen. Do you have a website with more detailed information anywhere? Have you had a post on WUWT explaining your theory?
jaymam says:
February 1, 2011 at 12:47 am
Wow, it’s snowing in MD at 24 C, it’s definitely worse then we thought. Thought Al lived in TN : )
Jim G says:
February 1, 2011 at 11:05 am
“My boy bought a lot of the BS until he got to engineering school where he became one of the most critical students re AGW, but not always in an outspoken manner due to the need to pass courses, …”
I retired from the Navy prior to going to university for my engineering degree. So I was not reluctant to have a say on things. I had a “discussion” with my heat transfer prof when he stated that Reagan was at fault for the schuttle that exploded after lift off. He claimed Reagan ordered the lift off so he could get a teacher in space, but when asked for proof had none. Then just to top it off I wrote a term paper for heat transfer on global warming.
I was flying off the Flordia coast in a warning area just north of the Cape when the accident happened and our plane volunteered to be search and rescue within minutes. So this event is etched in my mind forever.
The Pentagon’s secret earthquake-hurricane system has blown a fuse. After a swipe at Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, the backblast is striking home from U.S. Midwest to New England. Met Office forecast for the colonies: Sunny and dry, with off-chance of Climate Hysterics biting dust.
Cairns braces as Cyclone Yasi hits category 5
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/cyclone-yasi/evacuations-begin-ahead-of-the-arrival-of-the-powerful-cyclone-yasi/story-fn7rj0ye-1225998456005