Thu. night - Saturday storm system

[km1125]

On a related note, DTE is only showing about 4,000 customers without power. With the winds we had already, I thought that might be higher. Still a few hours left of good winds, but it looks promising from a power perspective.

[MWmetalhead]

Agreed! Good news so far.

[MWmetalhead]

The freeways in Metro Detroit are drivable certainly. Speeds are reduced. Traffic is very light fortunately. I-96 near Telegraph was closed earlier due to a jack knifed semi.

There are major issues in west Michigan.

Nine semi trucks collided on eastbound I-94 near Hartford, causing a freeway closure. A portion of M-40 near Holland is also closed.

[radioandtventhusiast]

In Toledo right now, we're at -2. Snow is drifting at times and the wind gusts are a little intense at times. Per FirstEnergy's website, the outages seem to be bigger in Sandusky and points east at this time. The winds could get worse over the afternoon though. We're supposed to be celebrating Christmas Eve with family tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

[Rate This]

In fairness to the so-called experts, forecasting a storm like this, particularly in the state of Michigan which has more variables than anywhere else in the country, is not an exact science.

That said, here's my problem. Most model runs from any weather forecasting computer are updated every 6 hours. And if you take the past 5 or 6 runs from any model, you can find one run from one model that shows a super high snow total in a specific location. What the forecasters seem to do is take the highest totals they can find for any particular region from any particular model run and combine them all into one single forecast map. And they're very slow to react to consistent shifts in storm tracks that come with each subsequent model run. And as I noted earlier, they all seem to underestimate the effect the lakes have on temperatures and the effect that has on precipitation type, at least close to the lakes.

And what is undoubtedly upsetting to some people is that they ended up unnecessarily canceling holiday travel plans.

I have to give kudos to the NWS automated forecast generator... it consistently called for an inch or two TOTAL down here in western Wayne county. I can still see the grass at this time.

[Mega Hertz]

Sounds like the best case scenario went down so far. I still don't believe we even have 2" in Brighton.

My wife seems to believe the challenge was the ice, how it rained and froze over. Even on this thread, I haven't seen too many ice issues. It was snow totals everybody was concerned about. The top three problems mentioned were snow, winds and temperatures.

[craig11152]

I ran a couple errands here in Ann Arbor and Pittsfield Township. Platt, Packard and Carpenter. It was about 2 hours ago and I was taken aback how crappy those 3 roads were given how little snow we got.

[TC Talks]

We are over 15" in Traverse City as of 2:30p, but I am in a snowbelt... Still coming down.

[MWmetalhead]

Keep it up there please.

The skiers and snowmobilers are probably happy (as well as the ski resort owners).

Winters last too long and are too harsh in northern MI for my liking.

[Mega Hertz]

I ran a couple errands here in Ann Arbor and Pittsfield Township. Platt, Packard and Carpenter. It was about 2 hours ago and I was taken aback how crappy those 3 roads were given how little snow we got.

That's funny, one of my jobs was at Pittsfield Glens, just off Textile at Platt. Maybe I'm glad I didn't go after all.

[Marcus]

The Weather Channel says Port Huron will have snow up until 8 PM and the highest wind gusts over the next few hours.

Environment Canada has both Sarnia and Windsor under a Blizzard Warning. They expect those kind of conditions for more than 12 hours.

[MotorCityRadioFreak]

Another year, another death storm bust. The worst is the winds blowing through my leaky bedroom window and our heating costs.

Rich Lutterman: "It was never about the snow." Your lying ass is wrong. You all were saying 5-9" on Monday.

[MWmetalhead]

He lowered those totals well before the snowfall started. Fox 2 on Wednesday was forecasting 3 to 6. By yesterday's early evening newscasts, I believe that was further reduced to 2 to 4 inches.

Fox 2 did a far better job forecasting totals than Loco 4 and AccuWeather.

The roads do look bad. The footage I've seen from Telegraph and also from Van Dyke doesn't look pretty.

[MotorCityRadioFreak]

Yeah, but he was saying "NEVER" about the snow. That's the part I take issue with.

[MWmetalhead]

Yeah, he probably shouldn't have said that. He probably should've said the snowfall risk wasn't considered the biggest threat (instead, it was the strong wind coupled with the Arctic air).