Weird Regional Weather

[WayneB]

It was -4 this morning when I got up and right now it is pushing 12 degrees F, darn near a heatwave. Not to worry going down tonight and more snow on the way.

 

[dmccarty]

Not sure how weird our weather is but we can get two feet of snow, 100+ heat in the summer, and hurricanes with high winds even though we are well inland.

We have not had a snow storm since 2003. In 2000 and 2003 we had almost 24 inches of snow from one storm. Then the ice storms. I'll take snow over ice any day.

The truck has a thermometer which I have started to monitor on the drive to/from work. I can leave the house, which is on top of a hill, and it can be 25. Go downhill to the gate and it might be 23. Then on the way to work I can see as much as a 10 degree temperature rise as I get close to the city. I am driving north so if anything the temperature should DROP. The other night I drove north to a downtown from my work office. It was 37 in the parking lot. 41 in downtown.

The heat island effect is interesting to watch as I drive from rural areas to city, on gravel roads and pave roads. East/West roads vs North/South roads, crossing lakes, going into valleys, etc.

Later,
Dan

 

[MossRoad]

I'm sure we all have our weird weather, ours happens this time of year. We're in the Lake Effect Snow belt, areas on the leeward side of the great lakes. As long as the lakes aren't frozen, the air picks up moisture and dumps it as snow. This creates a couple of unique situations:

We can have sunshine and snow at the same time. The lake effect snow comes in bands (visible on radar). There could be no other clouds in the area so looking straight up you may have blue sky and sunshine but coming in at ground level from the west may be dark sky and snow squalls.

My other observation came from just now. My handy-dandy outdoor thermometer/weather predictor shows 1 degree and sunshine, meaning fair weather. This makes sense as the system has passed and the barometric pressure is rising. Most times, that means fair weather. Looking at the radar and the local weather predictions though, we're in for nearly a foot of snow tonight. Hardly fair weather, but it's that Lake Effect again.

So that's my unique, local weather pattern. What does everyone else live through?

I live just few miles south of Rob. He gets lots more snow than us. Kind of weird. If the wind is out of the north, across Lake Michigan, the counties to our west 15 miles will get dumped on with the lake effect snow and we will get 4". If the wind shifts to the west, Rob to our north gets dumped on and we get 4". However, rarely do the winds stay over us for longer than a couple hours. I can sit in my office on a sunny day and see this dark band of snow in the west blowing from north to south. It is sunny above the snow. It looks kind of like a sand storm. Really neat.

Here's another oddity... the more it snows, the worse it is for ice fishing. Why? Because the snow insulates the ice from the cold temps and keeps it from freezing solid. It makes it mushy.