Arctic air will filter south and east through early this week. As this cold air moves across the South, a rare winter storm is forecast to develop from Texas, Gulf Coast States into the Southeast through early this week. Several new daily record low temperatures are expected, including new record-low maximum temperatures. For Southern California, fire weather concerns increase this week. Read More >
Prolonged Snow Event Affects Much of the Area
A prolonged period of precipitation occurred across the forecast area beginning Monday Feb 28 with the significant part of the event ending early the morning of March 2, 2005. The precipitation started out as a mixture of rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow across the area. Amounts were generally light with many area roads becoming slippery, causing several accidents, some with injuries. As colder air arrived Monday afternoon, the precipitation changed to all snow as low pressure developed across central Indiana and intensified. The snow developed in response to a combination of the deepening low pressure system and enhancement off Lake Michigan as cold northwest winds strengthened. By 7 am EST Tuesday morning (Mar 1), amounts ranged from nearly 18 inches at Niles in southeast Berrien county to an inch in White county Indiana. The snow continued through much of Tuesday, with much of the snowfall being confined to two dominant bands of lake effect snowfall. As the afternoon progressed and shear increased in response to the passage of a secondary following upper level wave, the bands became more multiple in nature with a larger area seeing less intense snow showers. Figure 3 below represents a hand contour analysis of coop observer and snow spotter reports for this event. Niles Michigan was the big winner with 17.8 inches reported. A big thank you to all of those who called in their reports! |
The radar images below (Figures 1 and 2) show where the two predominant heavy lake effect snow bands setup and persisted. Areas of dark green on the radar images indicate where snow was falling at the rate of 1 to 2 inches per hour.
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 Figure 1 0.5° base reflectivity image from 559 am EST March 1st. This first band resulted in 6 to 10 inches of snowfall before it began lifting eastward later that morning. |
 Figure 2 0.5° base reflectivity image from 1215 am EST March 2nd. This second band resulted in 3 to 6 inches of snowfall before it broke up toward 700 am that morning. |
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TH/LF...3/3/05
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