Wednesday Update: Snowstorm of the year leaves Michigan

The possibly largest storm of the season is finally out of Michigan, late this Wednesday afternoon. The system blanked much of southern-lower Michigan with anywhere from 6-12", as forecasted by the Grand Rapids NWS Office.

Recap: Snow started early Tuesday morning and moved in from southwest to northeast throughout the morning hours. By 9am, most of Mid-Michigan was seeing moderate snowfall. Numbers by early Wednesday evening indicated anywhere from 2-5" across the area, with locally higher amounts reported further south near Lansing and Grand Rapids.

Through the evening we saw a brief break across Isabella, Midland, and Saginaw counties. Infact, the snow came to a complete stop for several hours. As the ULL and SL slowly moved closer to joining, the banding started taking place late last night. The strongest portion of the deformation band seemed to take place from a line from Lansing to just north of the Metro Detroit area into Oakland county. The band apparently strengthen as we headed towards and past midnight, and the Saginaw Valley was walloped with up to 8" in some spots just over night. The big winner so far is Saginaw reporting 12.5" just west of town. We're still waiting on official totals from the GRR NWS Office, but I'm assuming you will see totals surpass a foot near Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.

One thing to thank for this storm is the strong thermodynamics that we saw set up in our atmosphere. Without the ULL and SL coming together overnight, we wouldn't have seen the strong deformation band form, and thus wouldn't have seen more than 2-5" out of this storm.

It is very clear where the band formed and where it disappated at. Once you get north of Bay County totals drop off very quickly. Infact, in northern Bay County only 3" was reported in Pinconning.

So, now the question that lies is will this have been our last storm of the season? We're heading into the halfway point of February so it is definetly possible, however, I think there is a good chance we will see one more good snowfall before Spring.

That's it for the afternoon update. I'll have a long-range outlook along with snow totals from GRR a bit later.