Christmas Snowmageddon - Winter Storm Elliot Approacheth
Mates,
A big part of our country is now under the gun for winter storm Elliott. In Michigan, up and down the state, 1-2' of snow is expected and they are talking about 50 mph winds to accompany the snow. Plans for Christmas travel are greatly impacted and of course, you better have your house in order, supplies, what to do if/when the power goes out.
...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM THURSDAY TO 7 PM EST SATURDAY... * WHAT...Blizzard conditions expected Friday. Total snow accumulations of 10 to 20 inches. Winds gusting as high as 45 mph. * WHERE...Portions of southwest and west central Michigan. * WHEN...From 4 PM Thursday to 7 PM EST Saturday. * IMPACTS...Travel will be very difficult to impossible. Widespread blowing snow will significantly reduce visibility. The hazardous conditions will mainly impact Friday and Saturday travel. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...While the snow will start by mid afternoon on Thursday, the strong winds will not start until Friday morning. It is then that conditions will become dangerous due to low wind chills, blowing snow, and very low visibilities. Power outages are possible.
Snow should be done by later on Christmas Eve, but it's going to be a donnybrook from tomorrow night until then. Please be careful, plan ahead, and yeah, you better get your shopping done early tomorrow! I am told that Santa has already contacted Rudolph to guide his sleigh
Be careful out there,
XM
December 21st, 2022 at 10:34 PM ^
I don’t miss the winters. I’m what they call a damn yankee. Regular Yankees live up north. Damn Yankees move to the south and stay.
my son is what they call a g&$damn Yankee. He moved to the south and married their daughter.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:38 PM ^
user name....checking out.
December 22nd, 2022 at 12:37 AM ^
Looking at your Santa animation, I was thinking that you probably have a giant Norelco razor head in your barn (Now with Floating Heads!) and you’ll be sliding down on it come Christmas. Have fun and some hot cocoa!
Note: you need my user name to remember goofy old TV ads like this.
December 22nd, 2022 at 8:30 AM ^
i totally remember those ads, classics.
December 22nd, 2022 at 1:01 PM ^
Iconic TV commercial. They re-enact it live on stage with washtubs in the play “Every Christmas Story Ever Told”. Hilarious for boomers. My daughter and her friends laughed pretty hard too.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:40 PM ^
🎶 Can you take my high enough 🎶
December 22nd, 2022 at 12:39 AM ^
well played!
December 22nd, 2022 at 7:09 AM ^
I tried Texas. I couldn't stand that the only days where I was comfortable outside the sun set at 630. I'd get home from work and have 30 minutes of daylight to do something enjoyable outside before it got dark. And I'd be vitamin d deficient in the summer. F that.
I live in Philly now. The winters aren't as bad as Michigan and the summers aren't as bad as Texas. Ya gotta deal with Philly folk, they're a special bread. They're kind, not nice. Unlike in the south, where they're nice, not kind.
Cheers.
December 22nd, 2022 at 8:59 AM ^
What kind of special bread? I like Rye.
BTW- yea, you have to like the heat or you’ll hate Texas. I don’t mind being outside all day in 100 degree temps . Y’all gotta be a special bread.
December 22nd, 2022 at 10:33 AM ^
was in Erie for a while, snow fall equals MI, but starts later and ends sooner.... lake effect fun stuff.... now i'm in central western PA... Really like it, the culture is very similar to rural MI (they just pronounce their vowels differently) we get a couple feet of snow a year, but its never really on the ground for more than a week or two before a warm enough spell melts it all.
In retirement we plan to spend Feb, March, April somewhere south... I like 4 seasons, but winter can be limited to a couple months and I'll be fine.
December 22nd, 2022 at 9:20 AM ^
"Regular Yankees live up north. Damn Yankees move to the south and stay."
ProTip: Move to Florida. Floridians say "you have to go north to get to the south." I think the panhandle is a bit different, but SoFlo is pretty much part of the north, from my experiences.
December 22nd, 2022 at 12:58 PM ^
True. I live in the Tampa area. Florida is like reverse Michigan. Hot as heck for 3/4 of the year and very nice for 1/4.
December 22nd, 2022 at 9:43 AM ^
I currently live in the south and I'm the opposite. (I know, not texas).
35-40 and raining all winter is way worse than it just dropping below 30 and snowing. It's still shitty, wet, gloomy, and muddy, but you can't fucking do anything all winter. As opposed to where it snows where the air is dryer, it feels warmer a lot of the time, and you can ski/board/snomobile/ice-fish/cross-country/etc.
Then summer hits and its 100+ for months straight, nauseatingly high humidty, and endless amounts of ticks.
December 22nd, 2022 at 10:34 AM ^
had the same experience while stationed at Ft Hood.... that low 30s and rain would chill right to the bones... seemed worse than 0 with wind and snow in Northern MI.
December 22nd, 2022 at 11:01 AM ^
My wife and I continue to maintain, after 13+ years in Duluth, that we'd take this over cold, rain, and slop. Any day. Winters here are *much* better than the chilly brown nothings a wide swath of the country gets.
December 22nd, 2022 at 10:33 AM ^
Isn't it like 12° in Texas right now?
December 22nd, 2022 at 12:45 PM ^
I'm a damn Yankee too. Which is fine, the weather is much better down here in Georgia anyway.
December 22nd, 2022 at 5:59 PM ^
And we damn Yanks ruin everything
December 21st, 2022 at 10:37 PM ^
This Elliot is a real Jumbo size winter storm.
Got my X-mas commute in before the roads become impassable in WI (we are a winter-storm-day-ahead of youtz guys on the other side of Lake Michigan).
December 21st, 2022 at 10:41 PM ^
good planning. just checked madison, wi. low temp tomorrow night = -9. high temp on friday....1. but with 45 mph gusts your wind chill will be in the -25 to -35 range. santa better wear long johns.
December 22nd, 2022 at 10:40 AM ^
No offense to anyone named Elliot BUT it’s kind of a weak name for a winter storm. Saying “Elliot is dumping on us” just sounds bad.
December 22nd, 2022 at 12:08 PM ^
Naming winter storms in general is silly. These aren't hurricanes that will leave a massive path of destruction.
December 22nd, 2022 at 1:05 PM ^
Unless it is spelled double L, double T, then very strong. On the other hand, Thor might carry more weight
December 21st, 2022 at 10:38 PM ^
Sounds fun. We had 2+ feet last week, and it was the heavy wet stuff. I'd take the powdery fluff you're getting any day (we're getting about 6" of it) over that.
It's terrifically beautiful up here. Looking forward to seeing the fresh stuff when we do a quick swoop into Michigan to see family after Christmas.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:48 PM ^
looks like where you are headed they are getting about a foot, but nothing more after Christmas
December 21st, 2022 at 10:51 PM ^
Suits us, we're not travelling until Sunday. We've got plenty of our own. Gonna be an interesting drive across the UP.
December 22nd, 2022 at 8:45 AM ^
Always liked how the locals in Petoskey rarely hit their brakes and just let off the gas in unison like synchronized swimming versus downstate panic. Everyone seemed to learn and adapt on snow and ice to be no big deal up there. If you went in the ditch up there you mostly were a novice teenager a drunk or a downstater/Fudgy.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:41 PM ^
Mlive just said 2-4 inches for A2, a white xmas, but looking like a yawner for SEMI. You guys on the west side of the state get all the fun.
I will be feeding my tulikivi all weekend.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:45 PM ^
interesting. lots of places near you are getting more snow. will still be cold.
December 22nd, 2022 at 4:23 AM ^
Gambling odds have A2 in the 6-10 range with better money to go higher than lower. But who am I to question the wisdom of MLive? As for me, hundreds of miles to the south I'll be a little bundled up over the weekend, but looks to rebound to upper 60's (fingers crossed lower 70's) by the end of the year. Then maybe a trek back to the mitten.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:49 PM ^
I didn't enjoy winter when I lived in Ann Arbor, but it wasn't until I moved to northern Minnesota that I realized that the reason for my disdain was that winter in Ann Arbor is generally pitiful. Infrequent snow, regular melts, slush, gunk.
We got dumped on last week and have had a number of smaller snowfalls since, and it's cold and nowhere close to melting, and it is stunning.
And we'll have a White Christmas this year, yet again.
It's unfortunate how few there are in Southern Michigan. Here is the Detroit history from the cool site that the Alaska NWS team cooked up to show White Christmas histories at all US stations (yes, even Florida, which goes about how you would expect).
December 21st, 2022 at 10:59 PM ^
that chart from alaska AWS was great. good find.
December 21st, 2022 at 11:00 PM ^
I feel like Southeast Michigan has had more white Christmases than that over the years. I wonder if the data looks different if you look a little further away from the city of Detroit (and its heat island effect).
December 21st, 2022 at 11:33 PM ^
A bit, probably, but the closest I could find. It meshes with my memory of Christmases in the 90s and early 00s, though. 2002 was quite memorable to me because I remember significant snowfall on Christmas Eve, talking to my fiance (now wife of 19 years) on the phone and marveling that it was going to be a genuinely white Christmas, and finding myself surprised that I was actually enjoying it.
December 22nd, 2022 at 10:30 AM ^
This data is almost certainly from Detroit. Detroit has a micro climate that makes it a bit warmer than Ann Arbor and Oakland counties. Lots of times I drive to court in Detroit in the winter and there is snow in Dexter and none in Detroit. So your thinking is likely true that you had a few more white Xmases than this chart indicates.
December 22nd, 2022 at 12:06 AM ^
I don't know if I am glorifying the past with hazy memory, but I recall being a kid growing up in the 1970's and 1980's in the Detroit area and having a white Christmas just about every year. Two to five feet of snowfall through the winter was typical. Things started changing in the 1990's to the 40-ish degF temperatures and it was mostly rain and sleet instead of snow.
December 22nd, 2022 at 2:26 AM ^
Reminds me of a storm we were supposed to get in Feb. 2011. They were predicting 8-10 inches of snow, students were buzzing about whether professors were going to cancel class (since U of M never would), etc. It predictably fizzled into like 2 inches or whatever, and that morning this is the message one of my profs sent via CTools (still have it saved in my email):
Subject: snowmageddon = lame
Group: Site
Message:
see you in class
December 22nd, 2022 at 4:31 AM ^
This is the groundhog day storm in 2011? It hit other parts of the country pretty bad. My wife and I got stranded in our car, along with hundreds of others as it dumped inches on our city in super short order. We had probably one of our biggest fights ever. (She had to pee, and I didn't have a urinal with me) She ended up storming off into the blizzard and finding a restaurant 10 minutes walking away. I think we tried to get out of downtown around 3PM that day, we lived about 5 miles south of downtown. We ended up walking into the house around 930PM that night.
December 22nd, 2022 at 8:09 AM ^
The infamous Groundhog Day Dump. It was significant over here on the west side. I remember busting drifts and pulling out stranded cars for a few hours that morning.
Two of my friends in separate incidents got sued for damaging people’s cars pulling them out of the ditch that weekend (The cracked bumper cover from the tow strap should have been the least of their worries after crushing the whole side of their car in the ditchbank, but what do I know). So now I just smile and wave and let them call a wrecker.
December 22nd, 2022 at 8:20 PM ^
My youngest son is as born during that snow Feb 1&2 2011, I spent those days at St. Joes
December 22nd, 2022 at 9:22 AM ^
It really depends on how quickly the rain transitions to snow. The forecast for actual snow amounts is murky in much of southeast Michigan.
The snow totals aren’t the biggest concern, in my opinion.
The biggest concerns are:
- A flash freeze of wet roads with plenty of dangerous ice forming (~11pm tonight affecting the Friday morning roads most)
- Blowing and drifting snow from 50 mph winds / possibly power outages
- Life-threatening wind chills of up to -25 degrees.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:43 PM ^
Well prepared 🥃🥃🥃🥃
In any type of storm, I just hope the power stays on and nothing hits my house.
December 22nd, 2022 at 7:38 AM ^
Just make a few trays of Chicken Broccoli Bake and you can weather any storm with comfort.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:50 PM ^
Eh southeast Michigan will barely get anything. Was kinda hopin for the fun 1-2 feet
December 21st, 2022 at 10:52 PM ^
Keeping my fingers crossed that my Friday AM flight makes it to CT.
December 21st, 2022 at 10:58 PM ^
probably greatly depends on what airport you're headed to.
December 21st, 2022 at 11:06 PM ^
BDL/Bradley. It's just NE of Hartford. It's been ok in years past in the winter. Hopefully our luck holds.
December 21st, 2022 at 11:37 PM ^
I don't have much hope. I have a late flight into Grand Rapids Thursday night.
May not get to see the grandkids
December 21st, 2022 at 11:41 PM ^
don't know where you're starting from, but you might do better to hop in a car and start driving before it gets ugly later on thursday night.
December 22nd, 2022 at 12:09 AM ^
North Carolina. Charlotte to GR. Arriving at 11 pm.