Winter isn't done with us, but getting closer
Out of doors, it looks and feels more like the last day of December than the end of February. But there is a light at the end of this tunnel that has become the relentless winter of 2014-15, and that's the first day of spring, now less than three weeks away.
Before the snow-swept counties of north central Ohio get there, however, they can expect to add still more inches of snow to a snowpack that's been around for eight straight weeks now. And if you're looking ahead and pondering whether flooding could become an issue as our temperatures inevitably warm up, you're right on track.
For the third straight weekend, our region is facing the likelihood of a significant snowfall, with at least 6 inches of snow expected Sunday along the U.S. 30 corridor, with a bit more to the north, less to the south.
"Right now we're looking at all snow across northern Ohio, and a mix of rain and snow below that. It will start out as all snow early Sunday afternoon, transitioning to a mix in the evening and then changing back to all snow early Monday morning. You should get at least 6 inches of snow before it starts to mix over," Kirk Lombardy, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Cleveland, said.
"It's not that common, but we've seen it in the past, especially during the winter, where the storm systems moving through get into a cyclical pattern. I can remember that happening in the 1970s, but it's not normal."
Over the course of just a few hours Friday the various computer forecast models on which meteorologists rely had Sunday's storm system shifting a bit to the north across our region, which would send our snowfall totals downward, and then back south, which would translate into more snow.
By late afternoon Friday the National Weather Service decided a winter storm watch was merited for Saturday evening through Monday morning. Six to 10 inches of wet snow are expected, the heaviest snow falling during the day Sunday. Anyone with plans to be out and about over the latter half of the weekend is advised to monitor weather forecasts in the event the storm's projected track continues to shift.
Before that mess transpires, however, the area was expecting yet another blitz of bitterly cold, possibly record-breaking temperatures around daybreak Saturday, as low as 20 degrees below zero in the ordinarily colder rural locales, where it's already gotten as cold as 26 below this month.
Most locations across north central Ohio have experienced subzero temperatures on at least 14 days this month.
Despite the fact that temps have hardly crossed the freezing mark at all this February, Malabar State Park is going ahead with its annual Maple Syrup Festival, which always takes place during the first two weekends in March. The park said it hoped to begin tapping its maple trees for sap this weekend.
Our temperatures are finally showing signs of warming up, but not on a consistent basis, and that's probably a good thing since a sudden, prolonged thaw accompanied by rain could cause serious flooding in parts of north central Ohio, especially with close to a foot of snow already on the ground.
We'll test our river and stream levels Tuesday, when the area is expected to be on the warm side of another storm system, translating into just rain for a change.
"It looks like the bulk of the precipitation won't get in your area until Tuesday night. You may get only half an inch of rain, but there's a huge snowpack, and when it's a fairly dry snow it can absorb the rain before it's released as runoff," Lombardy said.
Temperatures here are expected to top out in the low 40s during the day Tuesday, then drop to around the freezing mark at night, after which colder air will return for Wednesday.
"Those short-duration warm-ups are ideal for preventing rapid rises in rivers and streams. When you release, hold back, release that keeps them from flooding," Lombardy said.
Although the harsh, prolonged cold, and accompanying high amounts of snow, of last winter seemed like an anomaly at the time, we are approaching that severity again this season, despite the fact that December was snowless and the season didn't really get started until just after the new year.
In Richland, Crawford and Marion counties, seasonal snowfall is up to about 52 inches, close to where it was at this point last winter, and about 15 inches above normal.
The persistent cold of this February has been extraordinary. At Mansfield's Lahm Airport, which maintains the only official National Weather Service Automated Surface Observing System in the area, this month will go in the books as the coldest February on record with an average temperature of about 15 degrees, a whopping 13 degrees below normal. It will also go on record as the third coldest month overall.
"There will be another shot of cold air Thursday, but then we'll try to warm up behind that one. The pattern should become more west to east, which would be ideal," Lombardy said.
As of Friday, the Great Lakes were 84.1 percent ice-covered, with Lake Erie, the shallowest of the lakes, at 95.6 percent coverage. This is roughly equivalent to where they were last winter at the end of February, and marks the first time since the 1970s that more than 80 percent of the Great Lakes have been iced over for two straight winters, great news for ice-fishing businesses.
Although the U.S. Climate Prediction Center expects below-normal temperatures to remain entrenched over the Great Lakes states through at least March 12, normal temperatures are steadily climbing now on an almost daily basis.
"Hopefully, we can drain all the cold air we possibly can out of the North Pole before it has time to build up again," Lombardy said.
thill3@nncogannett.com
419-563-9225
Twitter: @ToddHillMNJ