Two-day snowfall total exceeds all of December ?06

by Peter Jakey– Managing Editor

At the current rate, nobody will be calling the winter of 2007-08 ?mild.? So far it has been more like ?extreme? with snow totals eclipsing last December?s snow totals in a mere two days. According to snowfall records kept at the Presque Isle County Road Commission, about 20 inches of snow fell on the area from Saturday night into Monday night. Eight inches of white stuff was recorded from the first storm over the weekend, which was topped by a foot of snow that fell from Sunday night to Monday night.

ACCORDING TO National Weather Service weather spotter Wally Roeske, 10.5 inches was recorded Sunday morning in the Moltke area, eight inches on Monday, while another 1.5 inches was noted Tuesday. Compare that to the 16 inches which was recorded at the road commission office in Rogers City during the entire month of December 2006. There was only 21 inches of snow that fell through the first two months of winter last season.

The first significant snow storm of the 06-07 season did not arrive until January 8, brining with it 10 inches, or about half of what was recorded from this week?s major winter event. The most snowfall in December during the last 20 years was in 2000 when 61.75 inches fell.

THE SNOW was accompanied b

y a lot of moisture, making it wet, packy and difficult to shovel. ?As that system pulled to the northeast across Georgian Bay, then what we had was a typical northern Michigan northwest flow, lake effect snow,? said Scott Rozanski, meteorologist from the NWS office in Gaylord. ?As that system continued to move to the northeast, then we got the colder northwest flow, lake effect behind it,? said Rozanski. The snowfall ranged from six to 11 inches for the first storm across northern Michigan. ?By the time the whole system was done, everybody pretty much ended up with about 15 inches on the ground,? said Rozanski.

He said it is tough to tell if the current trend will continue. ?It is hard to tell, patterns shift around,? said Rozanski. ?Right now it seems like a real active cold pattern. Whether that is going to keep up is going to be a little tough to tell.? Until the lake freezes, the potential for further lake effect snow will remain. ?We?ve had a lot of wind. It is hard to freeze that water up and get ice to form,? he said. ?Once that ice forms it generally slows down the lake effect quite a bit, just because you can?t get as much moisture up through the ice cover as you can when the lakes are wide open.?

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