Winter 2011-12 pattern

The Farmers Almanac shows a lot of rain for our area and very little snow. I remember my Grandparents living by that book.

INeedCoffee, I heard the same thing recently about the Winter of 1978.

(I lived through it in SE Michigan, but was just a little kid. I can't recall what it was like...probably didn't even notice!)

today's weather in particular is just plain weird!

True. I remember the night before the blizzard hit, it was 45 and raining. I was studying for a test the next day, and kept hoping for a snow/ice cancellation the next day. I got it...

I swear every winter when we have a warmer day, somebody says "you know, this is how it was before the blizzard of '78."

ops, sorry dell_diva.

I was running my first business in '78. Remember it well. Frankly, the weather was less unsettled then, than now. We had fairly average, normal winter weather until the very unusual quick warm up to about 50 or so with rain, thunder and lightening, followed by a rapid, steep temperature drop and all hell broke loose with howling winds and unbelieveable snow. It was thundering and lightening when we went to bed. We woke up to three to four feet of snow and incredible drifts that blocked all of our doors. We had a hard time actually getting out of the house. Once out we grabbed shovels and the snow blower and cleared paths and the driveway. An all day endeavor.

The Village of Holland plowed non-stop during that night. The streets were in good shape. We got in the car and could get around in the Village but nowhere else outside of Village streets. The snow was over the hood of the station wagon in some places once you got to the main roads like Angola or Mc Cord that were county maintained.

dell-diva I offer no apology. It was a unique experience (I hope) which I guess you can't understand.

Dell_Diva,

It hasn't been just one day this year it's been almost all summer, which my grandparents said it was like before the blizzard.

"An old salt told me today that this was how the Winter of 1978 started."

TT post - Blizzard of '78 - What Happened in Ohio: A Meteorological Review

That storm occurred on January 26. I was in grade school, living in southeast Ohio. I was a meteorological nerd. I had my own other weather station. I recorded daily weather observations. I made my own weather maps, forecasts, etc. Man, if I had the Web then ...

I remember that storm and that entire month well. It's in my notes, which I still have. Our school was closed for nearly the entire month in January 1978 because of that blizzard and because of the other snowstorms that preceded the blizzard.

Nothing about January 2012 reminds me of January 1978. In mid-January 1978, southeast Ohio got hit by two snowstorms, each dumping nearly a foot of snow. These were moisture-laden storms that came out of the Gulf and moved up along the Appalachians Mountains or the Atlantic Coast. These storms contained very little wind. It just snowed.

Before the Blizzard of '78 hit, we had over 25 inches of snow on the ground. The weather right before the blizzard was warm and rainy, which knocked back our snow depth a lot. Southeast Ohio did not receive the snowfall from the Blizzard of '78 that northwest Ohio did. So after the blizzard, which brought a lot of bitter cold, our ground was covered with an ice pack that was 12 to 15 inches deep and nearly as hard as concrete.

This past November, December, and the first 12 days or so of January 2012 have been a bit abnormal with a lot of rain, decent temps, and very little snowfall.

But I would say that beginning last weekend, Ohio is now entering what I consider to be its typical winter weather: cold and some snow, then warm and rain, then cold but no snowcover, then a little warmer with snowfall, then cold and snowcover, then warming with snow melting, then repeat.

It's a bit unusual for us to have long stretches of continuous snowcover, but the last three or four Toledo winters have actually been "good" for snowfall and the snow piling up and not melting away quickly. Good for local cross country skiing.

But most of our winter precip comes from rain and not snow.

The lack of snow at this point is not completely unusual.

TT thread about robins with a photo taken on January 27, 2007 at Maumee Bay State Park.

Maybe our 2011-2012 winter will be more like 2006-2007. Obviously, we have plenty of time for the type of winter weather that causes people to complain.

I'm assuming bread is piled high on grocery store shelves, waiting for one of those media-driven snowpocalyptic forecasts.

That's OK. We're on the downhill side of winter. The spring bird migration in our area actually begins in mid- to late-February. But the fall or maybe winter bird migration is still occurring because at dusk today I saw nearly 1000 Tundra Swans along Route 2 near 579. These swans winter along the Atlantic Coast, but as long as we have open water around, some stay in our area. Maybe some of these swans moved in recently from more northern areas that are icing up.

I worked all day, but when I got home both Republic Waste cans were toppled over. I have the larger size, and both half-full cans had considerable weight in them, yet despite the 40-plus pounds of weight the wind gusts sent them flying. This has not happened in the year or so since Toledo switched to the tall cans (I have the bigger sized containers, by the way).

so, the mayans were correct. It is the end of the world.