Unknown 0:06
Good evening, it is February 3, and welcome to a recap discussion of the storm. This storm is a dangerous storm right now it's an ice storm, lots of ice storm warnings, especially for places in Texas that had a very profound impact for those places going really highways, which cover from Texas all the way into the Northeast. And however, we're not going to be focusing so much on that we're going to be focusing more on the fun part of the storm.

Unknown 0:35
The fun part of this storm, right? The fun part of the storm is the snow part of the storm. And let's just go back to Monday, it was a complex storm. And that's why I wanted to just it's a unique storm, something that we don't usually get here in the Midwest, it happens but it's not the usual type of storm. So let me just explain the usual type of storm system that affects us the big storms that affect us here in the Midwest, the ones that produce more than six inches, and the ones which are forecasted to produce a widespread six inch plus

Unknown 1:08
are those low pressure systems that develop over let's say Oklahoma or so. And then they kind of dip a little bit south into Texas, this is called the Panhandle hook, it collides with lots of Gulf moisture, and then it also collides with an Arctic airmass. Low pressure generally a lot of times is under 1000 MB, which means it's about 29.5 or less, a lot of times 29.4. I remember in 2008, that winter, maybe 2009 29.4 Low pressure brought 14 or 15 inches of snow to Milwaukee. Now realize when you're trying to figure it out the storms intensity from just the barometric pressure

Unknown 1:46
to major forecaster for to the AccuWeather pointed out that for the East Coast, a good indicator to know whether a storm is going to produce a foot or more or not, is does the storm have a barometric pressure of 29.2 or lower. If it's not 29.2, then usually a foot will not be forecasted for the East Coast. Here in the Midwest, I would imagine we have different standards here because it's not so common to get a low pressure of 29.2. But you know, at the same time, the winter storms don't seem to be as big here in the Midwest. Anyways, we had a low pressure system, which was not really so much no Gaya, this it's not really so much connected to the snow. But I'm just going to mention it because it did have the barometric pressure at 29.2. And it actually did play a major role in getting this whole thing started. So that was the low pressure that was located just north of the Minnesota or North Dakota area in southern Canada. And if you looked on the map, it really looked intense. It had a lot of spin to it. 29.3 it was 29.3. On Monday, it moved northeast, they think now I think it intensified to 29.2. Tuesday as well. You might have actually was in just north of North Minnesota in Minnesota on Tuesday, and then it headed northeast. Now the way these low pressure systems work is that they were they were counter clockwise, the winds go counter clockwise around the low pressure. So areas to the east of the low pressure have Northwind of South winds and areas to the west of the low pressure have Northwind. So it brings in all the warm air to the east, which was many areas here in the Midwest, especially the southeast. A lot of times the warm air doesn't quite make it up in the Northeast because it tends to go over the colder air at the surface. But here in Chicago, we were on the warm in the warm sector of the system, in fact, much warmer or at least a little bit warmer than what was forecasted to happen. Temperatures in parts of Chicago area actually had 50 degrees on Tuesday, just amazing. 50 degrees in parts of the Chicago area on Tuesday, and precipitation moved in as well. That's because we had lots of golf moisture this was visible on any weather map you looked at from days ago days ago already was well advertised. The moisture available with the system was well advertised all over the place. You can look at a newspaper, weather map anywhere you could see even the precipitation it's precipitating in throughout the Gulf of Mexico. There's a front south of Miami that was on Tuesday and the precipitation around the Miami area. And you could see there's rain all over the place and the Flash Flood Watches for Texas, lots of moisture even without looking in a professional meteorological weather map even without that it was clear that there was lots of moisture available with the system. If you wanted to look at it with more depth you could look at the National Weather Service. The QP F which is the amount of water available with the system was approaching two inches or was two inches forecasted to be two inches in the St. Louis area and looks like that would be about the peak now. The general there is a

Unknown 5:00
A rumor or a rumor, and maybe it's true, we're going to talk about it that the general snow to water ratio is 10 to one. Now, meteorologist Tom Skilling set for here in Chicago on average, it's 12 to one. So in two inch or two inch of water equivalent, if that would fall as snow, you will have 24 inches of snow. Now with this system, phase number one was forecasted to be a 10 to one ratio, phase number two was forecast to be a 13 to one ratio, so you would average around 11 or 12. To one, if the whole thing would fall as snow, you would end up with about 20 inches in St. Louis, Missouri. Now, we're going to go ahead and talk about what exactly happened here. So this 29.2, low pressure system, this strong one in moves by 29.2 to 29.3, it drags a strong cold front, a cold front, all of these systems have a cold front associated with it. And this front was huge. This front went all the way from the Hudson Bay to Texas. Not only that, it's still doing it, the things still keeps moving this storm system up in Canada, it's still moving east. And the front just keeps getting longer and longer. It's like you have

Unknown 6:16
the front isn't going away from Texas, it just keeps extending and extending like an extending rod, the front just keeps getting longer and longer. So the front just gets bigger, and the front is barely moving. That strong system up in Canada is moving, but the front is just getting longer and longer. So that's how is it possible for the storm system with an associated cold front, connected to it? How could the storm move east without the cold front moving is it's very simple. The front just keeps getting longer and longer. Now the front is moving a little bit towards the south east. Usually, this is the type of setup that I know I read about pretty frequently in the summertime you have a front that actually situates itself across the mid part of the country from the Southern Plains or even the central plains into the Midwest to the Mid Atlantic area. A lot of times it's just north of Baltimore, it separates New York City from Baltimore. It certainly separates. We don't use the word certainly anymore, actually. But we go from Baltimore to Providence, there were a lot of times be a front separating the two Chicago to St. Louis. There's a fun, it's the same front. So here we have a front now this front is it is winter. So we do have the Jetstream is further south. And this front is situated well to the south of St. Louis. It even goes south A Little Rock, Arkansas, and even the front is at this point already south of Texas. And you have the stationary front that became stationary north of New Orleans. They're still in the warm air. Miami, of course is just beautiful and warm. And that front front always have a very difficult time. Nothing's ever always but in. But they have a hard time in the winter. As I pointed out in the past fronts. Even in the winter, they do make it through Miami, but a lot of times you'll see they stall just north of Miami. Eventually it makes it through or they just vanish. So you can look at the map today.

Unknown 8:13
We have a series of maps that's y'all just come skilling does a great job in the Tribune and you could just see this front. You see the day to day progress of this fronto. Tomorrow the front is hasn't even made it into Florida yet. on Shabbos. The front is making it into northern Florida. On Sunday. The front it looks like it's right over Miami on Monday. The front is just to the south east of Miami. And on Tuesday, it is starting to possibly move back north as a warm front and on Wednesday. The front is still around Miami. So this is a fun that's moving very slowly and it will be becoming stationary either just south of Miami maybe along Miami it would be interesting to see what the weather forecast what those temperatures are forecast to be in Miami. That's the front that we have. Okay, so along this front we have we had two main waves of low pressure, different impulses, waves of low pressure that traveled along the front. There was no intense storm system and a normal situation here in the Midwest. meteorologist Dave Murray. He retired. He's expert channel two in St. Louis KTVA. He retired and moved to Hawaii but he continues to forecast the weather for St. Louis. But in any case, he's has always said that in order for the Midwest to have a major winter storm, certainly for the St. Louis area no more certainly. For the St. Louis area. There's three ingredients necessary. You need deep love. Deep, low pressure. You need copious amounts of moisture, more copious amounts of Gulf moisture. It could be any moisture bill in the Midwest. All of our moisture comes from the Gulf.

Unknown 9:52
Again, the word all is difficult in recent times, I've noticed we sometimes managed to get Pacific stuff over here

Unknown 10:00
But the Gulf of Mexico is a primary is the main source of moisture around here. And the Arctic here, they collide this low pressure, I pretty sure it's deep, low pressure. But you know, in this case, we did not have the deep low pressure, and yet forecasts called for more than six inches of snow. And major winter storm is defined as more