Empty Promises

On Sunday and Monday, the NWS was talking about “significant accumulations” for Thursday and Friday (today).

On Tuesday and Wednesday, they were calling for 1–3" of snow today.

Yesterday, they started their typical waffling, “We are not sure of the track of the storm.” By last night, they were expecting no more than an inch of snow today.

We got a bit over 1" OF RAIN between midnight and 7am. Then we actually had (very brief) peaks of sunshine around 9am. Then the wind picked back up suddenly. It had been breezy between 3 and 6am (around 20mph), but had been below 10mph since then. We've had 20–30mph gusts since 9am here at work (on the west side of Fort Wayne, near I-69 and Illinois Road).

Finally, about 11:20am a blob of snow moved up from the southwest and reached me at work. It is snowing intensely now, and the ground is beginning to turn white. This is quite a feat, since we have not had temperatures below freezing all week (actually, not below 50 until yesterday), and the ground must be well above freezing.

awc 2006-12-01 11:37:41

Chicago Tribune Photo

UPDATE: we may have had ¼" of snow out of two snow squalls that moved through, but it never even completely covered mulched areas. The temperature dipped briefly below freezing during the squalls, but quickly rebounded to the mid 30s once they passed through.

Very windy throughout the area, even downing a few scattered trees; but never much over 30mph at work. Even my sheltered anemometer registered a peak gust of 26mph today (shortly after 11am).

The western suburbs of Chicago got up to 10". Some people have all the luck!
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awc 2006-12-02 01:09:44