Awesome stuff. Trying to get a handle on historical weather events and stories is a sub-hobby of mine.
I just have web snapshots available now, but these should prove interesting.
Below is one of Accuweather.com's bogus forecasts. It didn't pan out, but just check that nighttime forecast out - 33F with an inch of rain and 43 mph winds would have been awesome
. At those temperatures there could have even been a stray snowflake mixing in with the wind-driven rain. There's even a 24% chance of thunder.
Here's a GFS model run showing, among other things, a foot of snow in Kentucky on December 2, 2011. That didn't pan out and that run showed by far the heaviest totals, but that would have been historic for so early in the season. Coming off of the Cyber Monday snowstorm, some snow-lovers in those areas would think they hit the jackpot after getting an additional 5 inches from this storm:
And who isn't fond of seeing monster snow totals on real forecast maps
? That's why this map from TWC for the High Plains Blizzard last December has a special place in my archives. Just gaze with envy at that big area of pink and purple:
This is an incredible TWC map, showing the infrared satellite imagery from the historic Patriots Day Storm of 2011. Those cloud tops were so cold it almost scared me when I saw it. Up to that point I had never seen anything of that magnitude outside of the tropics, much less over such a large area. The only other time I've ever seen that was during the Super Outbreak of 2011 that same month.
That orange over northern Michigan was occurring while it was snowing, and over many areas there was a huge thunder and snow storm. Towards the south there was a strong cold front with three or four strong derechos which knocked out power to many people. If you look at some local forecast videos you will see a strong and continuous squall line that stretched from the Gulf Coast all the way up to Lake Superior where it was snowing. I had never seen before or since a squall line like that, and I've found no historical precedent outside of possibly some storms I read about in the late 19th century.
Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for Michigan when temperatures were in the mid 30's, and that huge deep red puff over Chicago signifying huge convection? It was in the upper 30's at the time there. The view I have gained over the years was proven in this event - heat or even warmth is not needed for even severe thunderstorms, all you need is instability, which can either be provided by heat or a strong storm system.
Although few besides myself would label it "historic", it is an almost-forgotten weather event that I'd rank in the top 10 for the entire year:
Below is an image from the same storm on the at around the same time. This is one of my favorite thundersnow snapshots because you can clearly see all the lightning strikes beyond the snow line in Wisconsin and Michigan. There was also an outbreak of thundersnow in Iowa the previous morning.
Green Bay was Ground Zero for lightning strikes beyond the snow line, and this amazing snapshot was taken at the same time. It's not often that you see "32, Heavy Snow with Thunder" on a weather report:
From the same month (April 2011), this storm was a nice one. It struck the Northeast on April 1, 2011, and provided Maine with a good dumping and provided everyone else with a nice, almost classic Spring snow:
This is a more recent one (June 29 2012). I took this snapshot after I glanced at Google Earth and saw that Smyrna, Tennessee was at 113F. That set a new all-time record high for that location, and for a few hours on the following day (when they got up to 111F) Smyrna was the hottest place on the face of the planet:
Tennessee being the world's hot spot is quite rare.
Below is a special snapshot from March 2012, of a heavy snow forecast for Lake Tahoe
:
Lastly, this is a classic case of what I christened "the deathly plume of mugginess" that all too often envelops a bubble centered around the Eastern part of the United States, and often (especially in "Spring") forms a plume-like configuration. The only really strange thing about it is that this snapshot was taken on March 15, during the huge heat wave that occurred in March 2012:
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