A Winter of Contrasts

Yesterday I drove out to an area near the Coldwater River in extreme southeast Kent County and returned with the following photos among many.

Ice and Snow

Linear

I just showed you those shots because I felt like it. Also, though, to give you an idea of what a mixed bag this December is proving to be. While snow has been the rule up here in the frozen tundra of Michgan, the Gulf has been doing brisk business farther south. Pulling juicy dewpoints northwards and combining them with high helicities and good bulk shear, a low has been firing off severe thunderstorms and tornadoes across the Dixie Alley. In fact, Wednesday’s tally shows twenty-two tornadoes spread across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. Perhaps that figure will be modified, but I”m simply impressed with the fact that there were any tornadoes at all. Up here in the land of ice and snow, such phenomena seem like mere pipe dreams.

But who knows what this winter has in store for us. The last one held a few surprises. In Michigan, the surprise so far has been the massive amount of snow that has already been deposited on the landscape. It”s not a bad thing; the Great Lakes water levels can use another good, snowy winter of the kind we got last year, and as a new enthusiast of winter photography, I don’t mind so much if we get one. But I can still hardly wait for March, and the first rumblings of serious convection. Bring it on, I say. The sooner, the better.