Golden Snow Shovel Winner Ready for Pizza As Snow Front Sets Up in the Midwest

Here is a picture of our winner Amber Crider with yours truly! She really is not a huge fan of snow and cold weather so she was ecstatic that I had to get out there and shovel it instead of her. It was a sloppy, wet, heavy snow so I am relieved that there was only about an inch of snow by time I started shoveling. I do admit that I worked up a sweat and I made sure to also brush off her car that was full of snow. Amber was treated like royalty and said she just randomly picked November 30th for us receiving our first inch of snow of the season. Now that was one good guess, but it was also a smart one too! Usually Lafayette sees its first accumulating snow during the last week of November and she hit it big. Not only did she get to keep the golden shovel but Mad Mushroom will be providing her with a free year's worth of pizza. Pizza is one of her favorite foods and she said it will be the perfect thing she can eat this winter when it is nice and heated to help keep her warm so she could not be happier. Amber told me next year she hopes to make it two in a row and really liked the royal treatment. The one thing I could not deliver her was some warmer weather she was asking for but not everything is in my hands. I did tell her that once we get through December that January and February will be a breeze and Spring is looking like it will come early this year. Thanks again to our sponsor Mad Mushroom and for everybody that participated in the contest. Now speaking of snow. Here were the final snowfall totals from Saturday night through Monday night.


An incredible 7 inches of snow fell in Bloomington, Illinois with the northwest and southwest suburbs of Chicago receiving a healthy 3 to 6 inches of snow. The old saying I like to use this time of year is that snow breeds snow and sure enough I have the possibility of more snow on the way by Wednesday night and once again late Friday and Saturday followed by more snow chances next Monday and Wednesday. Once that snow pack is down storms like to form and move on its southern periphery where there tends to be a nice temperature contrast set-up by the colder snow cover and the much warmer temperatues found to the south. You get what I like to call a snow front that sets up and if you add an amplified jet stream to the mix it does not take much for a low pressure area to form and it usually loves to move right along that temperature boundary! Many times when forecasting with snow cover you need to lower daytime highs by at least 5 to 10 degrees and with snow cover and clear skies at night you can subtract even more. Here is a look at an impressive snow pack that stretches all the way to Arkansas!

This pattern is so cold throughout much of the country that even southern Georgia could wake up with a few snowflakes today. Now that is impressive! The jet stream is in a January position due to a huge ridge of high pressure out West continue to detour it into our backyards from the North Pole. The Arctic Oscillation which we have spoken a lot about here on the blog continues to be negative which means there is plenty of cold air re-charging in Canada and ready to move our way. So the two big stories will not only be the active storm track, but we will have bitter cold air moving in with highs only in the 20s by late week and I would be very surprised if many of us did not see single digit lows in the next week. Will this last the entire month of December? I will have your December Outlook here on the blog by tomorrow. Let's just say our chance of a White Christmas still remains 80% or above. Normally it is only a 50-50 proposition. Yes, a lot of bloggers and even I am celebrating this snowy pattern but it is very hard for anybody to enjoy this if folks do not remember to slow it down on area roads, especially this morning. Black ice will be problem. I am still amazed at how bad the roads were last night. We do not need any more slide-offs. We already met our quota for the winter in just a few hours yesterday evening. On a brighter note today we should not have to worry about any drifting or blowing snow like yesterday and it looks like we could see at least some sunshine! I do know the wolves really like this weather. Monty Sloan sent in some great shots of the wolves with a nice story. Enjoy and have a great day!

Hi Mike

Today I was photographing the wolves. I was tossing a few treats over to the island in their enclosure and a few dropped into the water. Kailani waded right in and – well as you can see, they just do not feel cold like we do…

- Monty -