SHORE-PARALLEL SNOW BANDS OVER NORTHWEST INDIANA AND SOUTHWEST LOWER MICHIGAN DURING A MAJOR ARCTIC OUTBREAK

The paper investigates three cases of local heavy snow near the southeast part of Lake Michigan during a very strong Arctic outbreak in December, 1989. It in part uses the study by Mecikalski et al. (1989) to help understand the cases in terms of shore-parallel snow bands. It attempts to show how temperature, vertical temperature profiles, pressure, and wind patterns contributed to the development or caused the breakdown of snow bands. It also suggests that the event that yielded the greatest snow accumulation may have been a case of evolutionfrom wind-parallel snow into shore-parallel snow, and it attempts to explain why heavy snow fell during both phases of the event. 1