An Historic or Epic Storm for The Upper Midwest & Great Lakes.

An intense storm system is moving across Minnesota and Wisconsin this morning. A way to gauge the intensity of a storm is by how low the barometric pressure gets in the center of the storm.

In simplicity, the lower the central pressure of the storm, the stronger or more intense the storm is.

This storm will likely be an historic one for sure by the time it begins to wind down.

A very knowledgeable and savvy weatherlady  passed this information on to me:

The storm is forecast to reach a pressure of 28.35 inches. If it reaches that pressure it will be second most severe system to strike the Great Lakes.

Probably the most famous storm was the storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald back in 1975, that storm reached a central pressure of 28.95 inches.

However the strongest storm ever recorded was the January 1978 "Great Ohio Blizzard" which reached a central pressure of 28.05 inches.

In order to put a little scale here for comparison when Hurricane Earl (from this year) reached Category 3 strength its lowest pressure that was recorded was 28.20 inches.


This storm will be one for the history books that is for sure, if not epic.

As I mentioned in my last blog post Indian Summer and The Gales of November come Early this storm will produce  a widespread swath of high winds from the Dakotas and Plains east through the Great Lakes states and Ohio along with blizzard conditions for parts of the Dakotas: 
National Weather Hazards

Note the large swath of the Plains and Great Lakes States all under High wind Watches or Warnings on the National Hazards Map.

While for the Lower Great Lakes States and Midwest a major severe weather threat:
Today's Severe Weather Outlook


A final note, many national media outlets are dubbing this a "Midwest Cyclone". The word cyclone is a broad  word that applies to ANY type of low pressure system; thus a Nor'easter, hurricane, low pressure system, even a tornado is a cyclone.