Chinook

I wonder how many continuous hours that some part of Texas has had a cold-weather-related watch, warning, or advisory.

My place just got 4" of snow (3.5" on the low end), which is more snow in the last 4 hours than I have in any 24-hour time period since October. "Fun Surprise" -- unfortunately I have to drive somewhere tomorrow, but the roads will probably be ok by then. At least it is certainly warmer than 0 degrees this time around. radar from 7:44PM

Heavy snow formed around Fort Collins and has moved toward me-- mesoscale snow blob.

flakes

Yesterday, mesonet stations showed around -10 to -18 around Fort Collins/Loveland/Greeley and even -20 near Greeley. Today, it has warmed up to the upper 30's this afternoon. This is at least one extreme point in our otherwise bland winter. You might hate me for saying this, but I am kind of glad I don't have to shovel or drive around in much snow, like I did in Nov/Dec and Feb of 2019-2020. Really, the only remarkable thing since November, before this week, was a few days of 50mph or 60mph wind gusts. Here is an interactive basin-data web site that I found a while ago. The other map that I used to post never shows the SWE for California basins. It seems like 88% is the number of the day around here. It's not highly impressive, but still, not the absolute worst winter-drought situation.

Some +SN and 1/4 mile visibility and wind gusts over 20 kt and even 34 kt near where I used to live east of Toledo

Damascus, GA

I have been looking at weather maps for a long time. I cannot remember seeing a day when Texas was 50 degrees below average. Hmm. Abilene TX climate report says that the high temp of 22 was 38 degrees below average. Tomorrows low will be 37 degrees below average. Midland TX had 45 degrees below average for the high today and 28 degrees below average for the low that already occurred today.

Heavier snow is coming into the Fort Worth area. And even with this, 10 degrees is no joke-- salt doesn't work quite so well to melt the ice.

lowest temps in my area

My place did not get too much. 2". Drought sucks.

blue has taken over

This will be a very good storm for the Colorado mountains, certainly compared to most storms recently. The values shown by the NWS for the plains are probably a blend of models, which predict light snow at various times, mostly focusing on Saturday night to Sunday night. My area got something like 1/4" of snow last night, which is the first snowcover in several days. The GFS and NAM have over 0.4" QPF in the immediate area, with high snow ratios on the Kuchera snow plots, so I suppose we may want to watch and see if snow amounts could be higher. And even in this cold, cold world, Craig, Colorado has -RA right now.

Weather-related disaster in Fort Worth. You guys have probably already heard this on the news if you are from this area.

As of right now, I don't have a lot of confidence in any particular forecast of snow. The only thing I really know is that the mountains will get snow on many of these days, and we may be in a sad situation: we will have cold temperatures be in place, while every other region around us gets snow. Nevertheless, models have some QPF. Somewhere in here, 00z Sunday to 00z Monday, we could get 2-6", as this 0.3" in Fort Collins and Cheyenne could have 20:1 snow ratios.

Fort Collins-CSU had a temperature drop of 24.1 degrees in 10 minutes (5:20 to 5:30PM). As you can see on the image I posted, some stronger easterly winds yesterday advanced the arctic air. We had gusty westerly winds and quickly switched to gusty easterly winds. As of right now, APA (Denver/Centennial) is 20 degrees warmer than DEN. It will be interesting to see if the inversion breaks and Fort Collins or Greeley get up to 32 or something like that.

It is 53 degrees in Denver vs 22 degrees at Fort Morgan. I think the cold air may move westward quickly.

Our fantasyland storms have barely even been interesting for a long time. I'm not posting any fantasy storms unless the Euro has 0.1" or 0.2" of QPF. As for me, I've gotten 14.1" since November 1st, compared to an average of 26.4" for Fort Collins. (1.26" compared to 1.73" liquid equivalent) It seems like the cold air is coming into the middle of the country, and *later* this week may be one of the few times my place will get below 10 degrees for the winter. Even at that, I've hardly gone outside on any cold day since I work from home quite a bit.

I hope this isn't too crazy to post here. The latest development on the models shows a likely 7-8" in 12 hours at Grand Island, Nebraska in a couple days. Messy times on I-80. It's barely a defined surface low, but seems to have a low at 850mb in western Nebraska connected to a jet stream disturbance.

This band of snow in Indiana right now has no stations reporting snow under the band-- only stations to the southwest are reporting snow. Maybe it is just a timing thing, or maybe there is significant virga?

Wind gusts are picking up to 30-50mph in Fort Collins and Loveland.

If you combine the snow totals since about Jan 21-- it looks like one huge 10" storm tracked across the country, after dropping off 2-4 ft at the Sierra Nevada and also dropping heavy snow at Arizona's Mogollon Rim and southwest Colorado.

picture from between Marysville and Bellefontaine yesterday. My sister estimated a total of 9" by today

Sometimes the 120 hour time frame is when the models start to lock on to a storm and get some agreement. In this last couple of days, the 168-120 hour forecasts have been model hell. I think the models are getting closer, but the GFS/Euro are still having some issues determining precipitation with the front. The GFS has some areas of 0.5" QPF from Fort Morgan to Denver, the Euro has some snow bands (or even rain) that are quicker and weaker.

The models are flip flopping too much on this potential storm. I don't really think any model has nailed down the synoptic situation.