hlcater

Snow is about to resume in Iowa city. Hopefully these hang around through tomorrow as modeled and add a few more inches. 6” call for CR/IC is looking solid.

The players on the field here are mostly the same as for the last system. Big block over hudson bay and some confluent flow out east. If I had to stab, I would say that this is rather unlikely to be a big rainer for the sub, especially east of the Mississippi and that even if it does rain, a front end thump looks likely.

dry slot incoming for IC. Hopefully it's not too long lasting. Sitting about 3-3.5".

Looking through guidance, all of them had CR under an inch through 00z with most of the meaningful precip falling overnight.

I'm already up to 2.5". Big band of probably 1-2"/hr getting ready to move in. Dry air has poked in, but posed only minimal issues here so far. Still outpacing 12z precip guidance.

disappointment, in 3 parts

1.1" down in IC.

Yea I'm gonna stick to my 6" call just for the sake of consistency, though the earlier start and decent banding with solid dendrites per webcams evident in central Iowa may provide a pathway to 8 or 9". Not especially confident in that occurring however, and 6" is probably a decent floor.

Top down saturation is nearly immediate. Already snowing in IC. The dry layer on the DVN 12z sounding was really quite modest so it is reasonable to assume this should continue to be the case further east.

There's significant system in the long range (~252) with a fairly decent amount of deterministic and ensemble support. Powerhouse longwave trough traverses the country during the period and assuming a neg tilt/quality ejection from the 4 corners, could lead to a significant system for someone somewhere in the midwest. Meanwhile in the warm sector, assuming moisture, the general look aloft is analogous to significant severe weather outbreaks in the lower OV and Dixie. One of the better GEFS analogs upstairs is 2/5/2008.....

LNK, OMA, SE NE and SW IA are on pace to do well though. OMA is at 3 and LNK is already at 6. Thats more or less what guidance had there through 18z.

Doesnt help that after you get to about 8" or so, you're really fighting midwest climo to go any higher.

Gonna hold my final call at 6" for IC. Not seeing much reason to go higher.

Yea the bleeding for our area has stopped this cycle, thank god.

I wont be disappointed because I'll be in a coma by the time this starts! (real talk, the 00z suite isnt totally awful for our area, so we'll see...........)

Held serve for the places that matter!

Looking at the trends and 18z guidance, gonna have to lower my call for IC from 8" to 6". Might need to readjust again tomorrow morning in either direction if necessary. I question how good of banding/rates/dynamics we're really gonna see out of a low that is rapidly weakening and am making an assumption (perhaps ill informed) that these features will underperform.

GFS continues to be one of the wettest models by far.

DVN thinks the trend to crap out the system is overdone on models, or at least their AFD reads that way. They’re going 8-11” along I-80 in Iowa. That seems optimistic given recent guidance but theyre the experts.

If the 00z runs continue the trend that has been evident since 00z last night, CR/IC might consider themselves lucky to see 6-7”. The drying has been particularly bad in E IA.

In most other cases I wouldn’t be lol but I was hoping that CR could end their 40 year 12” storm drought with this storm, as it looked like a possibility yesterday. Certainly not going to complain with 7-8”, just was hoping that those runs with 12” to the river would be realized. Been awhile since Iowa has had such luck with storms and will likely be awhile until it happens again, which is why I am relatively disappointed with the outcome here.

I’m sure we will, but as I said last night, I was hoping for a shot at some truly impressive snows, so the trend towards something more garden variety (7-8”) is pretty crummy. Especially when considering the potential that was on the table.

Euro is nasty. Forecasting half the totals that were originally forecast yesterday, even when including the first system. That’s a pretty remarkable drying on that model. I’d love for the GFS to be right, but it stands alone in bringing solid snows to the Mississippi. The trends have really screwed E IA in the big snow department.

Damn if only the low didn’t fill so quickly. I mean it is possible that models are overdoing the speed of decay, but I don’t really want to count on that. Gonna hold with my call of 8” for IC for now. Looking like the winners are SE NE and SW IA. I picked up 2.4” overnight.