fluoronium

Incredibly early start to spring here. Flowers are blooming weeks ahead of normal and the grass greened up within the first week of the month. I'm actually thankful for the current cool spell that has set in as it should slow things down a bit. Fruit crops will take big losses in a seasonable April freeze if growth gets much further ahead.

Yeah it's the 84hr NAM, but GFS is onboard too. It's something to watch at least.

PIA set the all time February and winter record high AGAIN yesterday, with the temp plummeting 61F over the 14 hours. Insanity. I chased yesterday and busted on the dryline, but was able to get a distant view of one of the tornadoes in the suburbs.

Peoria, IL got to 77F today, smashing the all time high temperature for both February and met winter overall. Chase mode activated for tomorrow. As they say, you don't get that kind of warmth in winter without somebody paying for it!

Scored a nice surprise 3" of snow with the system that came through yesterday. Plus, I saw the IL tornado on the 8th, so I'm pretty happy with how this month has gone so far.

Can't forget January 3rd in IL and January 16th in IA just last year either. Models certainly have grabbed my interest for Thursday, although dews look pretty marginal. It's too bad about the gulf getting swept right before this.

It's been a pleasant stretch of wintry weather recently. Nothing crazy, but the glacier on the ground is nice, and it's been refreshed frequently with light snows or at least snow that gets blown around. It sure beats some recent winters.

interesting scaly ice crystals forming on my pond in the cold snap

I just took a core of my 5" of snowpack. 1.4" liquid equivalent! Snow to liquid ratio of 3.6. This is some of the densest snow I've ever seen.

I got at least 3" out of the morning band. A pleasant surprise

HRRR is our only hope left lol

I could be looking at a bombing January low traveling well to my SE, only to have it nuke my modest snowpack right before the arctic blast hits. This hobby is stupid.

Raining snowballs now. These things are massive. Not the widest I've seen, but they are very dense and barely icier than slush.

Only squeezed out an inch of slush last night, even though there are substantially higher reports nearby. Looks like the backside snows might make up for the dud WAA band however. Snowing now, even though models had it switching to rain here by now.

It switched back to snow here (near Metamora) and it's sticking pretty well now. Hopefully it can stay this way for the rest of the night.