cyclone77

The stuff here is like cement. There's been no melting so far which is impressive for mid March. MLI picked up 0.98" of precip today.

Down to very light snow. Finished with 2.5" of snow and sleet, minor ice glazing, and probably near an inch of precip in total.

Rochelle down to 1/8 mile now.

Yeah that's a heck of a lightning barrage out there by Dekalb. Showing 8 strikes in 2 minutes.

Heavy snow here. Sky has become much brighter in the past 15 minutes so with the heavy snow falling it's super bright out there. Over 2" now.

That sucks. Last evening's 00z HRRR run was lol worthy, showing 10"+ in the Cedar Rapids area. I'd be curious to know how much qpf fell here, we've had steady moderate to heavy precip since 7:30. Guessing it's gotta be pushing an inch.

Shifted over to heavy snow for about 20 minutes, but back to mostly sleet again. Snow rates were well over an inch an hour, as we picked up another half inch in that 20 minutes. If this thing could have stayed all snow we easily would have surpassed 6". Around 1.5" snow/sleet so far.

80/20 sleet/frz rain. Has turned into sort of an ice storm. Haven't seen snow in over an hour. As per usual WAA aloft can't be denied.

Pounding sleet. Snow completely ceased. Close to an inch of snow/sleet so far.

The transition here was sort of bizarre. Dry (normal) flakes started mixing in with the rain/sleet. Usually you get the white rain/partially or mostly melted flakes pouring down first. Dry flakes just started fluttering down in the midst of the rain and sleet. Don't think I've ever seen that before. Snow is getting pretty close to heavy with the ground quickly whitening. EDIT 9:32- Heavy sleet has mixed back in and knocked the snow intensity back quite a bit.

Mostly snow now here

Rain mixed with sleet and a few rogue flakes. 0.16" rain so far. Using ILX radar since DVN has been unplugged.

This one and the next event around the 18th are throw-away events. Minor stat padding at best for snowfall. No convective potential which sucks for mid March. Basically it's looking like the whole stretch from late Feb to late March is a month worth of down time for anything of interest of any kind. Hopefully something of interest shows up sometime in April.

Every event this winter that had mixing to start had disappointing results for snowfall for this area, so I'm gonna bet against seeing much snow and play the pessimistic role for this one lol.

Looks like a messy mix for this area. By the time it gets ready to change to mostly snow the event will likely be pretty much done. Kind of a meh event really for this area.

Made a little modification for Ma's day

Have my 2nd does of the moderna shot a week from tomorrow. Kind of interested to see if I'll get any of the 2nd vaccine symptoms that some have had. 1st one was a breeze.

As expected the Iowa convection slowly crapped out by the time it got here. Picked up 0.02", enough to rinse a grain or two of salt off the roads.

Still in the 60s with 40 mph wind gusts from the south, and dewpoint of 54. Def feels like spring this evening.

MLI hit 71 again, hit 69 here which is the warmest of the season so far. Trees are starting to bud now.

Thread created just in time lol. SPC just upped tor probs to 5% in southeast MN, far west WI, and extreme northeast IA. HRRR has considerably more surface cape than 3km NAM, as it has dews pooling into the upper 50s to near 60 ahead of the surface low, while the 3KM NAM keeps dews lower in the 50s. The result is cape AOA 1000J/kg on the HRRR and <100J/kg on the NAM. SPC must be banking on the HRRR working out, as if the NAM ends up being correct tors would be very hard to come by. I for one am rooting for the HRRR, let's kick off 2021 severe season with a bang.

Looking forward to some Iowa sloppy seconds tomorrow evening.

I figured we'd get some more snow at some point, but was leaning more towards April lol.

MLI tied the old record from 1986 @ 71 degrees. It's possible they bumped higher after that climo report that came out around 4pm. Hit 67 here.