hawkeye_wx

Winners and losers so far. Parts of southern Iowa are getting hosed by a persistent dry pocket that models absolutely did not show at all.

One real nice thing about this system is the wind is actually going to drop through this afternoon as the low passes by to the south and some of the best snow moves in. This should lead to an efficient ratio as the snow won't blow around.

4.2" here as of 7:15am. The heaviest snow so far, with good-quality flakes, just popped over us. The winners so far have been Fort Dodge to Waterloo, where 8" has fallen. Southern Iowa has been stuck in a big dry pocket this morning, which models did not forecast. My ratio so far is 11.3 to 1, so not bad. The wind is not bad, so the snow in my backyard is very uniform, which I love.

12z Euro... doesn't get much better for Iowa.

The CAMs were already holding steady with the high-end snow totals and now the lower models are coming up. This is looking like maybe a 10" floor for my area.

00z Euro... This is about as locked into 8+" as my area ever gets.

This evening's regionals/CAMs have not backed off at all. In fact, every model so far has inched farther north. (NAM/3kNAM/FV3/RDPS/HRRR/RRFS)

Can always count on the 18z NAM/3kNAM to go extra weenie.

I would, of course, love for the 18z HRRR to be correct, but it is likely too strong and juiced. It has a 1004 mb low, whereas the globals have a 1008-1012 mb low. This HRRR run would probably finish with 16+" in Cedar Rapids, which I very much doubt. Half of that is more likely. The CAMs will probably come back to earth as the start approaches.

The Euro is stronger/sharper with the shortwave at 500 mb than the rest of the models. I was expecting the 12z run to fade south and weaker just a bit, but it actually ticked farther north. Here are the resulting snow maps for the south UK, middle GFS, and north Euro.

Long-duration event, mostly light to moderate snow, with wind, the ratio in my yard is going to suck. I'm hoping for at least 6 inches.

The shift back south is real across all models. Probably cut the totals by 30%, though.

I'm sitting pretty good this morning, but this is still four days away, which is a long time in the model world.

Some models had been dumping a bunch of the energy into the sw US and cutting it off, but now they are all trending toward ejecting it into the midwest this weekend. The Friday night snow is looking a bit lighter, but now a stronger low blows up the snow across Iowa Saturday into Saturday night. As long as it doesn't trend any farther north, which every model this morning has done, I should be good.

Well, we are back to zero because the Euro just came in way different at the end of the week. Last night the Euro looked like the GFS, but now it has suddenly pulled all the energy back into the western US and pulls a bunch of warm air up into Iowa so we get rain.