hawkeye_wx

The NWS's flood outlook a couple weeks ago said there was a good chance the Cedar River would reach major flood stage this spring. Well, it's there now. The level has been upped a couple more feet and should crest just below where the major problems begin to occur.

A band of heavy snow tonight dropped 1-3" in the Cedar Rapids area. I got 2". Unfortunately, I totally forgot about the snow and didn't see a single flake of it. The flakes must have been massive. This snow puts me 0.1" short of 50" for the season.

This little pipsqueak disturbance may ruin my no-snow-after-February streak.

The temperature across Iowa is underperforming today. The euro had 60 in Cedar Rapids this afternoon, but it's only 50. It had Waterloo in the mid 50s, but they are stuck at 43. We are not going to lose the snowpack for a while longer. The open areas are showing plenty of grass, but the yards are still covered with several inches in spots.

My total is 0.85". Now I'm just waiting for the surge into the 50s and perhaps a thundershower later this afternoon.

A nice cluster of thundershowers moved through east-central/southeast Iowa tonight. I experienced occasional lightning flashes for a good while, then a band of heavy rain dropped about 0.70".

Our still-substantial snowpack held us down in the 30s. I'm more than ready for the strong south flow to throw 50s up here Wednesday. This glacier needs to go. It will feel much more like spring when I can look out the window and see green again.

I picked up 0.50" of rain, short of what the models had been consistently spitting out. It also was barely above freezing all day, so very little snow melted.

A- here. We had the snowiest 5 1/2 week period on record from Jan 12th to Feb 20th, including a 7" storm and an 8" storm in the same week and 19.7" in a ten-day period. Before the early February melt, we had an amazing, deep, fluffy snowpack, better than any other I can recall. The negatives include the lack of snow before and after the epic period(We missed out on everything early in the season) and there were no real big snow events. 7-8" is nice, and it's "big" by our low standard, but it's still garden-variety stuff. It took a lot of snow to build up the great snowpack, but the bigger January events underperformed and we couldn't even hit 5" in any event. Cold-wise, the record-breaking cold in late January was great. I'm glad this winter was not as consistently cold as '13-'14. That winter, it was brutally cold after each storm, which made shoveling suck. This winter I was much more comfortable while shoveling.

The first low pressure, on Saturday, will track too far south to bring much warmth up here. However, the big low next Wednesday could really pull the warm air north. Models have been suggesting 50s possible. Tonight's euro has low 60s up to I-80 from Omaha to QC. Add to that some rain, 40s dews, and wind, and our remaining several inches of snowpack would get zapped very quickly.

Yeah. The snow season appears to have ended on February 20th. It's going to be generally cold for a while longer, but models have no snow here other than a dusting tomorrow. This was certainly a memorable season. We received 4 ft of snow, nearly all of it in a 5 1/2 week period.

The UK is also showing a farther south, frozen-precip-in-Iowa scenario.

Eau Claire nearly doubled their previous February snowfall record. That's very impressive. Down here, I've had back to back 20+" months, which is also very impressive. Before this year, my last 20" month was February 2008.

Our snow season was pretty wild. We basically had nothing until January 12th and it appears we may get little if anything after February 20th. In between, we had 44". I was hoping we could break the season record, but the snowstorm train has ended as abruptly as it began. We haven't had any real snow since February 20th and, unless the GFS pulls a coup with the Thursday system, there's none in sight. Models have been teasing more big snow several times since Feb 20th, but they've all gone north or south or fizzled.

The rule is... if the low is strong and wrapped up, it will cut right through Iowa.