hawkeye_wx

A last-minute surprise for cyclone?

Our big snow potential has diminished late next week because the trough is no longer digging south into the Rockies, but the brutal cold is still there on all the models.

It's a supercell fest down south. Many of them are tornado-warned.

Thursday's snow showers on the backside of the low will be our first flakes in a month.

I only received 0.56" of light rain and drizzle from this system, at the very bottom of the model range. Tonight's strong wave will miss to the east. Some light backwash snow should whiten the ground a bit later Thursday.

0.64" of rain here, a decent December soaking.

Next week's big storm is quickly turning into a Dakotas special.

Models are suggesting a possible big storm early to mid next week. The GFS is surging warmth well north, but the Euro and Canadian are more blocky, which allows for a west-east track and ample cold air to work with.

Two years of snow for many of us, in one f'ing day. That's just crazy.

Wow! Part of me would love to experience this. However, I'm afraid the experience would ruin Iowa for me, forever. I would never be able to get excited about a solid 3-6" event or 1"/hr rate ever again.

Overnight, we cooled well below freezing again and the second piece of the system moved across the area. I picked up another 1.1". My two-day total is 2.5".

1.4" here following the decent snow rates first thing this morning. Now, it's no longer piling up due to light rates and melting. It's about what I expected, a typical early-season teaser. It's nice to see white lawns and trees again.

The first real snow of the season fell this morning from bands of showers moving across the area. It was nothing heavy, just light bursts. It only amounted to a trace or 0.1".

After two days of 70s, we likely won't make it to 32º today. It's still in the upper 20s at 1pm.

I wasn't expecting a lot of rain after the brief storm along the front, but post-front precip really expanded this evening and trained over the area for several hours. I ended up with 0.84". The last hour was sleet.

New dropsonde says 984 mb. It's doing quite well considering the core is currently pretty hollow.

The structure has certainly improved. However, the core convection has really dried out this afternoon. We should see more fire overnight.

The latest GFS is 10 mb weaker than the previous run and 20 mb weaker than five runs ago.

My rain total is 2.06". It's a solid total, especially for November. Of course I wanted 3-4", like several models were predicting, but the rain was disappointingly light for much of Friday. 3+" did fall just to the west. The only "heavy" rain we got was from one brief cell Friday morning and one brief cell Saturday morning. The drought had been expanding and worsening, so I was really hoping a pattern change could bring a couple decent soakers before the freeze. Two weeks ago we got 1.5" and now another 2". Voila!

Cedar Rapids has a severe warning now for wind and hail. I got neither, but did get heavy rain.

There is a pretty good consensus for 2-3" of rain through my area. The neighbor's giant oak tree dropped 3/4 of its leaves over the last three days and I got most of them cleaned up, so I'm ready for the soaker.

It is now 76º here in Cedar Rapids... beautiful. The leaves are dumping from my neighbor's oak tree. I think this occurred in mid November the last couple years.

As Lisa approaches the coast, recon is finding a ~990 mb, 80 mph storm. It never really took off.

Regarding the late-week heavy rain event, the eastward shift of the models continues. The new Euro is now the farthest east model. At this rate, Cyclone will end up with 4-5".

Frankly, Lisa looks a bit disheveled. There appears to be a bit of southerly shear and the behavior of the convection suggests it's fighting some dry air in the core. The pressure has only very slowly fallen overnight and is still about 990 mb according to the latest recon.