hawkeye_wx

It did not take long for the snow to reach the ground here. It's snowing pretty good. I may be able to get an inch before it quickly moves out.

Brutal cold behind the system, too.

00z GFS

Two other storm notes... - The Cedar Rapids airport reported a 51 mph gust. I don't remember hearing any local met mention 50 mph as a possibility. DVN did not issue a blizzard warning, but I believe we did meet the criteria. - Most models had the precip starting as rain here, but we got none. It began as some sleety snow and quickly changed to snow.

I finished with 5.8". Cedar Rapids was bulls-eyed by the storm five days ago and it was again today. Cedar Rapids is the new Des Moines. This was essentially two storms. The first two inches fell with little wind and were wet and heavy. The next four inches were a blizzard. The driveways and sidewalks collected all the dry stuff that blew around. The shoveling job took three hours (mine and my neighbor's). The piles are rivaling February 2008 when over 2 ft of snow fell and we equaled the season record. My season total is up to 44.8".

While I had not yet bought into the jackpot totals on some models, no models were predicting anything less than 3" in Cedar Rapids. At the time, my point forecast said 1-3", which didn't really make sense.

As of 1:20pm, my snow total is up to 5.0". When you're hot, you're hot. The heavy snow is over, but a couple more hours of lighter snow might get us to 6".

This morning the heavy snow dropped our temp from 34 to 33, but then it held there until the front came through.

Conditions are deteriorating rapidly over here. We went from beautiful, relatively calm snow to significant blowing and very low visibility.

The front just came through a little while ago and the wind has picked up from the west. My snow total is up to 2.1".

This has to be 2+"/hr snow we're getting right now. It's too bad I am getting toward the back end of this band.

A nice band of yellow on radar has popped over Cedar Rapids. It's dumping pretty good... probably even better a mile or two south/east of me.

We've had a mix of sleety-snow and snow for the last hour, but it's changing to snow... about on schedule. The question for us has always been how robust will the precip shield be? Given the current look on radar, I don't think the higher totals some models have been spitting out will happen.

Both NAMs and both GFSs are going nuts around here with a very intense snow band dropping several inches. Other models are in the 3-4" range. Meanwhile, the NWS forecast has 1-3".

The 00z NAMs have suddenly thrown a 5-8" band over eastern Iowa, but the 00z HRRR has nothing like that. The HRRR is more in line with other models showing a few inches around here.

The GFSv16 is MUCH weaker with the Monday wave.

The latest models show the arctic cold parking over the northern US for at least ten days. That would be impressive.

Here's the Euro kuchera map for the next week, which includes four systems (Thursday wave, weak Sat wave, better Sun wave, best Mon wave)

The 00z Euro is pretty similar to the UK

There is definitely a south trend. The UK has finally sunk a few inches down into Chicagoland.

00z GFS is holding pretty steady.

Even the 3k NAM is nothing like the 12k NAM. As Purdue mentioned, another 24 hours for the various pieces of energy to present themselves will help.

12z NAM has jumped nw big time. Models will need more time to figure this out.

Tonight's Euro with a nice surprise for northern Illinois. It's very similar to other models with its shifting of the energy southward, but while other models have more snow focused on Iowa, the Euro is east.

The January temp departure graphic is deceptive. If I saw that before the month began I'd probably think it would be a lousy month. Instead, it was my second snowiest January over the last fourteen years, with consistent snow cover for the entire month.