hawkeye_wx

The heavier snow has remained south of me so far. I'd really like it to lift north a bit.

So, of course, the 00z Euro decides to flip to what the GFS had been doing and crushes any chance of any precip in our region. Ugh.

The GFS has improved significantly next weekend. Hopefully, this wave will pan out better than the Superbowl wave train has.

It's about -15º here in the city. The Cedar Rapids airport officially hit -20º

I have received only 0.7" of snow this afternoon. I expected a bit better, but the ratio is lousy. The 0.7" of snow melted down to 0.07" liquid, so a 10:1 ratio.

I only need about 15" (after today's snow) to break the Cedar Rapids record. Bring it on.

All the models this morning are very active into the extended range.

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)