hawkeye_wx

Euro says, "Wtf is the GFS smoking?"

Edit:  Actually, now that I look back at the GFS, it does spin up a big storm.  It's just well east of the Euro.

12z Euro is less interesting again, more positively-tilted/east/weak.

12z UK is similar to last night.  It has the initial weak wave that drops a bit of light snow up here, then there's a second, stronger wave, then a third good wave for eastern areas

12z GFS is a big step backward.  The northern stream digs a little more again, which grabs the strong western energy and stretches it out and yanks the northern part of it eastward.  We end up with a weak, positively-tilted system.

We are getting a major change tonight from the UK and Euro.  They are now trying to hold a lot more energy back to the west, so it is able to spin up a better wave that tracks much farther nw.  At the surface an organized "big" storm is not quite there, yet.  Both the UK and Euro drop a few inches of snow through Iowa.

14 minutes ago, cyclone77 said:

Massive cotton balls falling from the sky a short while ago.  Biggest flakes I've seen in awhile.  Up to almost an inch of lumpy accumulation.  I didn't even know it was supposed to snow tonight lol.

It was expected to snow here as well this evening, but it mostly bypassed Cedar Rapids.

I'm not excited about this.  As the western energy moves into the upper midwest, the northern stream digs down ahead of it and shears it apart.

Terry Swails blog post this morning about the 1967 tornadoes/blizzard, if you haven't read about this before. 

https://www.tswails.com/single-post/2020/01/28/GOAT-THE-GREATEST-48-HRS-OF-WEATHER-ALL-TIME

What the GFS is showing this morning will probably vanish on future runs.  It feels like a flukey run.  Models are generally just showing a strong cold front sweeping through the midwest.  This is the first model run that shows a flattening of the fropa with a nice wave or two riding along the front.  I'd have to see more models doing this, and stick with it, before I'd get excited.

I saw some sun today.

My January snowfall total is up to 13.9", which makes this the third snowiest of the last thirteen Januarys.

My final snow total is 3.1".  That's makes my combined wave total 6.0".

My season snow total has quietly risen to 27.4", only a few inches below the average full season total.

Another 2.8" here overnight with another decent band moving through now.  It is very pretty out there.  This entire messy system has worked out pretty well for my area. 

It's looking pretty solid over here.  The second wave's defo band seems to be backing plenty far nw to drop a few inches here.

As usual, I'm going to lean conservative and guess 2" for Cedar Rapids.

My wave 1 snow total is 2.9".  It seemed fairly fluffy last night, but it seemed a bit wetter and heavier while shoveling this morning.  My liquid total in the gauge is 0.29", so it's close to 10:1.

The Chicago area folks won't like the 12z HRRR.  It's pretty rainy.

3 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

What has your temp been like?  LOT was saying that ratios upstream were running less than 10:1

We peaked at 30-31º, then fell back to 29º during the better snow.  With the snow done, it's back to 30º.

I picked up 2.2" from the first wave.  The snow seems fairly fluffy.  I was hoping light snow would continue all night, but it looks mostly over.  Maybe I can pick up a couple more inches if the wave 2 defo band can get up here in decent shape.

I'm up to 1.4" now, so that's an addition 0.5" over the last 1.5 hours, a decent 0.33"/hr rate.  That will add up over several hours.

After six hours of precip, I'm at 0.9" of snow.  Of course, it's snowing and accumulating better now than earlier.

Real snow has finally commenced over here.

The snow is really struggling to get going over here.  For a couple hours it was mostly very light freezing rain and sleet.  Now it's just brief spurts of flurries.

The area of light precip moving through my area is flipping back and forth between very light freezing rain, sleet, and snow.... mostly non-snow.  At this point, I'm not expecting any snow accumulation until later.