hawkeye_wx

I'm a gardener. Let's not do this.

At least I was able to get a solid thundershower around midday... heard a few rumbles and picked up 0.26" of rain. I knew that would probably be it for the day.

For lunch today I went to the local Culver's. As I pulled into the line, a high-rider pickup truck drove by as it exited. The driver was a bearded guy with a big, white parrot perched on his shoulder. That's something you don't see every day.

A few days ago the models had this cold defo band pivoting over eastern Iowa all day today. Instead, northern Illinois gets it and over here in Iowa it's a beautiful day in the low 60s.

I went to Menards late this morning. The place was packed. About half the customers were wearing a mask.

Models have backed off of any cold, here at the west edge of the subforum, into early May. A few days ago they had a strong, wet system holding us in the 30s and 40s Saturday, but now that system will be more progressive and we should reach the 60s. The latest Euro has 60s and 70s every day except one through day ten.

We got stuck with clouds and showers this morning, but once that crap cleared we soared into the 70s.

Not a day goes by without 20-30 mph wind. One of the local mets said Cedar Rapids has had 20 mph gusts every day except one this month. The wind combined with the chilly temps has made it difficult to put all my plants outside.

The Euro is also showing this weekend system. If this verifies, folks from Iowa to Michigan would be stuck in the 30s and 40s with rain/mix and wind.

We may be done with the real cold stuff, but models are not very pretty for the lakes region the rest of the month. We get a warm day Wednesday, with a high in the 70s, and Thursday should be solid, but then it kinda turns kinda lousy again. The GFS and Euro both show a similar pattern... general wnw/nw flow, with disturbances riding southeast like clippers and then amping up as they turn east into the Ohio Valley. Farther into the lakes, like Michigan, you don't even get the brief midweek warmth. The Euro has you in 40s and 50s for the next ten days. Yuck.

That's a great photo. It reminds me of the movie 'Runaway Train'.

Man, this one is the textbook definition of a stat-padder. We picked up 3.5" of snow between midnight and 6am, while I slept, there was zero accumulation on the pavement, so no cleanup at all, and the snow will be totally gone by 1pm.

I forgot to mention that my 3.5" of snow had only 0.28" of liquid in it, so the ratio is 12.5 to 1. That's pretty good for mid April. It certainly helped that my area had perfect timing. All of our snow fell from 12-6am.

My 3.5" of snow will be gone in a few hours.

Good overperformer around here. I picked up 3.5". We only expected 1-2. Iowa City got 6". This heavy snow is really caked on the trees. There is a decent branch broken off of one of my trees.

Radar shows a batch of heavy snow moving into Cycloneland.

3-5" in south-central Iowa and the storm really hasn't even started, yet? *sigh* The Des Moines NWS was only expecting an inch or less. My biggest snowfall this winter was only 4.x" and it takes the world's biggest storm just to drop 8 inches here.

12z Canadian

Even this weak, barely-mentioned system was able to drop 3-4" from southeast of Des Moines to the QC. Radar was fairly impressive down there, but I didn't expect 4" totals. I did not get into the good stuff, but a temp in the upper 20s helped us get 0.4".

The 00z Euro is, once again, stronger and farther north compared to its previous run.

3k NAM isn't quite as far north.

My 2-day rain total from this system is 0.78". We won't be seeing 60º again for a while.

It's too bad this system is moving through the region in split form. Instead of one powerhouse low, we get a northern piece and southern piece.

We had a pretty nice morning, rising into the 50s, but an afternoon washout produced 0.45" of rain and dropped us into the upper 40s.