This morning's EPS is the first decent-looking run in a long time. In the 10-15 day range, it has a western trough, with snow-producing waves getting ejected into the midwest.
Man, this winter is really brutal for snow lovers. I can't remember anything like this. An entire winter with little to no hope of anything is astonishing. Day after day, the ensembles out to 15 days are bone dry.
Parts of Iowa have still had no measurable snow this winter, and there is little to nothing in sight. Meanwhile, Birmingham and Atlanta are getting 2-3" this morning.
Models have also really backed off of the extreme cold they were advertising a week ago. Now it just looks like some typical January cold. The latest model runs don't even have any sub-zero lows here.
We had some long dry stretches again this year, but I finished with 41" of precip, a whopping 16" more than 2023.
Two periods that stand out are the very wet July (almost 9") and the 2-week period from late October to early November during which I received 7" of rain.
This storm has been as locked-in as any big storm gets days ahead of the event. Unfortunately, it's locked in south of Iowa. Northern Missouri should get crushed.
12z Euro... There is pretty good consensus with four days to go. The storm peaks in northern Missouri, then slowly fades as it heads east or even ese into the less favorable upper flow. That big dry pocket over MN/IA/WI/nIL makes me sad. As the storm organizes in Kansas, that would typically be very favorable for Iowa.
Those of us in the I-80 corridor really needed the big southeast Canada gyre to lift out, but it just isn't. It remains parked as the storm approaches, continuing the wnw flow across the lakes region.
I received 0.22" from this system. Some of the models were pretty bad, going back and forth from north to south. A few models, even up to last night, predicted several hours of light snow. We did not see a single flake.