hawkeye_wx

I think I have about a 12-inch depth here in my yard.  It is compacting as I type.  Saturday's 1.6" of fluff finally reached the top of one of my snow board stakes, but a day later the level had already fallen by at least an inch again. 

I picked up about 2.7".  The liquid total is  0.28 (gauge catch) and 0.35 (core sample).  That's about what I was expecting.  The wind, as usual, killed the ratio, and the snow band just didn't last long enough to pile up a bigger total.

The surface low passed through Iowa City, so we remained in the cold sector and maxed out at 20F.  It's nice to get a cold, dry refresher snow just before the extreme cold.

Cedar Rapids set its cold record of -29F in 2009, I think.  Of course, that's at the airport out south of the city.  I don't think we came close to that here in town.  I would like to see at least -25F at the local school stations this time.

5 minutes ago, Chicago Storm said:

18z NAM coming south again.

This run actually puts the low track on the south end of the model range through Iowa.

The latest euro has a snow pack-destroying torch from Feb 1-4.  For this week we've been discussing how long the temp might remain below zero.  We may go from that straight to the opposite extreme.  The euro now shows the temp across a large part of our region remaining above to well-above freezing for four days.

The latest HRRR has come up a bit to 0.25" in Cedar Rapids, which is also what the Euro has stabilized at, so that's probably a pretty good guess.  I think the 0.50" GFS and GEM are out to lunch.

UK appears to be about the same as last night

The HRRR continues to be much less of a deal for Cedar Rapids/Iowa City.  It still has the low much farther north and only has a 4-hr band of snow moving through here... 0.20" vs 0.50" (hrrr/gfs).  Heck, the HRRR only drops 0.10" on Iowa City, almost a non-event.

24 minutes ago, cyclone77 said:

Quite the challenge along the southern edge based on the latest guidance.  The GFS and RGEM have 0.4-0.5" of precip for the QCA, while the HRRR/RAP/3km NAM have considerably less precip.  You would think leaning on those higher-res models would be the way to go at this point, but the shift south with the heavier precip on the other models is noteworthy.  From a forecast standpoint the best bet is to just go with a wide range of totals, which is a bit frustrating lol.  

I would love to see the 0.50" GFS/GEM veryify.  However, the meso models show this being only a 6-hr event here before the dry slot shoots in from the west.  It would have to snow hard for the entire event to pile up the totals being spit out by the GFS/GEM.  I think 0.20-0.30" is more realistic.

Today's clipper perked up nicely as it traversed Iowa.  I saw a couple heavy bursts and finished with 1.6".

The UK is still pretty robust with the front-end thump over eastern Iowa.

The Cedar Rapids airport hit -18 yesterday morning and -17 this morning, but the stations here in the city only hit about -8 both mornings.  The airport, out in the middle of nowhere south of the city, always gets much colder than we do inside the city.

I picked up a half inch today.  The ratio was 50 to 1... real dandelion fluff.

It seems like the problem for Iowa may be up in Canada.  The models keep starting the southeast dive farther eastward in Canada.  The GFS almost has this thing into Manitoba before it enters the US.  Iowa does not get Manitoba Maulers.

00z euro - thursday morning... of course, we'll have to score with the clipper to have a chance at this.

Thar she blows!  That's even more extreme than last night's 00z run.

I finished with 4.6 inches.  The core liquid is 0.44".  It sucks to end up a relative loser right in the middle of the snow band, but 4.6 isn't too bad.  It was worse until the last heavy snow burst.

29 minutes ago, ams30721us said:

This will by far be my favorite storm of the season! Likely will end with totals between 7-9 inches total. Went to bed last night around 10pm with heavy wet snow falling, and awoke to heavy wet snow still falling a few moments ago, looking like a perfect snow globe scene. All of this after being modeled way to far south for any decent snow up through the final hours. 

The Quad Cities seem to do well in every storm.  They got 12 inches back in November and seem to be getting 6+ from each of these smaller storms this month.

I got totally screwed by this dud.  I only have 3.8 inches.  I think I spent more time in dry pockets than in snow bands.  This was supposed to be the center of the heavy band.  The last two storms were expected to drop 6-8" here, but instead the two combined only dropped about 8".

Wow!  This run shows Cedar Rapids at -32 at NOON.  This is probably too incredible to not back off significantly in the coming days.

The other models have been in the 0.40-0.50" range for the area.

Cedar Rapids has had pretty good luck with strong clippers in recent years.  I'm counting on that to continue.

And the euro follows it with a brutal arctic dump.

Oooh.  00z Euro also south to join the GFS/FV3/UK.... and it's strong, too.  This could be pretty fun if it pans out like the latest runs.

The UK has shifted south, joining the GFS and FV3 with a good dump through Iowa.  It appears this will be a cold cleanup.

38 minutes ago, cyclone77 said:

Pouring pixie dust here.  Think it may be mixing with a little rain as well, can't be sure.  It's very slowly, but steadily adding up.  A bit over 2" now.  Temp has been hovering at 31 for 6+hrs.

I didn't realize it was in the low 30s over there.  It appears Moline is reporting 33.  We hit 28 earlier, but we're down to 21.

I was at 2.1 inches a half hour ago.