madwx

walked outside in a t shirt and full sun and 16 felt alright

5 hours ago, madwx said:

Got slightly higher today with 73.6% snow coverage.  Thinking this should be the max 

This is the greatest snow cover extent since at least 2003.

up to 9 degrees and full sunshine.  Feels like a heatwave outside.  Will finally be able to melt some of the snow and ice that's been stuck on the roads

23 hours ago, madwx said:

up to 70.4% of the country covered in snow.  Have a chance of passing that tomorrow, depending on how much melting(if any) occurs in Texas

Got slightly higher today with 73.6% snow coverage.  Thinking this should be the max 

Got 0.4” here on the far NW edge of the snow shield 

Some N/S oriented gravity waves showing up on MKX radar 

finally popped above 0 here.  Between 8 pm Friday and 3 pm Monday we only had 1 hour above 0.

1 minute ago, Powerball said:

My understanding of the Kuchera method is that it's based on a somewhat convoluted calculation of moisture content and lift in the DGZ.

This is my first time hearing about the 17:1 ratio thing.

Kuchera is actually really simplistic.  You just take the max column temp below 500 mb, subtract it from -2 celsius and add it to 12. 

So for example if the max column temp was -12 celsius, you would do 10+12 so 22:1 ratios. 

up to 70.4% of the country covered in snow.  Have a chance of passing that tomorrow, depending on how much melting(if any) occurs in Texas

waiting for the official number but looks like we got down to -12 or -13 this morning.  Just short of the record again.  We just had the 7th coldest first half of February for MSN.  Looking forward to the slow climb out of this now.  The cold has overstayed its welcome.

One positive around here is that the consistent snow cover has lead to a fairly shallow frost depth. So when we do warm up the ground won’t stay frozen for long and will be able to soak up water 

56% of the country is covered by snow now.  Will be interesting to see how high that number gets later this week

Missed the record low and record cold max by 1 degree today.  Last chance at a record will be tomorrow’s record low of -14

Looks like we’ll end up right on the edge of the snow and get a dusting.   Congrats to all to the SE who will get a great system.  Can’t wait to watch all this snow melt after this 

dewpoints have been around -20 all day.  Can really feel your skin dry out

DVN goes WWA for the SE third of their CWA for 2 to 5 inches

maybe people will stop trash talking the GFSv16 and actually realize it'll be an improvement on the current GFS

Looks like models are keying in on an inverted trough on the NW side of the system that gives us a couple inches Monday night 

made it to -12 this morning.  One degree shy of the record for the day.  High clouds rolling in around 5 saved the record low.

https://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/users/meg/gefs_plumes/index.html?stationname=KMSN

Just wanted to show everybody this website.  Its the equivalent of the SREF plumes but for the GFS ensemble.  You can just select the station on the map and you can bookmark it.  Very helpful for seeing how the GEFS members are trending.

2 minutes ago, zinski1990 said:

I know those are often ridiculous but why are they like that? Any reason 

One reason is that they count any frozen precip as snow so in a storm with a lot of sleet it’ll be counted as 10:1 instead of 4:1 or so.   That’s not happening here but it may be something they are doing when calculating the kuchera method, like the max column temp they are using is lower for some reason which really inflates ratios 

La Crosse tied their record cold high of 0 today and Rochester set their record cold high of -3.

lots of people going to be disappointed in snow totals if they keep looking at the weatherbell weenie maps

it really matters how much of the column is in the dendritic growth zone and other factors like fracturing of snowflakes by the wind.  Low temps don't always equal crazy high ratios.  For a major synoptic storm like this it's pretty tough to average more than 15:1.

About 1.5” here.  Sun came out right after the snow stopped and it’s beautiful out despite the cold temps