madwx

just picked up a quick 1/2" with snow showers this morning. Sun should come out soon and melt most of it. Looks like another clipper moves just south of us overnight tonight bringing snow to northern illinois

As we wrap up February and met winter, I'm going to throw together some preliminary stats for the month and season, I'll update again in a few days but only the temp rankings should change For Madison this is: 51st warmest February at 23.4 F 56th driest February with 0.94" 22nd snowiest February with 13.3" For the Winter: 12th warmest Winter at 26.7 F 75th wettest(or 78th driest) winter with 4.20" 36th snowiest winter at 35.0"

she's a beaut, just a few too many altocumulus blocking the view

Yeah Madison is 10.9" above average since July 1 but 0.7" below average since December 1st. Only 2.9" between Dec 1 and Jan 10, Basically the first half of met winter had almost no snow.

Not a bad canopy today. A few cumulus/stratucumulus at times and the sun is even peeking out.

pretty impressive to see tornadoes right up against Lake Michigan that early in the season. Definitely have positive feelings about this severe season. the jet has been ripping along so far and if continues into spring that will help promote increased shear and less meridional flow which will lead to more turning with height. Have seen 1990 thrown around as an analog and seeing some similarities in the March pattern(1990 also feature a double spike of extremely high AO values in February). Have also seen 1991, 2007 and a few other years thrown around that would portend average to above average tornado risk this spring. Personally I'll be out chasing the last 10 days of may so hoping for an active stretch then.

March(and spring!) is around the corner. The month looks to start off with a warming trend and then gets active with a few SW flow systems rolling through the area around the middle and end of next week.

I actually think its the forecast snowfall amounts in the grids from each forecast office. Which had their last major update about 3 am. But in this case you should either create your own graphic for this situation or do something else to explain the situation because these are going to be drastically different in an hour or two

the NWS twitter account just sent out graphics showing 4" in Madison and 7" in Milwaukee LOL not a good look

GFS finally fully capitulated, down to less than an inch here on all models. Was looking back and at the 12z run two days ago the GFS had a 15" jackpot in green bay. Not the best winter for our hometown model.

Eh we've been pretty lucky overall this winter with a few overperformers and deep snowcover for about the past month. Also my mind is switching to spring mode so by the end of this month I'm rooting for warmer weather and thunderstorms vs cold and snow.

The trend downward here continues on the GFS. Still warning criteria but losing about 2” per run

Kuchera is actually better than the standard 10:1 because its actually showing lower ratios which are much more realistic for this storm,

3km NAM is a bit healthier into Southern Wisconsin

Some areas with Winter Storm Watches in Wisconsin get 0 snow with the 0z NAM

from 11.1" to 0.7" in 2 runs of the NAM. Pretty impressive I must say

Here is surface temps which shows a similar pattern.

It has much better verification scores than the GFS and is only slightly worse than the Euro.

GFS still north. but trend in less snow here is obvious. from 10.1" to 8.9"

This is probably the reason all the offices are going with such high totals and watches

NAM went from 11.1" to 4.7" here between the 12z and 18z run

the text for the watch is 7-12" for MSN. That's just taking the GFS straight and disregarding any other guidance

Lol MKX going WSW for most of the CWA. Not sure I would have done that

Trending toward DAB to 2” here. Will just have to see if the GFS falls in line

my second post call is still in play. We will see what the euro shows