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54 degrees and sunny now. Another beautiful morning, and even easier to enjoy with something besides endless sun and warmth in the forecast at the moment.

Yes... this would solve everything.

Too bad random model runs can’t end drought. It takes actual rain!

Nice to see widespread lows in the 30s again this morning. PDX decoupled more quickly and actually got a degree or two colder than last night it appears. Low of 36 here with some light frost but not as much as yesterday. Still impressive to see frost on back to back mornings this late.

The 12z CMC would put any drought worries to bed.

Been waiting a while to grade this just in case more snow fell, but at this point it looks very unlikely that Chicago will receive any additional measurable snow. Overall, this outlook was not good. Actual temperature departure for DJF was +6.8 degrees, which is well above my range. 22.2" of snow occurred, which is below my range. There were 3 days below zero, which is right in range and the best aspect of this forecast by far. Overall, all things considered, I'd probably give this like a D+ at best. As said, nailed the number of below zero days, but the things that people tend to care about most are the temperature departures and snowfall amounts, and it was a pretty bad bust in that regard. In seasonal outlooks, there is an argument that being on the right side of a departure deserves some credit, even if the value is off. I agree with that to some extent, but a temp departure of +6.8 is so far above my upper range of +1 that I really just can't give any credit for that. There is a big difference between how a +1 winter feels compared to a +6.8 winter. The snowfall forecast was not quite as bad imo. Although snowfall came in under my values, the overall tenor of the season was reflected fairly well in that it was less snowy than average. As far as what went wrong, I definitely put too much stock into the strong Ninos of the past. Those tended to not be all out torches (except the super Ninos). Also, it seems like we actually may have had too much forcing too far west in the Nino regions. Little quirky thing... if the 22.2" of snow holds, it will only be the second time on record that Chicago's snowfall amount has all of the same numbers. The only other time it happened was when 44.4" fell in 1893-94.

Zero days at my house from June 16th to October 22nd. 4" of snow on Nov 4th

Next week.

Shouldn’t you be sipping martinis on the beach right now?

True.

High clouds are moving quickly on the satellite loop. They should be mostly gone in a few hours.

Lots of high clouds this morning

It will be so nice to see my area off the dreaded drought monitor soon! I have a incredible 7 plus inches since March 1st. My ponds are almost full! Going back to Dec 1st 2023 I am steadily running surpluses. Except for the pultry .14 in Feb.

A lot of good can happen in May/June, we could be building the snowpack rather than melting it, and that would make a huge posotive difference on the snowpack.

Lakers will get destroyed by the Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs.

If its any consolation... the "drought" prone areas are generally related to mountain snow and its really hard to make up mountain snow deficits in May regardless of the pattern.

Pretty crazy that over the course of the 160 miles between us you can go from just 57% of YTD precip (Omaha) to 109% of YTD precip (Sioux Falls). You've been awfully close to getting in on the action but storms seem to continuously crap the bed at the last second in your area. Sure hope you can get precip back on track soon!

Fingers crossed this pans out, we are least getting some moisture this week here in Eastern Nebraska - however it hasn’t been enough to put any type of dent in this lingering drought. So far this week I am still under a half inch rain between two systems that were forecast to drop double or triple that amount. Would be nice to close out April and start of May with some consistent moisture to turn things around.

With the latest rainfall we have received, we are now 109% above average on YTD precip, currently standing at 5.2 inches. We are already approaching our normal rainfall for April - currently at 2.36 with the average being 3 inches. Most models show us getting another inch or so of precip over the next 10 days so we should end up above normal for April as well. Assuming that pans out, this will be our first above normal precip month since January. On the temperature side, we are running at almost +7 on the month. This will be the ninth month in a row of above normal temperatures as our last below normal month was July of last year (-0.4). The closest we have had to a below normal month in that time span was January which came in at +0.3. Otherwise, we have been running anywhere between +2.3 to +13.4 for each month since last summer. And if it wasn't for last July's barely below normal departure, you'd have to go all the way back to March of 2023 to find a solidly below normal month (-7.5). In other words, we have been on quite the warm stretch for a while now.

Had a low of 34 and a little frost on the roof once again.

I very respectful to these sorts of gates! After all attack dogs may reside on the other side Too funny Front Ranger 34* currently and we had a low of 33* this morning in Federal Way

Better than nothing, as long as these 0.2 storms don’t turn into 0.02 as they have been lately.

Yeah I'm going to Charleston as well. Pretty much the only options are Alaska and Delta, and Delta used to be my airline before we started flying to Montana a lot. Delta did have a couple of options on the A321 when I looked a month or so ago, but that's never a guarantee. Planes have mechanical issues all the time and get shuffled around, so even if I booked on a Delta Airbus flight, a Boeing could be sitting there waiting for me at the gate. I think my favorite MX issue was a Horizon E175 that had computer issues when it sat overnight in freezing weather (the flight was in December). The solution was to do a full reboot of the aircraft: shut everything down, disconnect the batteries (which is just a button push on an airplane), and unplug from ground power. Kinda weird to be sitting on a dark plan at 5am on the KBLI tarmac. It was so quiet you could hear a mouse fart. It worked but we were very late and I just made my connecting flight to SNA.

got down to 29 currently 32

Dry, exacerbate the drought, YAY!