Hawkeye

Wednesday morning, when the wind chill was -50s, I went out several times without gloves to do something with a bird feeder. It doesn't take long for the extreme cold to send pain through the fingers. That really does hurt.

From my experience, the see-through dandelion fluff tends to max out at about 50 to 1.

A 3-5" snow event at temperatures between -10 and -5 has to be pretty rare.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to follow the extreme cold as closely as I wanted to because I lost my internet connection. It appears the euro overdid the cold by several degrees. It was disappointing that Cedar Rapids was already -23F when I lost internet at 1am Wednesday, but when I woke up in the morning it had only fallen to -24F. We failed to break the low max record Wednesday. Then, CR bounced around in the -20s for much of Wednesday night before finally hitting -30F and breaking the record intra-hour around sunrise. As expected, here in the city it appears we only bottomed out at about -20F.

I finished January with 21.9" of snow, 3x avg. This is only the second time I've recorded a 20" month since I began keeping track in 2007. My season total is up to 25.8". My snow depth is about 15 inches of beautiful, dry, sparkly powder, as deep as it ever gets here.

I have not been able to be on the forums the because my Mediacom cable connection has been down for a couple days. It has been back up for a couple hours early this morning, but the issue at the pole has not been fixed and Mediacom won't send a tech until next Tuesday. It's possible I will be down for much of the next five days. I hope not.... two days without tv and internet sucks. I don't want to experience seven days without, including Super Bowl weekend. I was very pleasantly surprised by yesterday's clipper. Cedar Rapids went from -30F to heavy snow in three hours. That's ridiculous. After the intial heavy burst, we had a bit of a lull, but it continued lightly. It then became moderate to heavy again and kept up for a while. I finished with 3.1 inches. My liquid total from a core sample was 0.14". That makes the ratio 22 to 1. I love these weaker clippers. The larger storms have largely had small flakes and wind and take place in the middle of the night. They've also been underperformers here. These weaker clippers have had larger flakes, no wind, and taken place in the middle of the day. They've been overperformers, too. Those ratios are ridiculous and wrong. When I was out shoveling I guessed about 20-25 to 1 based on how the snow looked and felt. My core sample confirmed 22 to 1.

-20 here in town, -23 at the airport.... wind chill in the -50s.

The Cedar Rapids airport was -19 at the top of the hour. Here in the city, the local school stations have passed -18. It typically doesn't get much colder in the city. When the airport set the record at -29 in 2009, I don't think we came close to that in town. Wednesday night will be interesting. The ridge has been sliding farther east on the models, so return flow will begin by morning. The euro shows the ridge axis hanging over the Waterloo-Cedar Rapids corridor through 7am, allowing the area to drop to -36. However, the GFS has the warmer air moving in and brings us to the low -20s by morning. The NAM is much more robust with the return flow and brings the temp way up to -10 by morning.

The 00z euro backed off the extent of the warmup the first few days of February. There will certainly be some melting. I just want to avoid a blowtorch.

I finished with approximately 2.7". My gauge catch was 0.28" and the core sample was 0.35", so the model average was pretty close qpf-wise. As always, however, wind-swept snow kills the ratio. I went out at 4am to measure, but it felt so nice at 20F with no wind I went ahead and did some shoveling. I knew it would be much colder and windier later. We only maxed out at 20F so the surface low did end up tracking just south, near Iowa City. We are down to 10F now and the wind is picking up.

After starting the day at 0.20" in Cedar Rapids and then climbing to 0.30", the HRRR has gradually dried out the southern edge and CR is down to 0.15" on the last run.

The HRRR has stabilized at about 0.25-0.30" for Cedar Rapids. I'm expecting about 3 inches.

HRRR continues to drift south each run toward the other models. Cedar Rapids has risen from 0.20" earlier to 0.25" last run to 0.30" at 18z.

Euro says four straight days above to well-above freezing(even at night) ending with a strong, mild, rainy system. If this actually verifies, I don't think we'll have much snow left. We had better enjoy what we have now.

12z FV3

12z FV3 Doesn't bring the 0.50" qpf as far south as the GFS, so it's probably more realistic.

Man, the GFS and HRRR are on different planets this morning. The HRRR has the snow band WAY north.

12z GFS

Yeah, the northern models have really come south, so there's a pretty good consensus now (as there should be considering it's almost here) the low will move ese to near Cedar Rapids and then east from there.

12z RGEM is the wettest run of any model in days for the CR/IC area. It has the 0.50" line down to CR. I think I'd lean more toward the 0.20-0.30" of other models.

The snow pack is going to take a hit the first few days of February. It's just a question of how big of one.

The NAMs are south with the surface low, but they've dried out the moisture plume over Iowa a bit. Here in Cedar Rapids, we only get front-end snow for 5-6 hours and then the dry slot swoops in. 2-3" may be all we can get.

Oddly, the DVN's forecast for Sunday night simply says low around 12. All the models are surging the temp into the 30s across Iowa overnight Sunday night. You'd think the nws would mention that.

The Euro is crazy. A couple runs ago, it had Cedar Rapids remaining below zero until Sunday, Feb 3. Today's 12z run has Cedar Rapids hitting 60 degrees!!! on Monday.

I finished with 1.6 inches. My liquid total is 0.07", which makes the ratio 23 to 1.