Hawkeye

As much as some of these model runs get me excited, the last couple storms are a good reminder that model maps often don't pan out. If models suggest 8-12", expect 6-8". If they suggest 6-8", expect 3-6". Heck, even my conservative expectations haven't been met recently.

Only 3.8 inches in my yard. What a joke of a storm. Instead of being in the bulls-eye, as the models predicted, I ended up in the anti-bulls-eye. We spent half the last day in dry pockets within the very patchy deformation zone.

The euro follows it with -30s and -40s across Iowa.

Wow. This euro run is even better than I thought. It shows what may be the greatest clipper of all time for the I-80 corridor from Iowa eastward.

The 00z Euro shifted well south as well. It has a 995 mb low tracking from Nebraska to Indiana. It's too bad it's still five days out.

The GFS and GFS-FV3 are losing the weak Friday clipper, although the UK still has it. However, all three are nailing Iowa with the strong Sunday night/Monday clipper. The UK was farther north, but moved south to where the GFSs have been.

We had a nice burst for an hour a bit earlier, the first 1"/hr rate of the season. During a lull at 10:45pm I measured 2.1".

Geez, there are reports of up to 4.5" in the Des Moines area now. It might be tough for Cedar Rapids or even Iowa City to finish with that much tomorrow.

Cedar Rapids seems to be the unlucky spot so far. We've been stuck in a dry hole for hours and now the new bands are going around us. There appears to be moderate to heavy snow passing just northwest.

So the Des Moines area has a couple inches, Dubuque and QC have an inch, and Rockford has 2. Here we are in Cedar Rapids waiting. One positive... the last couple HRRR runs have re-added a strip of up to 0.50" precip through the Cedar Rapids area tonight.

I picked up a fluffy 0.6" of snow from the first band a couple hours ago. We are now waiting for the south-central Iowa snow to move up here. Terry Swails lowered the snow forecast to 3-6", which makes sense given the system's lack of vigor.

The problem is the band is just southeast of the city and the wind is coming from the nne. We need the band to be in/north of the city.

Geez. The HRRR is really quite weak and disheveled with the deformation zone. Down to 0.30" in CR? Yikes!

Yeah, large flakes are dumping at Creighton U. Here's the Creighton webcam. http://typo3.creighton.edu/?id=68712

As radar has filled in, light snow has started again here. It should last for a while this time. It's too bad the wind will not remain this light.

The HRRR keeps drying eastern Iowa more each run. The 19z has Cedar Rapids down to about 0.40". The heavier precip is now over closer to the river. It drops off to very little nw of Waterloo. We finally got a nearly ideal track, but the storm just isn't strong enough. The cold-sector precip doesn't become quite as widespread and strong as it could be.

As a couple CR posters above mentioned, I had a solid light snow shower for a bit. Radar shows better returns moving back in, so we should get back into some light snow. I wish the main plume of moisture over southeast Iowa was moving more northward. Models have that plume veering east before reaching CR. Regarding the local mets, Terry Swails and Joe Winters are snow geeks. It's not a bad thing to have the third one be less of a snow geek and maybe more conservative. Schnack has been pretty good with his forecasts over the years. Heck, I always go conservative with our snow events.

$60 for the Cocorahs gauge? Rip-off city. AmbientWeather has it for $34. I think I paid about $25 twelve years ago.

Bulls-eye #6 for south-central Iowa?

The morning model runs are a mixed bag with regard to the strong Monday clipper. The GFS/GFS-FV3 shifted south into Iowa, but the UK and Euro are farther northeast.

When I woke up this morning there was a very light snow dust falling. It then switched to freezing drizzle for a couple hours. It is now back to light snow dust.

12z UK... I feel bad for the Nebraska members as we watch the storm disappear over there.

DMX is downgrading the nw part of their warning to an advisory, while DVN is upgrading another row of counties through the QC.

12z GFS-FV3

This southeast and weaker trend can stop now. I'm not happy the real snow is now being put off til after dark. It's amazing how difficult it is to get good snow during daylight. The odds just aren't that bad, but it seems like 90% of snow events are overnight. If we can get 4-5 inches out of this, I'll be happy. 6+ would be a bonus.