Hawkeye

12z Euro still has the snow-producing wave late in the week.

This system is no longer looking like much for Iowa... just light rain and some wind.

And highs in the 20s with wind on Friday... brrrr

Two models this morning have a snow event and very cold air in about a week. The euro has 6" of snow and a low temp of 6 here.

Now the model trend is take the low a bit farther east and delay the rev-up again. The FV3-GFS barely has any precip here and the euro just cut our precip quite a bit.

The models are all backing off the storm winding up in time to give too much to Iowa next week. However, it still looks cold following the system. Today's 12z euro has highs in the 20s and lows in the teens across Iowa for the first time by day 9/10. It may not pan out that cold, but this is coldest air on any euro run this season.

Today will be another very pleasant one, sunny and 60 degrees with a modest wind. It has been a cool pattern, but we've had several nice days.

Today is the last day to subscribe to Maue's weathermodels.com site and still get the lower price. I thought about it, but I guess I'll make do with the free stuff. Weathermodels.com and its companion site weather.us both have much of the same model data, including detailed euro data. Weathermodels.com just has Maue's pretty maps and nice interface. Also, weathermodels.com will be adding the 06z/18z euro data, while weather.us may not. Weather.us, however, does also have the new hourly euro data through 90 hours, which is nice.

It really doesn't look too exciting for the Nebraska/Iowa part of the region. Models have trended toward a fast wnw/nw flow in which several systems race through the area, but don't really pull in a lot of moisture or rev up until they get into the Ohio Valley/Great Lakes. The euro doesn't even show any sub-freezing low temps here through ten days... just cool days and meh nights, probably with plenty of cloud cover.

So far, the wind is gusting to the 49-53 mph range from Waterloo to the QC.

I picked up 0.20" of rain overnight, the first real rain in eighteen days.

If anyone was considering subscribing to a models site for the winter, weathermodels.com, Ryan Maue's company, is about to go up in price again. It is currently $10 per month, but is rising to $13 on October 30th. However, if you subscribe by the 29th you can remain at $10 per month.

The Cedar Rapids airport sure dives fast on good radiational cooling nights. It's already down to 26 out there in the country. It's still 35 downtown and about 33 here.

Iowa City just reported a gust of 59 mph. Cedar Rapids 53 just now.

I like to see that widespread dryness vanishing.

It's going to be a windy football game in Iowa City (vs Maryland) midday Saturday.

We had our first real freeze this morning. The hummer feeder had some slush in it, so the temp must have dropped solidly below freezing.

Once again, we did not freeze this morning here in the city. However, there's a solid frost and all the real tender plants are toast. Fortunately, there is only one hummingbird remaining. The rest of October looks like a real snoozer.

I just got my first freeze. It only fell below 32 for about an hour, though.

Even when the better radar returns passed over Cedar Rapids last night, I still only saw a few flurries.

It's looking like I won't get anything more than a few sprinkles this evening and then a few flurries at best tonight.

This is a pretty impressive system. Frankly, I don't want it because I still have 4-5 hummingbirds and it'll be tough enough for them when the plants die in the morning. And this morning you thought you were getting little/nothing. Must be a great surprise. I hope to get a nice surprise dumping in a couple months.

A heavy pocket is about to hit Lincoln.

Here's the Creighton University cam in Omaha. It's really coming down at the moment. http://typo3.creighton.edu/?id=68712

We had a freeze warning Friday morning and a frost advisory this morning, but neither panned out. The airport hit 31 Friday morning, but here in the city we only hit the mid 30s. Last night we only briefly fell into the upper 30s before rising into the low 40s this morning, so no frost. It looks like a better chance Monday morning behind the snow system. Much of Iowa should freeze. I still have four hummingbirds and many of the salvia plants look best this time of year, just before getting killed by freeze.