Hawkeye

Oh, yeah, that historic flood may never be approached again. For a hundred years, the Cedar River's max crests had always been in the 18-20 ft range, with nothing more than 20. In 2008, it hit 31 ft.

The red-winged blackbirds showed up here late yesterday afternoon. Walking outside and hearing those calls from the treetops is always the first real sign of spring.

This system really turded out for Iowa. Getting northern and southern energy to align just right for us is like getting all the planets to align.

Hit 64 today, tying the record high.

It's now up to 62, here, the first 60 of the year. There's still plenty of thawing to do. The river, lakes, and ponds are still mostly frozen over and my lawn is still frozen in the shady areas.

12z Euro

12z UK is the weakest, yet, showing almost no precip at all along I-80 from Iowa to Chicago.

NAM, ICON, and GFS, this morning, are at least bringing back a light to moderate rain event around here, plus wind. The northern wave just won't be digging enough, early enough, to wind up a biggie this far west.

That's an interesting tail the euro has sticking up through MSP.

At 500 mb, the 12z euro is doing the same thing as every other model... northern stream is a little faster and digs less until it gets farther east, southern stream is a bit slower. It still has more for eastern Iowa than other models, but much less than earlier runs.

12z UK

And now the UK is caving... much weaker and east this run. Gosh dangit. How many years has it been since the northern and southern streams cooperated for eastern Iowa?

Uh, oh.... after days of consistently phasing and wrapping up a biggie, the 12z GFS is showing cracks. Like the latest NAM and ICON, it's speeding up the northern wave and slowing the southern wave, leading to less/delayed phasing. Iowa gets squat this run, for the first time.

Like the NAM, the ICON became more phased by 00z, but is now back out of phase. The ICON has been reluctant to wrap this system up in general.

So yesterday, from 12z to 18z to 00z, the NAM took two big steps forward, transitioning from way out of phase nothingburger to well-phased biggie. Great trend, right? Well, from 00z to 06z to 12z it gave those forward steps right back.

00z Euro slows down the northern wave further, storm looks very similar to the 12z. I'd still love to see the 980 mb low it was showing a couple days ago This is going to be a fun system. First, it wraps up over our forum, then the energy slides east and re-wraps up off southern New England.

The 00z Saturday and 00z Sunday UK maps never showed up, and, unfortunately, this evening's 00z maps are not showing, either.

Well, in the next day or two we should have a better idea of how well the northern and southern waves are aligned. We just need the northern wave to not speed out ahead.

So, the 00z nam and ICON are more in phase, the GFS a tad less, the GDPS a tad more. Expect more of this for another day.

The model inconsistency appears to be all about the timing of the northern and southern waves. Check out the 12z Saturday Euro vs the 00z Sunday Euro. The 12z had the southern wave just out ahead of the northern wave, so it was able to go negative, phase, and wrap up into a very strong storm over Iowa. The 00z, on the other hand, had the northern wave running well out ahead of the southern wave. The GDPS and ICON models are doing the same thing this morning, speeding up the northern wave and slowing down the southern wave so they can't phase.

The Euro has been very inconsistent with this system.

Another 0.28" of rain, here, adding to an already wet month. Again, I'm really looking forward to some ground-thawing the next few days so some of this water can soak in and the big puddle on my patio can drain.

A spotter in Estherville, IA is reporting 6 inches. That's a mean-looking snow band west of MSP.

It doesn't appear to be an icing situtation. The temp, even under the snow, will have trouble getting down to 32.