Hawkeye

My bird baths had ice in them this morning. I was not expecting that.

Sunday continues to look like a pretty good soaker for Iowa on the nw side of the main wave. It's less clear how the Saturday evening storms will play out.

It's nice to see the models coming together on a nice rain event this weekend. The latest Euro has put a few inches of snow back in for eastern Iowa, but odds are we would only get a bit of short-lived white on the grass. It's also nice to see the Euro showing another warm pattern developing late in the period. I hope that sticks.

I was expecting all-day cloudiness, but instead much of the area is mostly sunny. Our temp is already up to 56 so we have a good shot at 60 again. 60s are beginning to pile up now, a sure sign that winter is history.

If the Sunday front can move across the area slowly enough we could get a nice soaking. The Euro has been hitting Iowa pretty good. The GFS has been a bit more progressive.

Feels great to look at the models today. The latest Euro has upper 40s tomorrow, with light wind so it will be ok, but then upper 50s to upper 60s through day 9. That's more like it. I can finally get my dormant geraniums potted up and growing outside and get some other potted plants outside to make room for new seedlings. The grass should be also growing a bit by the end of the period.

Got a bit more rain overnight to up the event total to 0.31". The grass is beginning to green up.

12z Euro says no more sub50 highs after Friday... nothing but 50s to low 60s through day 10. I'd like a couple warmer days mixed in, but I won't complain about consistent milder(normal) weather.

Much of the good rain and storms have been and will remain to our south and southeast. I was fortunate to get a brief, but nice storm overnight that dropped a little hail and 0.22" of rain. Iowa still needs a widespread good soaking, but it's not happening with this system and there are none in sight.

NW Iowa should get some, but there won't be anything around here.

The line of storms couldn't hold its intensity for long and devolved into little more than a band of light rain.

64 in Cedar Rapids. Tomorrow should be about as mild. Unfortunately, after tomorrow the latest Euro suggests we may not even see 50 again until mid April.

Much of Iowa needs a good soaking, but the cold and wind with the rain sucks.

Next Wednesday/Thursday could be pretty cold and wet. And the Euro isn't optimistic about any warmth beyond that. http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/d/getchart/catalog/products/forecasts/medium/deterministic/msl_uv850_z500!Geopotential%20500%20hPa%20and%20Temperature%20at%20850%20hPa!240!North%20America!pop!od!oper!public_plots!2014032812!!chart.gif

Only 0.13" here yesterday. Most of the better precip went north. It has been a very dry month.

I took a notebook and pen the first couple times I went to a training session, but it just wasn't needed. You will watch a slide show about how to identify storm structure, shelf clouds, tornadoes, etc., and then they'll give you a sheet or two describing what kind of stuff spotters should report and how to report it.

Ditto, although I barely heard the thunder. It was pretty wild. We went to zero visibility in seconds when the meat of the squall hit.

00z GFS is showing 70 degrees here both next Sunday and Monday. That would not suck.

I don't understand the bit about the last days of March. The models continue to look fairly mild on the 30th and 31st.

It's looking good for some snow across Iowa early next week. The models have been showing heavier snow(2-3" maybe) in southwestern Iowa, but 1-2" is not out of the question around here. The NAM has shifted the heavier stuff into eastern Iowa this morning, although it's wildly overdone with qpf as usual.

4.0-5.5" of snow fell in parts of far southeast Iowa overnight. Radar showed scattered heavy pockets moving across that area. To get that much snow it must have come down at 2-3"/hr at times. I only picked up 0.5".

The total I'm going with is 2.9". My ratio wasn't high at all, only around 12:1. My gauge catch was 0.23" and the core sample was 0.25".

I only got a trace or maybe 0.1" from the first system late Friday, so it's all down to system #2 today. I'm not optimistic.

Euro is radically drier along the I-80 corridor than any other model. The Saturday wave is very solid on the nam/gfs/gem/uk, but just abysmal on the Euro.

This series of systems over the weekend could be a fitting summary of the entire winter... our area gets another couple nickel/dimers while northern Missouri through Indiana gets hit good.