New Year's Day Colorado Low

[Tom]

While most of us on here will open up the New Year on the warm and wet side of things, some of our members out west who have been anxiously waiting for a legit snow, will be in the midst of a potential potent high impact winter storm.  The models are wavering on how much this storm cuts NW as the GFS/GGEM are father NW than the Euro Op.  Let's discuss...

0z Euro is digging this storm a little farther south and takes a track right through KC/DSM and clobbers NE up into MN...what a run!  There is somewhat of an icing signal for OMA peeps.... @CentralNebWeather @gabel23 @hawkstwelve

 

 

[Tom]

0z CMCE...

 

0z GEFS...

[westMJim]

36 minutes ago, Tom said:

While most of us on here will open up the New Year on the warm and wet side of things

In this morning NWS GRR discussion they mention there could be a shot of record highs in parts of Michigan on January 3

[Tom]

06z GEFS...

[CentralNebWeather]

NWS Hastings morning disco talks about the differences in the models as @Tomhas shown. GFS and Euro are in different worlds as far as track and impact here. 
 

“Sunday night into Monday and early Tuesday another system comes through the area this time as a deep trof or potentially a closed low ejecting out of the CO/NM area. Some early indications show the potential for a little icing with this system but it is still too early and too uncertain to include in the forecast just yet. Cluster analysis shows pretty good agreement in a deepening trof over the CO/NM border which may favor the closed low solution. Beyond that there is discrepancy in the track of the low. The track will be important in determining the precip type and amounts. Right now the EC brings a bunch of snow to the area but there is still decent spread amongst the EPS members. The GEFS continues to show considerably less snow, and the Canadian resides somewhere between the two. Needless to say this is a system that bears watching and track placement will be rather important to determine.”

 

[hawkstwelve]

Euro shows over two feet falling here and has remained extremely consistent in it's solution. I don't think I've seen it show a different track a single time over the past few days. Hard to bet against it when it never wavers. They don't call it 'the King' for nothing. 

That being said, over two feet of snow falling in a single storm is pretty outlandish. I remember the Pre-Christmas storm showing feet of snow and I ended up with a couple inches. So I'm riding with the Euro (screw the flip/floppy GFS) but taming back the accumulation expectation from the large amounts it's been showing.

Worth throwing out there the GFS made tomorrow's system completely disappear over the past few runs before bringing it back all of a sudden with the 06z run. A joke of a model.

Regardless of model preferences, this will be fun to track! The potential is there for a very solid snowstorm if the cards are played just right!

[hawkstwelve]

You can see the two camps of the track on the latest NBM. One heavier over W SD/ND and one heavier over SE SD/MN. FWIW, the latter band is the heaviest it's been shown on the NBM by a fair amount.

[Clinton]

1 hour ago, CentralNebWeather said:

NWS Hastings morning disco talks about the differences in the models as @Tomhas shown. GFS and Euro are in different worlds as far as track and impact here. 
 

“Sunday night into Monday and early Tuesday another system comes through the area this time as a deep trof or potentially a closed low ejecting out of the CO/NM area. Some early indications show the potential for a little icing with this system but it is still too early and too uncertain to include in the forecast just yet. Cluster analysis shows pretty good agreement in a deepening trof over the CO/NM border which may favor the closed low solution. Beyond that there is discrepancy in the track of the low. The track will be important in determining the precip type and amounts. Right now the EC brings a bunch of snow to the area but there is still decent spread amongst the EPS members. The GEFS continues to show considerably less snow, and the Canadian resides somewhere between the two. Needless to say this is a system that bears watching and track placement will be rather important to determine.”

 

I hope the Euro operational is right, I'd love to see you get buried in snow.  But the GFS looks like whats happened to Nebraska over and over and over again. 

[Madtown]

man I hope this trends just a bit east...gonna destroy the trails if not.

[CentralNebWeather]

1 hour ago, Clinton said:

I hope the Euro operational is right, I'd love to see you get buried in snow.  But the GFS looks like whats happened to Nebraska over and over and over again. 

NWS Hastings has not discounted it yet, which is not like them. Usually they follow the model that shows the least snow. I’ll remain pessimistic until it gets closer. The many misses to the Northwest over the decades makes me cynical. 

[hawkstwelve]

Not the storm for this thread but just an example of the quality of the GFS. Went from this on the 00z run...

 

To this just two runs later...

 

For a storm that is about 24 hours out. 

[CentralNebWeather]

8 minutes ago, hawkstwelve said:

Not the storm for this thread but just an example of the quality of the GFS. Went from this on the 00z run...

 

To this just two runs later...

 

For a storm that is about 24 hours out. 

I saw that. Hard to have any confidence in this model. 

[bud2380]

Euro came in further southeast this run and flatter overall. Not as big of a north/south cut. 

[hawkstwelve]

Another day, another Euro run showing a ton of snow. Feels like a broken record at this point.

Although I'm #TeamEuro all the way, it bears mentioning that it's kind of on its own with this track at the moment. Both the GFS and Canadian have the track way more to the NW while the ICON and UKMET are kind of in-between the two camps.

Time will tell if the King gets to keep his crown, or becomes the Jester.

[OKwx2k4]

I'm pulling for Nebraska to get clobbered. They've earned it.

[Tom]

13 minutes ago, hawkstwelve said:

Another day, another Euro run showing a ton of snow. Feels like a broken record at this point.

Although I'm #TeamEuro all the way, it bears mentioning that it's kind of on its own with this track at the moment. Both the GFS and Canadian have the track way more to the NW while the ICON and UKMET are kind of in-between the two camps.

Time will tell if the King gets to keep his crown, or becomes the Jester.

12z EPS shifted S/SE as well…interesting 

[Tom]

12z EPS...I'll include the "appetizer" for tomorrow...

 

[Bellona]

I can't complain if this misses me to the North. The blizzard last week was pretty nice. Not that I'd be unhappy if we got buried again! Nebraska and FSD have been getting the shaft for a long time. Fun to watch regardless of where it goes

[OmahaSnowFan]

Mega ice storm for me on the 12Z Euro

[gabel23]

Bismarck puts out a 75% chance of the further south and east track. I'll patiently be waiting for next week! 

 

[CentralNebWeather]

2 hours ago, gabel23 said:

Bismarck puts out a 75% chance of the further south and east track. I'll patiently be waiting for next week! 

 

Looks like GFS agrees with the 25% chance track. 18z not budging as it continues in the north camp. 

[OmahaSnowFan]

[hawkstwelve]

18z GFS definitely was tick to the SE vs it's 12z run. Blink towards the Euro?

[hawkstwelve]

4 hours ago, gabel23 said:

Bismarck puts out a 75% chance of the further south and east track. I'll patiently be waiting for next week! 

 

Good find. That's encouraging. #GoEuro

[hawkstwelve]

18z EPS has about 2 inches more than it's 12z run for FSD through Tues afternoon. Looks pretty nice for 10:1 totals.

[jaster220]

GEFS absolutely nailed the SLP track for our "storm" last week at this range. But the OP GFS swung wildly L and R with it's track(s), as well as failed miserably with too much qpf, and thermals were horrible. Ofc, your scenario looks much more straightforward than our bombo-genisis along a massive arctic front. 

[CentralNebWeather]

0z GFS not budging, stays north. 

[Madtown]

20 minutes ago, CentralNebWeather said:

0z GFS not budging, stays north. 

Good ol GFS had last week's north by 400mi till the day of the storm. May check a Euro run or 2 from now till Sunday, but the days of model watching are done for me. Used to be enjoyable to see it all come together 3 days out and then fine tune. It's about as good as throwing darts blind folded 3 days out these days. Hobby or not it's real close to wasting hours of time model watching these days.

[hawkstwelve]

00z Canadian with a pretty large shift to the SE. Move towards the Euro.

[CentralNebWeather]

5 minutes ago, hawkstwelve said:

00z Canadian with a pretty large shift to the SE. Move towards the Euro.

Looks like the Canadian had quite a bit of ice also. 

[hawkstwelve]

30 minutes ago, CentralNebWeather said:

Looks like the Canadian had quite a bit of ice also. 

Ooof, yeah that doesn't look good. I feel like I've seen the GEM overdo it on ice accumulation before though, at least a few times. I know it busted among the higher models for the ice storm back on 12/13. Hopefully just another case of that tendency.

[Hawkeye]

Another jump southeast from the 00z op Euro.

[Clinton]

Model Mayhem!

6z GFS at hr 123

0z Euro at hr 129

[CentralNebWeather]

 NWS Hastings morning disco thinks the system comes out south

“Our next system comes through just after the new year late on Sunday night, and could be stronger than the current system moving through. Aloft a deep trof is expected to eject out of the southwest and bring a potent sfc low through the region. Track placement is going to be key in determining precip type and amounts. Currently the EC has us getting slammed while the GFS has us dry slotted. Looking at the global ensemble clusters, 2 of the clusters which total to 31% of the ensembles show a deepening trof with respect to the mean. One cluster totaling 32% of the ensembles is very similar to the mean which shows a deepening trof. This would indicate a more southerly track is possible where the sfc low emerges and moves up through eastern Kansas into Missouri. This situation would give us decent wrap around precip on the northwest side of the low. This also looks to be a moisture rich system as this trof is connected to an atmospheric river over the western CONUS.”

 

[Tom]

The Euro/EPS is known to be golden inside 5 days and to see the model hold firm on the S/SE track as we get closer to the event while the others are still NW is a head scrather.  Here's a comparison just to show you the difference between EPS and GEFS.  

0z GEFS...

 

 

0z EPS...

[hawkstwelve]

That was a pretty sizable shift to the SE on the 00z Euro. 00z EPS didn't quite follow suit with it still showing a similar axis of higher snowfall than previous runs.

Edit: Woops, Tom already posted this map. That's what I get for not refreshing the page first.

[hawkstwelve]

You can see the southern trend over the past four GEM runs pretty clearly. Snow accumulations map is starting to look much more like the Euro. FSD went from 3 to 15 inches from the 00z to 12z runs.

[hawkstwelve]

GFS remains out to lunch with the further NW track. Doesn't want to let that go but my hunch is it will eventually, especially with the Canadian trending in the SE direction.

[hawkstwelve]

12z UKMET also coming in with a SE shift.

GFS will cave. Just depends on how many more runs it will take.

[james1976]

Am I reeling it in?

[gabel23]

9 minutes ago, james1976 said:

Am I reeling it in?

I hope so, I still need about another 50 miles to get into the real action!

[hawkstwelve]

12z vs 00z Euro through Tuesday morning...

[Tom]

Another shift forthcoming on the 12z Euro...the blocking over CANADA  is growing causing this storm to track farther south...

[Tom]

Geeze, from thinking this storm is going to miss my area without any chance of seeing any snow till sometime after the 6th/7th, this storm could deliver some wrap-around snow as it gets blocked up over the GL's.

[Tom]

The GGEM has been showing a secondary wave coming up from the south as we have seen happen several times this season from various storm systems.  I'm starting to think this could be another case where we see it happen again.

[Tom]

12z Euro...

 

[Andie]

North Texas will enjoy partly cloudy, lower 70’s this week and lower 60’s next week.  
No real chance for precipitation. 
Quiet end to the year.  

[CentralNebWeather]

20 minutes ago, hawkstwelve said:

12z vs 00z Euro through Tuesday morning...

Whoa. That looks good 

[Bellona]

Anyone have fzr maps from the Euro?? 

[jcwxguy]

53 minutes ago, Bellona said:

Anyone have fzr maps from the Euro??