February 2021 Observations and Discussion

[Hawkeye]

Last night's Canadian had freezing precip in the deep south at the same time this morning's run has spring warmth surging north.  Next run will probably be much colder again.

[Minny_Weather]

35 minutes ago, Madtown said:

was the same around here....took a couple longer exposures with my phone to make sure they were the lights. Didn't want to go through the trouble of getting the tripod and camera out in the cold

I did use my tripod and DSLR. I burned my hand twice on the tripod cuz it was so cold lol

[CentralNebWeather]

12z Canadian. 

[GDR]

Haha

[Hawkeye]

All the waves on the Euro are quite weak.

[CentralNebWeather]

12z models all have multiple waves in the next 10 days, but varying locations. I think we’ll see lots of changes during the week, as any wave could over perform with these bitter cold temps. Any stronger wave could dump a lot as the extended models show. 

[Tony]

12z models weak waves of nothing unless you are on the coast. NE has been doing well

[GDR]

Icon 

[tStacsh]

Something brewing in the long range.  

[jaster220]

1 hour ago, tStacsh said:

Something brewing in the long range.  

Informative post of the year

[OmahaSnowFan]

2 hours ago, tStacsh said:

Something brewing in the long range.  

That’s my wife’s chili. Sorry in advance

[CentralNebWeather]

0z NWS blend. 

[GDR]

Snow in the forecast and Buccaneers win!!

[tStacsh]

3 minutes ago, GDR said:

Snow in the forecast and Buccaneers win!!

Brady!!!!!!  Now that gambling online is legal in Michigan, I won 500 on the Bucs tonight  

[Niko]

Soo, the EC will get blasted next week w snowstorms.

 

[Hawkeye]

The GFS had been suppressing everything, but tonight's run is very widespread with good snow next weekend.

[Grizzcoat]

CMC also spread the wealth on a new system it seems in the 4 day range....

[snowstorm83]

23 minutes ago, Hawkeye said:

The GFS had been suppressing everything, but tonight's run is very widespread with good snow next weekend.

0.5" of QPF in Lincoln with temps below zero the entire time. That would be something lol. 

[Niko]

Attm, its 3F under clear skies. Temps will fall below zero tanite for the first time this Winter!

[Hawkeye]

2 hours ago, Hawkeye said:

The GFS had been suppressing everything, but tonight's run is very widespread with good snow next weekend.

The Euro had been keeping the PV up in Canada, which allowed waves to move into our region.  Tonight's run is a huge shift to a very suppressed pattern, with no chance of anything around here.

[Tom]

The model trends of late are indicating through at least mid-week (Wed-Thu) the S MW/OHV will steal the show and nature will spread some of the wealth down towards the S/SE part of the Sub.  @Clinton looking good I believe...00z EPS also agrees...

 

00z EPS...

[Tom]

Locally speaking, there is some indication that the flow will turn more northerly by midweek around the GL's region with HP placed NW of here allowing for some potential LES into NE IL/SE WI/NW IN during the Wed-Sun period.  The GEFS have been all over this set up for about a couple days now  and the UKIE also seeing this set up.  The Euro/EPS is not really buying into it yet.  If this would happen, it could be a very rare set up and one that could really pile up snow on this side of the lake with a true arctic connection.  Remember all those marginal LES set ups we had over here and we wondered what it would be like if it were 5+ degrees colder?  Maybe now is our chance.

00z GEFS...showing a 6-10" mean into NE IL/NW IN through Sunday

 

00z UKIE...

 

Meantime, the EPS is trending towards the GEFS in the longer range for the Valentines Day weekend period and into the following week.  As the pattern begins to shift out of the "Polar Vortex" version of this year's LRC, I think we are heading into a pattern that features more or less of a blocking pattern near Hudson Bay that allows systems to dig farther south into the S Plains and track somewhere into the S MW/OHV region.  A flip towards a +EPO the following week is showing up which takes the extreme cold out of the equation.  This does not mean, however, that there isn't enough cold air in the pattern to produce winter storms.  I still see tremendous opportunity in the extended.  A shift towards a more southern stream storm track is on the table the week of the 15th IMHO.

 

 

[Tom]

Most CAM's painting a swath of 1-3" for N IL later today/tonight...I wouldn't mind seing another nice refresher...

 

@tbone8 @shakjen...I see your getting some decent returns on radar right now along the I-80 corridor...

 

[Tom]

By this time next week, I would expect to see much of E KS/MO/S IL/S IN covered by snow as the "share the wealth" pattern spreads S/SE across the Sub....

 

 

I dove deeper into the 00z EPS for this coming weekend and more ensemble are trying to develop a cutter, similar to what the 00z GFS showed tonight.  After all the back n forth that has been playing out in the modeling wrt the Polar Vortex and it's impact later this week, it does appear that it will traverse into the GL's by this weekend and probably deliver the coldest air of this entire stretch of anomalous cold.

00z GFS...through Sunday...

 

[GDR]

[Clinton]

5 hours ago, Tom said:

The model trends of late are indicating through at least mid-week (Wed-Thu) the S MW/OHV will steal the show and nature will spread some of the wealth down towards the S/SE part of the Sub.  @Clinton looking good I believe...00z EPS also agrees...

 

00z EPS...

Boy is it cold this morning. It has been 7* and light snow has been falling for almost 24hrs and I've slowly accumulated about an 1.5.  Would love to keep this going and keep adding to it.  Late weekend should be fun for many of us as the gulf will come into play with all of this artic air.

[CentralNebWeather]

NWS Hastings has a good disco this morning.  One is how rare it is to have such a large area covered in at least a 12"+ snow pack.  Said it will make the forecasts tougher this week as models struggle with such a snow pack and how cold it can actually get.  

[CentralNebWeather]

06z GFS through 156 hours, noon on Sunday.  

[CentralNebWeather]

06 NWS Blend 

[Tom]

2 hours ago, Clinton said:

Boy is it cold this morning. It has been 7* and light snow has been falling for almost 24hrs and I've slowly accumulated about an 1.5.  Would love to keep this going and keep adding to it.  Late weekend should be fun for many of us as the gulf will come into play with all of this artic air.

I’m happy to hear you can finally enjoy a cold winters day with snow falling.  There is something about dry and fluffy snow which makes the landscape look gorgeous.

[CentralNebWeather]

We are at school on time this morning.  Many local schools starting at 10 AM.  Looks like with even colder weather/wind chills/snow later this week, could be more school closings.

[jaster220]

2 minutes ago, CentralNebWeather said:

We are at school on time this morning.  Many local schools starting at 10 AM.  Looks like with even colder weather/wind chills/snow later this week, could be more school closings.

Iirc my kids got 8 snow days here in 13-14. What's the number there so far?

[Clinton]

6z Euro, Control, and Mean

[bud2380]

There are so many waves, and so much run to run variance on any systems beyond a few days, it's really hard to get a feel for how much snow may actually fall during this pattern.  A week ago most models showed that much of Iowa would get 8-12" of snow from Thursday through today, but nothing really materialized here outside of the blizzard Thursday which did drop 4-6" locally.  So when again the GFS and Euro are showing wide spread high totals over much of the area, it's still hard to feel very confident about any of it.  The Euro shows widespread snow (2-5" type range) on Thursday, GFS is dry.  The GFS shows a strong system Wednesday for MO and IL, where the Euro is mostly dry or very weak.  The GFS has a weak system Friday and a strong system Saturday that would affect most of this forum, but the Euro shows nothing substantial during that time.  It feels like you may as well not even look at anything beyond 48 hours right now with this pattern as it likely will change, and potentially dramatically beyond that time frame.  

[Niko]

Clouds are increasing ahead of the next disturbance, which will be moving on in later in the day and especially early evening. Temps are holding into the single digits and will eventually climb into the mid teens. 

Note: Looks interesting towards the weekend as a potential phase could occur. Fingers crossed!

Btw: Saw the "Detroit River" yesterday and it has begun to ice up. Looks Very wintry. Also, as I was getting my morning breakfast earlier today, I noticed roads were a little gelid from a weak disturbance (if ya wanna call it that), which rolled on through very early. When I went back to my homeoffice, I did a quick check on past radar and captured it. Sneaky little thing! Fast mover as well! Provided a quick dusting, which came outta nowhere.

[CentralNebWeather]

8 minutes ago, bud2380 said:

There are so many waves, and so much run to run variance on any systems beyond a few days, it's really hard to get a feel for how much snow may actually fall during this pattern.  A week ago most models showed that much of Iowa would get 8-12" of snow from Thursday through today, but nothing really materialized here outside of the blizzard Thursday which did drop 4-6" locally.  So when again the GFS and Euro are showing wide spread high totals over much of the area, it's still hard to feel very confident about any of it.  The Euro shows widespread snow (2-5" type range) on Thursday, GFS is dry.  The GFS shows a strong system Wednesday for MO and IL, where the Euro is mostly dry or very weak.  The GFS has a weak system Friday and a strong system Saturday that would affect most of this forum, but the Euro shows nothing substantial during that time.  It feels like you may as well not even look at anything beyond 48 hours right now with this pattern as it likely will change, and potentially dramatically beyond that time frame.  

Well said.  I wasn't expecting that much last weekend, and I got 10-12" from Friday through Sunday.  With the air this cold, any wave can overachieve.  Whatever we see today, probably won't be the ultimate outcome.  NWS Hastings has already said this morning that models aren't used to this much deep snow pack.  Temps have already gone well below forecasts and the end of the week looks colder.

[Tony]

39 minutes ago, Clinton said:

6z Euro, Control, and Mean

Hoping to get those amounts this afternoon. Beyond today who the heck knows what's going to happen

[Tom]

27 minutes ago, Niko said:

Clouds are increasing ahead of the next disturbance, which will be moving on in later in the day and especially early evening. Temps are holding into the single digits and will eventually climb into the mid teens. 

Note: Looks interesting towards the weekend as a potential phase could occur. Fingers crossed!

Btw: Saw the "Detroit River" yesterday and it has begun to ice up. Looks Very wintry. Also, as I was getting my morning breakfast earlier today, I noticed roads were a little gelid from a weak disturbance (if ya wanna call it that), which rolled on through very early. When I went back to my homeoffice, I did a quick check on past radar and captured it. Sneaky little thing! Fast mover as well! Provided a quick dusting, which came outta nowhere.

I see you used the”word of the day”...it is rather gelid outside today!

[Hawkeye]

Last night's 00z GFS was a one-run wonder for I-80 north.  It's now back to a farther south PV and suppressed snow.  The 12z is fantastic for the southern plains to Ohio Valley.

[CentralNebWeather]

12z GFS through 150 hours.  Things suppressed to the south.  Will be interesting if that is the trend for the week and other models.