New Year's Day Storm

[FV-Mike]

53 minutes ago, tStacsh said:

Our office is betting on the Euro currently.  Which would mean more snow for our area.  But they tend to be wrong a lot.  

LOT is leaning with the Euro as well

[Hawkeye]

The 12z NAM took a big jump north, much closer to the Euro.

[bud2380]

Here is the 6z Euro

 

[bud2380]

The NAM is a perfect path for Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.  Would love to see this come true.  Also the NAM as mentioned by Hawkeye, jumped north in line with the Euro, it also sped up the storm a lot.  Previous runs it was much slower.

 

[tStacsh]

12 minutes ago, FV-Mike said:

LOT is leaning with the Euro as well

one local met is leaning for a broad 3-6" across SMI with higher end amounts to verify.  We shall see.  Plenty of time to track.  At least we finally got something on the hook.  

[someweatherdude]

If the GFS, NAM, Icon and Canadian all cave to the Euro, I will vomit (no offense to the Iowa peeps).  KC doesn't get a lot of love from the snow gods even in a normal year.  And Iowa had it's year last year. 

[OttumwaSnomow]

3 minutes ago, bud2380 said:

The NAM is a perfect path for Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.  Would love to see this come true.  Also the NAM as mentioned by Hawkeye, jumped north in line with the Euro, it also sped up the storm a lot.  Previous runs it was much slower.

 

I must admit we look to be sitting  pretty here !  We seem to be the sweet spot or near it every run.  We are up to 115 accounts and 55 are commercial. So gonna be a busy weekend here!

[GDR]

15 minutes ago, someweatherdude said:

If the GFS, NAM, Icon and Canadian all cave to the Euro, I will vomit (no offense to the Iowa peeps).  KC doesn't get a lot of love from the snow gods even in a normal year.  And Iowa had it's year last year. 

No offense taken but if you have a snow plowing business in Kansas City then you might wanna move north but if you have a snow plow business in Iowa it’s been along time since the last paycheck. Still plenty of time for kc peeps! Besides you have the Chiefs to cheer on.

[Hawkeye]

12z RDPS is well south

[Clinton]

2 minutes ago, Hawkeye said:

12z RDPS is well south

I feel like this back and fourth may continue up till Friday.

[Clinton]

12z ICON takes a jump north

[someweatherdude]

1 minute ago, Clinton said:

12z ICON takes a jump north

I'm used to KC getting trolled by the models, but this would be one for the books.  To have 3 of the 4 main models putting KC in the line of fire (4 of 5 if you count the 06z NAM), only to have the odd man out be right .... 

[tStacsh]

CHI sitting pretty on the GFS

[someweatherdude]

Only in KC could we have a surface temp of 16 degrees, have precipitation, and have it not be snow. 

[Hawkeye]

12z GFS is back north, although not as far as the NAM... a middle ground.

[Clinton]

12z GFS trying to make everyone happy.

[Tom]

12z GFS has .75”+ qpf in NE IL…I’ll take it and run…LEHS signal growing stronger each run.

[snowstorm83]

Big jump in totals for I-80 on the GFS! I really don't trust Kuchera though, no way LNK gets 11" out of this. 10:1 ratio is 4.9", I would think 6-7" is more realistic. 

[Hawkeye]

The GFS has a high temp of 10º here Saturday.  Combined with snow and strong wind, it will be very cold.  I'll certainly have to break out the hand warmers to insert in my gloves.

[Clinton]

12z GEFS developing a bullseye.  Ensembles look good for KC

[tStacsh]

And now we wait for the King. 

[Clinton]

12z CMC is south and very weak

[someweatherdude]

Canadian gives almost everyone the finger. 

[Tom]

12z GFS...here is the whole storm...

  

[tStacsh]

Amazing how similar the GFS looks compared to last week Thursday.  hmmmm

[Hawkeye]

The Canadian shows a flatter western trough, so the storm ejects south and weak.

[MIKEKC]

10 minutes ago, Clinton said:

12z GEFS developing a bullseye.  Ensembles look good for KC

Lets go! We're about 60 -72 hours out. We'll see how this thing trends. 

The Canadian model just flipped out and said, what storm. Totally different run from the 0z run last night. The GFS looks great for a lot of folks. GFS has been pretty consistent, has it not??

[Hawkeye]

12z UK - the center of the snow band is the same as 00z, but it's a bit weaker and the edges have shrunk inward this run.

[Tom]

12z GEFS trends...tightening things up...

[Clinton]

7 minutes ago, MIKEKC said:

Lets go! We're about 60 -72 hours out. We'll see how this thing trends. 

The Canadian model just flipped out and said, what storm. Totally different run from the 0z run last night. The GFS looks great for a lot of folks. GFS has been pretty consistent, has it not??

It has but it drops 7hrs of sleet in mby.  30 miles on that model is the difference between sleet and warning level snow.

[GDR]

Looks like snow is coming

[The Snowman]

12z ECMWF a tad slower at the surface compared to the 00z but juices up snowfall in western and central Nebraska a little more.

Side note, pretty bizarre how the Kuchera numbers coming out are almost 2x the 10:1 numbers (at least on WeatherBell)

[The Snowman]

2 minutes ago, The Snowman said:

12z ECMWF a tad slower at the surface compared to the 00z but juices up snowfall in western and central Nebraska a little more.

Side note, pretty bizarre how the Kuchera numbers coming out are almost 2x the 10:1 numbers (at least on WeatherBell)

Never mind, I see surface temps are forecasted to be just a hair above zero in the OMA/LNK area, hence the wild numbers...

[bud2380]

Euro still takes a great path but weakens as it heads east lowering totals in eastern iowa. I hope that is a trend that reverses. 

[The Snowman]

Obligatory Kuchera map, 12z ECMWF

[GDR]

Man the euro has been very consistent 

[OmahaSnowFan]

You'd think it would be pretty easy to get 20:1 ratios with temps in the single digits here. 12Z Euro gives us about .4" QPF, so that's 8".

[mlgamer]

I pretty much expect the heavier snow track to stay north of me so I would lean towards the Euro. I imagine I'll get the usual dusting to 1/2".

[The Snowman]

10 minutes ago, OmahaSnowFan said:

You'd think it would be pretty easy to get 20:1 ratios with temps in the single digits here. 12Z Euro gives us about .4" QPF, so that's 8".

 

Yep, perusing the GFS' implied ratio charts on Pivotal, looks like 21:1 - 23:1 for the area during the event.

[Yerf]

34 minutes ago, OmahaSnowFan said:

You'd think it would be pretty easy to get 20:1 ratios with temps in the single digits here. 12Z Euro gives us about .4" QPF, so that's 8".

[Clinton]

12z EPS

[someweatherdude]

2 minutes ago, Clinton said:

12z EPS

Holy buckets are those consistent -- and not in a good way for me and you.  Could be one of those scenarios where the airport gets 4 inches and I get rain/sleet. 

[GDR]

There’s some big hitters on the a**

[Jack_GradStudent]

At the point in forecasting this storm, we have nearly all the resources (besides CAMS) that we need to regards to modeling data to begin forecasting with more accuracy. After looking at the trends in the GEFS and EURO means in addition to the National Blend of models, to me it seems that the EURO is more of the outlier at this point in time. The NBM has continually been upping snow totals from south of the KC metro, to northern Missouri. The GEFS seems to be telling us it thinks the bullseye will northern Missouri, while the EURO mean is telling us its in southern Nebraska and Southern Iowa. We can't try to outsmart the models and the data. We have to work with it. 

These 10:1 snow total maps are also going to be deceiving because especially for areas north of Kansas City into northern Missouri, snow ratios will start 10-12:1 and may finish close to 17-18:1. It's obvious with these QPF outputs that GEFS likes a wetter and more southerly track and the EURO a more northerly and weaker track. In the next 24 hours we will (hopefully) see these converge. It's getting to be crunch time. Here we go! 

 

[GDR]

[The Snowman]

Cautiously optimistic here in Omaha. Latest GEFS & EPS have gathered around 0.3-0.45" QPF, which (assuming 20:1 or even 23:1 ratios) looks to translate into at least 5-6". Would love to get 8", my arbitrary personal number for a "big one"

[someweatherdude]

Well, the NAM just went off the deep end and lost all credibility.  KC may not get snow out of this.  But the NAM is out to lunch giving people 25 inches of snow.  

[Jack_GradStudent]

Wow. Nam is 12 degree warmer at the surface compared to the GFS. Ice storm for the Kansas City area. Major outlier at the moment. Has a very wet and strong storm. 

[tStacsh]

Looking good per GRR.  


- New Years Day Winter Storm

Travel impacts are expected over the weekend, especially from
Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning, as a winter storm with
several inches of snow is becoming more likely. The ECMWF has been
fairly consistent the past couple days in showing a stripe of
heavy snow across our forecast area and the GFS trended that way
yesterday and continues today, so confidence is increasing. The
trend has also been for a colder storm, with even our southeast
forecast area getting all or mostly all snow. The 12Z GFS model
sounding at AZO and JXN show all snow by the time the steadier
precip arrives during the late morning on Saturday.

The synoptic set up is interesting in that we are poised to get
heavy snow without a deepening or even well-defined surface low.
Indeed, the surface low does not begin to intensify until it is
well past our longitude and the upper trough goes negative tilt.
The main driver here is strong mid-level frontogenetic forcing
which results from strongly confluent flow ahead of the advancing
positively-tilted longwave trough. The confluence strengthens the
baroclinic zone between SE CONUS ridging and the upper trough.
Deep Gulf moisture is also available in this flow regime.

A 1028mb surface high of arctic origin is centered over the
Northern Plains with sfc ridging extending eastward across
southern Canada feeding cold air at the surface on northeast low
level winds, which will increase snow ratios to 10 to 1 or higher
during this event, unlike the "warm snows" we have seen so far. At
this point it looks like 4 to 8 inches across much of southern
Lower Michigan but mesoscale banding that persists/pivots over
the same could result in locally higher amounts.

[bud2380]

Please let the 18z NAM be right for just once.