Attention now turns to winter storm likely to impact the area Thursday. Models have been more and more pessimistic on bringing precip on Wed night… therefore will keep Wednesday out of this. Overall changes to the system track and area are little from last discussion…soundings have been a little exotic with it but have been more consistent as the afternoon progresses. Timing has also improved…the storm should begin in SW Iowa (which is why OAX has issued WSA in advance) and track Northwesternward where it will gradually worsen. I still will not post any pinpoint snowfall estimates until 48 hrs in advance as anything I estimate will likely change later on. The Upper Low will make it’s way out of the four corners region and make it’s way farther north into Nebraska and eventually into the Dakotas. Another wave will split off the base causing the flow of the system to split over Iowa. A thing that I fail to see consistency with in the models is the movement of the surface low into SC into SE Minnesota… but will leave that out for now. Another topic that I missed in the last discussion is that Iowa should be in the warmer side of this system due to the Upper Low being NW of Iowa. Soundings agree with this…and this should limit our snowfall numbers as we get to that point. But this does not decrease the significance of this storm as areas in NW Iowa will still see a good amount of snow…but where the end of this significance will lie is unknown. Along with this entire system will be the gusty winds…and nonetheless without lots of snow or not we will see impacts from the wind.
More problems coming with this…we still expect a dry slot across Southern Iowa into our Northern Missouri counties. Models have differentiation on where this will all take place and whether we will see this go farther South or not. But if this dry slot remains the threats of the storm will only rise with snow, freezing rain, high winds, and even temperatures concerns with this system. Once the surface low lifts Thursday evening into Thursday night… more snow should fall and even though significant accumulation is not expected…visibilities and road conditions will remain a problem.
The system will finally depart out of our area Friday morning into midday but snow chances should remain across the North for the majority of the day. Temperatures will differ from where the hard snow is to where the little to no snow is. Will make final call as we get closer but not worried about it at this time. Another storm is expected later in the weekend but models are having a tantrum with the forecast of it and I will not even consider mentioning it at this time.
