It’s another Friday, and I have another couple of hours to look at the weather. Plus, we are getting our first snow since before Thanksgiving, so I feel a little more weather-ready (though not as much as yesterday).

Snow confintues to fall tonight as a small system spins past us to the southwest. The storm is taking a little more of a northern track to keep us out the maximum snow. The heaviest band has already passed by and we are about get get dry-slotted. The snow will probably end around here in an hour, and we’ll see little after it as the center of the storm passes near or over us.

The 21Z RUC is still a little too far south with this storm, so it makes we wonder how well they are handling the next storm now over Monterray, CA. Models continue to show this storm diving into the southwest and cutting off hard. Then we go into an odd split-flow weather pattern. Odd, because we have a continual deformation zone between the cut-off to southwest and waves in the northern stream. Because of this, and little in the way of steering currents around here, we’ll probably be socked in with the clouds for some time. The models don’t really have a good handle of the timing of waves propagating in this pattern, flip-flopping with each run and each are different. Best consensous is a wave that dives south just NE of us in the Monday night – Tuesday time frame. There is another wave that gets spit out from the cutoff on Sunday, but it looks weak, and I’m not terribly confident in it being strong enough to effect us. The ECMWF and GFS have been pretty consistant in keeping the cutoff in place through at least Friday.

So… until further notice, it’s status quo for the weather. Mostly cloudy with highs in the low to mid 30s through much of the week. No precip from late in the morning through Sunday. Small chances for snow come back in Monday, but that’s all the excitement here. It’s been dry, so hopefully we’ll get more precip soon.

It’s another Friday, and I have another couple of hours to look at the weather. Plus, we are getting our first snow since before Thanksgiving, so I feel a little more weather-ready (though not as much as yesterday).

Snow confintues to fall tonight as a small system spins past us to the southwest. The storm is taking a little more of a northern track to keep us out the maximum snow. The heaviest band has already passed by and we are about get get dry-slotted. The snow will probably end around here in an hour, and we’ll see little after it as the center of the storm passes near or over us.

The 21Z RUC is still a little too far south with this storm, so it makes we wonder how well they are handling the next storm now over Monterray, CA. Models continue to show this storm diving into the southwest and cutting off hard. Then we go into an odd split-flow weather pattern. Odd, because we have a continual deformation zone between the cut-off to southwest and waves in the northern stream. Because of this, and little in the way of steering currents around here, we’ll probably be socked in with the clouds for some time. The models don’t really have a good handle of the timing of waves propagating in this pattern, flip-flopping with each run and each are different. Best consensous is a wave that dives south just NE of us in the Monday night – Tuesday time frame. There is another wave that gets spit out from the cutoff on Sunday, but it looks weak, and I’m not terribly confident in it being strong enough to effect us. The ECMWF and GFS have been pretty consistant in keeping the cutoff in place through at least Friday.

So… until further notice, it’s status quo for the weather. Mostly cloudy with highs in the low to mid 30s through much of the week. No precip from late in the morning through Sunday. Small chances for snow come back in Monday, but that’s all the excitement here. It’s been dry, so hopefully we’ll get more precip soon.

Well, it’s been some time since I’ve put together a forecast discussion, but I feel compelled to do so with a significant wind event on our doorstep. Haven’t spent a great deal of time looking at things, so there won’t be much of a model analysis… but I’ve looked at enough to take a quick look at a forecast…

An unusually strong Alberta clipper continues to zip through the homeland (Wisconsin) tonight. On the back side, another strong polar front is rapidly diving south, and will be ripping though here probably by the time I finish this discussion. Winds behind the front are already sustained at 20-30kts in NE, and we can expect winds to only increase as the storm continues to strengthen. Models continue to show a pressure gradient on the realm of 1mb per 25-50 miles. Even tighter across IA. This could easily bring winds on the order of 45-50 mph around here before sunrise. The weather service believes that the fog and clouds may limit the mixing of momentum down to the surface (up to 65kts at 1000mb progged), but I believe that this won’t be too much of a limiting factor until morning once the boundary layer recouples. Plus, the cloud line is just west of here, and we may clear out some overnight. With peak winds coming sometime between 3 and 9, we could easily see gusts up to 55-60mph. Either way, the windows will be a-rattlin’ tonight. It should be interesting to compare readings from OJC and IXD to the ol’ Davis on the roof.

The winds will slowly subside through the afternoon, and tomorrow night should be cold, with readings in the single digits after temps in the teens (and wind chills -5 to -15) during the afternoon. Certainly nothing quite like thye -20 with -55 wind chills I got to experience last week in MSP. We should continue in the current weather pattern for some time (trough to the east, ridge to the west… we are caught in-between). Sunday afternoon, we should start to benefit from the storm pushing east enough to modify the longwave pattern a little further east. Temperatures should continue to moderate as we head into the first part of the week, as once again get the benefit of the advection of downslope air from the west. The models are typically too aggressive with modifying cold-dense air during the winter, but I believe the timing of the warmup is such as though they should do too bad this time around. A weak wave moves through Sunday night, which the models respond by bringing slightly warmer 850 temps in. With limited overnight mixing, and the difficulty of maintaining downslope heat overnight, I don’t think it’s going to make much difference. Otherwise the warmup it pretty realistic. We may be talking temperatures once again well into the 50s by Tuesday.

Well, it’s been some time since I’ve put together a forecast discussion, but I feel compelled to do so with a significant wind event on our doorstep. Haven’t spent a great deal of time looking at things, so there won’t be much of a model analysis… but I’ve looked at enough to take a quick look at a forecast…

An unusually strong Alberta clipper continues to zip through the homeland (Wisconsin) tonight. On the back side, another strong polar front is rapidly diving south, and will be ripping though here probably by the time I finish this discussion. Winds behind the front are already sustained at 20-30kts in NE, and we can expect winds to only increase as the storm continues to strengthen. Models continue to show a pressure gradient on the realm of 1mb per 25-50 miles. Even tighter across IA. This could easily bring winds on the order of 45-50 mph around here before sunrise. The weather service believes that the fog and clouds may limit the mixing of momentum down to the surface (up to 65kts at 1000mb progged), but I believe that this won’t be too much of a limiting factor until morning once the boundary layer recouples. Plus, the cloud line is just west of here, and we may clear out some overnight. With peak winds coming sometime between 3 and 9, we could easily see gusts up to 55-60mph. Either way, the windows will be a-rattlin’ tonight. It should be interesting to compare readings from OJC and IXD to the ol’ Davis on the roof.

The winds will slowly subside through the afternoon, and tomorrow night should be cold, with readings in the single digits after temps in the teens (and wind chills -5 to -15) during the afternoon. Certainly nothing quite like thye -20 with -55 wind chills I got to experience last week in MSP. We should continue in the current weather pattern for some time (trough to the east, ridge to the west… we are caught in-between). Sunday afternoon, we should start to benefit from the storm pushing east enough to modify the longwave pattern a little further east. Temperatures should continue to moderate as we head into the first part of the week, as once again get the benefit of the advection of downslope air from the west. The models are typically too aggressive with modifying cold-dense air during the winter, but I believe the timing of the warmup is such as though they should do too bad this time around. A weak wave moves through Sunday night, which the models respond by bringing slightly warmer 850 temps in. With limited overnight mixing, and the difficulty of maintaining downslope heat overnight, I don’t think it’s going to make much difference. Otherwise the warmup it pretty realistic. We may be talking temperatures once again well into the 50s by Tuesday.