Winter in Full Affect

Woke up around 11 a.m. this morning to a dusting of snow with temps in the single digits and a windchill of 11 below. The artic front has arrived and it appears as though winter will be here to stay for the next couple of weeks as the pattern remains active.

The warmest day we will probably see through the end of the week should be in the mid 20s here in Omaha with a decent shot at snow both Tuesday and Thursday. Then a reinforcing shot of cold air Thursday night/ Friday depending on the timing of the next front and which model solution you want to believe.

The snow producer Tuesday looks to give us our first real shot of decent accumulating snow here in Omaha and across most of East Central and Southeast Nebraska. The GFS/ WRF/ ECMWF/ and UKMET have all picked up on this feature and have very negligable differences in location and timing. The UKMET is the outlier taking energy further south across Kansas and into Eastern Iowa with little precipitation falling along the Southern Nebraska border. With the artic airmass in place across the region snow ratios should yeild around 14-16 inches of snow to one inch of water.

Both the WRF and GFS yeild the heaviest precipitation along and just south of the I-80 corridor in Nebraska and Eastward into Central Iowa.

GFS provides right around a 1/4 inch of liquid precipitation, using the 14:1 - 16:1 snow ratios that yeilds between 3 and 4 inches of snow in this heavier band. WRF provides about 3/10ths of an inch of liquid precipitation along this same corridor, yeilding between 4 and a 1/4 inches and 5 inches of snow in this heavier area.

As we have appraoched this event models have shown a notible increase in the originzation and strength of this system. Coupled with availability of moisture from the Gulf if this trend continues, we could see a narrow area of Winter Storm Warning snows, otherwise a Winter Weather Adviosry will most likely be issued at some point with an area of 3-5 inch snows along the I-80 corridor and southward likely.

Check back for more on this later.

Dec. 9, No snow

Woke up this morning to no snow and just a bit of wind with temps in the teens. There was a fairly heavy band about to move into the Omaha area last night that evaporated as it moved into the city. Dustin Wilcox just off to the north near Arlington even got around an inch. Our next chance for winter weather appears to be next week about this time depending on which model you believe. More on this later when I have a chance to take a look at it.

First Post

Hello,

Its my first post here on blogspot. I toyed with this idea over the summer however, I didn't really have the time to work on it. As we head into winter, (looking at our first accumulating snow here in Omaha today) I feel that I will have a bit more time to devote to this. All of my photos are taken with a Canon Rebel XTi and I'm exploring more photography methods as time goes on as well as trying new subject matters.

Regarding our potential for snow today. The Winter Storm Watch which was earlier in effect has been dropped and we are now looking at only 1-3 inches of nuisance snow. As of this writing a cold front is about to spread through Eastern Nebraska as the low moves further NE from the TX/ OK panhandle region. On and have mist has accompanied the frontal passage and we should be changing to snow between 6-8 pm, with some light snow showers and gusty winds on and off through the night. The only way I forsee any additional snow accumulation is if the system somehow slows down or ends up coming across the plains a bit further south than currently projected. More updates on this later.

I leave you with my first image, and one that really defined my chase season this year.

This is the circulation of a tornado producing storm near Elkhorn, NE. This later produced a tornado near Highway 33 very close to my location, which we then had to jet south to get away from. The huge curing RFD and gustfront then cut off our view as we emerged from the precipitation in the hook region of the storm.