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.