The snow continued to melt away on Sunday as temperatures climbed well above freezing. The birds were singing, dogs were on longer walks, and Midwesterners wore sweatshirts instead of coats. The warmth will keep on rolling as the week goes on. Temperatures will be in the 40s and 50s Monday: Pretty similar on Tuesday: And even warmer on Wednesday: This is thanks to a big ridge of high pressure hanging out in the upper levels of the atmosphere: There's a cold front that moves t

The snow is leaving just about as fast as it came! We had 1-5" of fresh powder on the ground Saturday morning from Thursday night's system and some sunshine and southerly winds started to melt it away by the afternoon. We went from this Saturday morning: (The white on the map where you can see the river valleys - that's all snow seen from space with sunny skies) To this by the end of the day: You can see a shrinking of the snowpack, especially near and south of Highway 30. As

The weekend got off to a cold start thanks to a fresh mantle of snow delivered by Friday's disturbance. As you can see below, the track of the system allowed the heavier amounts to fall northwest of the Quad Cities. In that area, amounts were generally in the 2-4" range, with a 5" report near Dubuque. Southeast of the Quad Cities totals were around 1-2". Here's a larger perspective of Midwest snow totals. The visible satellite imagery clearly shows river valleys imbedded with

A weather system crossing the Midwest was responsible for generating the snow we endured Thursday. As I mentioned in my previous post Wednesday night, I was concerned about how much snow would actually fall. At that time forecasts were basically calling for 2-4 inches areawide. As I mentioned, support for totals like that was mixed, especially in the south due to a lack of phasing between two separate pieces of energy. Without the proper bundling, the split in the energy coul

It won't cause big problems but a storm system emanating out of the southwest will bring a round of snow to all of the area later Thursday and Thursday night. The snow will be of the light fluffy kind so it will be relatively easy to shovel but there will be enough of it to create slick travel conditions. More on that in just a minute. NOT A GOOD YEAR FOR SNOW (AT LEAST FOR ME) First though, I thought it would be interesting to see how the snow season is progressing around th