The first of two clippers is bearing down on the region as it zips steadily southeast. The atmosphere is in the process of saturating and snow should begin soon in my western counties in Iowa (if it hasn't already) and spread across the rest of the west and south into Illinois by 3 to 4:00pm. Here's the latest radar around 12:30pm. In my northeast counties, dry air remains firmly in place, forcing the snow band to largely avoid this part of my area. As a result, accumulations

We've been in the throes of winter recently, with one of the coldest and snowiest starts to the season in decades. Here's the snow that's fallen the past 2 weeks. Many of us have already seen more than we did all of last year, and it's not even winter yet! Here's the temperature departures, which are running 9 to 11 degrees below normal per day over that same stretch of time. It's reminiscent of the winters of the late 70s, which were epic in every sense of the word for those

After the warmest day in two weeks, temperatures are on their way down again thanks to the passage of a strong clipper. Rapidly rising pressures on its backside and stout cold air advection will drive winds that at times early Wednesday may gust as high as 45 to 55 mph. The HRRR shows gusts around Sioux City as high as 61 mph. That meets severe thunderstorm criteria. Along with the winds will come a shot of colder air that overspreads the region Wednesday morning. At 6:00am,

Considering the official start of winter is still more than two weeks away, it's impossible to say how 2025-26 will end up in terms of severity. However, you have to admit that 2025-26 has gotten off to a fast and rather harsh start, with many places already measuring more than half their average winter snowfall in a week's time. Not only that, sub-zero lows of 5 to 15 below have been good enough to set records. In Cedar Rapids, the minus 11 last week was the earliest double-

The week ahead will feature several storm systems across the Great Lakes region as an active storm track sets up. When it's all said and done the overall snow chances are somewhat muted, but we are tracking a few snow events, a rain event, and with every system passage we will be dealing with up and down temperatures as well as some potential windy conditions. The higher snow chances likely fall later in the work week locally, in the Thursday/Friday time frame as depicted abo