AND NOW SOME ICING "MAKE THAT SNOW" ON THE CAKE....

After the second significant severe weather outbreak of the year, the focus turns to colder and in some areas snowier weather. Before I get to that I did want to show you how active the tornado season has already been. Monday alone 10 touched down in Iowa bringing the national total to 302. The 3 year average through March 6th is about 62 (5 times more to date than in 2017!)

You can also see this year is close to an all-time high as of March 6th and ranks in the top 95% .

For now the Midwest will get a breather as the EPO (eastern Pacific Oscillation) has begun moving into negative territory on both the ensembles of the EURO and GFS.

This will ensure about a week of colder weather March 8th-15th. Then it goes positive again and up go temperatures and severe weather potential in some parts of the Midwest the 3rd week of March. Here's the 5 day temperature departure for March 9-14 representing the drop in the EPO. Along that ribbon of cold with be an active storm track that spears the central U.S.

Now the 5 day departures for March 15th-20th when the EPO rises again.

During the week long colder phase of the EPO models are indicating a couple systems with the potential for snow. The first opportunity comes Friday night early Saturday. Here's the surface low on the GFS.

Here's the snow the model produces.

The second system arrives late Sunday night and Monday. Here's what the GFS does with it.

Combining this with the first system, the GFS shows total snowfall over the next 7 days that looks like this. What happened to spring!

Now, the first thing to take away from all this is that these numbers will change in coming runs. I feel pretty good about the general trends but the final track and intensity of both systems is still in question. About all we can do now is take it day by day and storm by storm. However, I think much of the Midwest has some of the best snow chances we've seen in a good long time. Roll weather...TS