SNOW IS ON THE MOVE. THE RACE HAS STARTED...

So far so good. The winter storm is evolving and on the move. Snow has invaded southwest Minnesota and NW Iowa at mid-day and is tracking southeast.

By way of temperatures you can see where the low should track. Find that 30-32 degree isotherm and follow it from South Dakota to northeast Missouri and you have the highway the system travels.

I'm quite amazed at how low the dew points are in parts of NE Iowa and SE Minnesota. Some as low as -4. Any precip. that falls into an air mass like that will quickly induce evaporative cooling once saturation occurs. No issues with precip type in my area with snow being the dominate form.

The storm center at 500mb shows up nicely on the satellite image in Montana. Moisture is beginning to enter the system on the jet streak you can see punching from California and Arizona into Kansas.

Advisories and warnings currently look like this.

The new snow forecasts are in and I will start with the EURO. It still shows some reorganization of the lift and moisture over parts of eastern Iowa as the storm phases. There is a bit of a dry slot showing right over Cedar Rapids and Iowa City (right where I live, wouldn't you know). Instead of a swath of 7-8" snows all across the NE half of Iowa it drops amounts by 2-3" (to about 5") over me. Then just east around the Mississippi amounts go back up to that 7" category. That's the second run in a row for that cute little trick. To a lesser degree the US models are showing a similar trend so there is support for that idea. That little mesoscale feature could mess with totals in localized area. Will need to watch that going forward.

Here's the larger view of the EURO snowfall forecast. You can see that decrease in snow centered on Cedar Rapids. I am the black hole of weather, especially when it comes to snow!

Moving on here's what the GFS has for totals. It's is a bit further east with the lower amounts into NC Illinois.

The NAM is actually a little further west with the lower totals from Cedar Rapids to Tama.

Finally, the 4k NAM.

In the end, it's still a widespread snow event that should produce 4-7" of snow in my local area. A localized 8" total is possible if we get some banding or focused forcing. It gets underway this evening and tapers off Monday late morning or afternoon. Today is the 85th consecutive day without an inch of snow here in Cedar Rapids. All of you moaning about the coming snow in my area should really try not to cry too much. It hasn't been much of a winter around here and it won't be around long. Let me have my day! Roll weather...TS