- Dec 28, 2017

SNOW AND COLD, THE DOUBLE WHAMMY...

It took a long time for winter to find us but we're making up for lost time now. Following our Christmas Eve snow Arctic air invaded the Midwest and that's put some real chill into the air the past few mornings. Here in Cedar Rapids we've strung together lows of -3, -8, and -13. Here's some of the lows around my area Wednesday morning. Waterloo hit 15 below.

Serious cold invaded northern Minnesota where Cotton northwest of Duluth hit 41 below. International Falls came in at -36.

Snow cover played a role in the cold. Here's the snow depths reported this morning. Lake effect regions doing really well in the white gold department.

The northwest flow will not only keep the cold air locked in place it will deliver snow clippers on a regular basis. These are relatively narrow disturbances and difficult for models to see and time out so confidence is low on when and where these will end up. However, it does appear my local area is in a favorable spot to get into some decent snow. I guess we'll see soon enough.

One of these is currently passing through the region producing a light fluffy snow with a minimal moisture content. A couple more of these are set to move through between now and Sunday. The next, which is shown arriving Friday has the potential to be a bit stronger with a band of 1-3" snows somewhere in the area.

These will all add up and with the high snow ratios of 20:1 many spots could end up with 3-5"+ of snow by Sunday. This will certainly need to be watched but this is the latest trend among all the major models. Here's some total snow forecasts through New Years Day.

The GFS:

The NAM:

The EURO:

A tighter view of the EURO:

After the snow comes a BIG Arctic high and that will no doubt lead to bitter cold temperatures to close out 2017 and the start of 2018. Wind chill advisories or warnings are very likely by the close of the coming weekend.

The GFS shows this for lows New Years morning.