COMING IN WHITE, SHOVELS READY...

I had a medical procedure today to correct an irregular heartbeat, what's known in the medical world as atrial fibrillation. My heart was essentially shocked to restore a regular rhythm (kind of like booting your computer). Amazingly, it worked and now I'm regular again! Hopefully it stays that way. We have no idea why it went out in the first place.

Anyway, after a long day I am going to make this short but felt it was necessary to address the snow that's due in Friday. Assuming you haven't heard, the majority of my area is now under a winter weather advisory from Friday morning at 9:00 until midnight Friday night. From the looks of things this is a high end advisory with some areas pushing winter storm warning criteria with snow totals up around 6 inches....the majority of my area seeing 3-5" totals. Here's the current winter weather advisories.

The NWS in the Quad Cities produced this graphic showing the arrival of the snow in my area.

Here's some snowfall forecasts from the NWS in Des Moines and the Quad Cities.

Now the Quad Cities.

The NWS forecast amounts are looking pretty solid considering what the latest models are showing as of Thursday night. Here's the GFS.

The NAM looks like this. The higher totals based on snow ratios of 25:1

Once the snow departs extremely cold air descends on the Midwest for the remainder of the holiday weekend. By New Years morning lows are forecast near 20 below on the GFS. More than possible if the snow comes as expected.

Wind chills could be pushing -40.

The NWS in the Quad Cities put out this statement regarding the cold.

OK, the nurse (Carolyn) says it's time for bed. Winter is alive and well, finally! Roll weather...TS