60 DEGREES! WILL WE PAY FOR IT?
As anticipated on tswails.com 3 weeks ago the weather pattern has turned active around the Midwest. Storms have been more frequent and have contained more moisture leading to higher precipitation totals. As you can see below, radar estimates indicate 1-3" totals over my general area in just the past 2 weeks.
Arkansas has been especially wet with most of the state reporting 7-13" of rain the past 14 days. The wetness continues northeast into the Ohio River Valley.
Where temperatures have been colder snow has piled up from NW Iowa into Minnesota and NW Wisconsin. Here's the snow depths as of Monday morning. 10-30" depths are common up that way. The snow machines are getting a work out.
One area that's not been so stormy in this pattern is the high Plains of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Around Amarillo, Texas no measurable rain has fallen for 136 days and counting! That's over 4 months...1/3rd of a year.
Here's a couple of tweets from the Amarillo NWS regarding the dryness. Severe drought conditions and wildfires are major concerns. The dates on the tweets have changed so you need to do a little math to get the correct numbers.
The next storm to bring wet weather to the Midwest is showing up nicely on the satellite. A well defined upper air low spinning across southern California.
For several days this was looking like a formidable system but Monday's data has shown less phasing between the northern and southern branches of the jet. So instead of heavy precipitation in my area amounts are trending lighter. The GFS now has this for total precip.
Also, there will be less dynamic cooling making it harder for any of the rain to transition to snow. After some really large numbers the past couple of days tonight's GFS was very lean. I'm still leery about totally buying in but the threat of snow has greatly diminished on the U.S. models. Here's the latest GFS snowfall forecast as of Monday night. Most of this would fall Thursday morning if it happens.
The EURO with a more phased look shows larger totals. I think it's way over done and will probably come in lighter on the next run late tonight.
Whatever happens (and there is still time to figure it out) Tuesday is going to be a fine day over the central Midwest. I'm looking at mostly sunny skies and highs that should reach 60 as far north as Omaha, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, the Quad Cities, and Chicago. Yes!!!
That's where we stand for now. Roll weather...TS
