WHAT A MONTH!

The strongest winter storm of the season moved through my local area Saturday. Over a foot of snow was recorded in parts of Iowa... impressive! Especially for March. Roads were covered, visibility was low, heavy, wet snow came down in buckets in much of central and eastern Iowa.

The largest snowfall total I could find was Mason City, Iowa at 17.5"! Wowza...

Wintry precipitation and snow continued into Illinois and Indiana...

But as you can see there was an incredibly sharp cutoff on both the north and south sides. Feast or famine on the white gold! There were places that went from a few inches to nearly a foot of snow by just a matter of 30 miles. The cutoff was due to dry air eating away at that part of the system.

The Cedar Rapids site (located in Marion on the NE side of town) checked in at 7.3" of snow. The biggest snow we've had all season... and in several years! That is the largest single day total since February 2, 2011 (during the Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011). Not to mention pretty rare for this late in the season.

The good thing about late season snow is that it tends to leave pretty quickly. There is *a lot* of heavy, wet snow to melt though. Temperatures will be greatly impacted by the snow and be near or just above freezing Sunday afternoon. The strong March sun will do it's work though!

Another thing that will help the melting is another storm. This storm will bring in some warmer air and some rain -- which will do a number on the snow on the ground. Showers and even some rumbles of thunder will be possible.

Temperatures will be cool, but above the 32 mark!

It is going to take some time to melt away a foot or more of snow.. if you haven't gotten out there to shovel.. take your time. Or wait for it to melt! Maybe we can put winter behind us after this one, but March is a wild month... literally anything can happen! RK