WAITING AND WATCHING THE HALLOWEEN STORM...

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We just finished up with our first now of the season here in Cedar Rapids. At my place I'm estimating 2.5". It was pretty as heck with some healthy dendritic flakes for more than 2 hours. It's a winter wonderland and it's only October 28th. This was taken in Cedar Rapids late Monday evening.

These are some snowfall reports as of 1:20 am by way of the Iowa Mesonet.

It's past 2:00 am and I'm going to have some long days coming up with the next system already in by Wednesday night so I will make this brief and get back on it in the morning. All I really wanted to convey in this post is that the EURO did make a little move towards the GFS on the 0z run. I had mentioned Monday how the GFS was much more bullish on the Halloween system and how its solution seemed to be an outlier. Tonight it really came in hot showing this for snowfall Wednesday night and Thursday. Remember this is just model output, not a forecast. These totals also include a couple inches from Monday night's system.

Here's a larger perspective.

Compare that to the EURO which is significantly lighter but still not too shabby for October.

The larger perspective of the EURO

I'm still not completely sold on any of these depictions and I have some real concerns with how heavy the GFS is. It will be very interesting to see what Tuesday's runs do. For tonight, I'm just going to say I think the more conservative minded EURO is far more reasonable. But, even that supports a good chance of some areas seeing a healthy wet snow just before Halloween. The one and only thing I can say in defense of the GFS is that the pattern is quite energetic with ample cold air. If the phasing comes together right over the Plains, the potential is there for a stronger system like the GFS depicts. Just saying, it's not entirely out of the question. We'll know more tomorrow as data gets better sampled. Until then, I am enjoying my snow and looking forward to more. Yea baby! Roll weather...TS