SHAVED BY A CLIPPER UP NORTH?...
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SHAVED BY A CLIPPER
I'm watching what appears to be another one of these nuisance clippers which could bring some snow to the north Tuesday night and early Wednesday. As we've seen numerous times this year, HWY 20 seems to be the cut-off line...near or north of it.
Most of the snow (on today's EURO anyway) is shown occurring in a 40-50 mile band north of a line from Cedar Falls/Waterloo to Independence and then close to just south of Dubuque and on to Rockford. That could fluctuate in future runs depending on the depth of the cold air and resulting track. Most places that get in on the snow would see and inch or less although a narrow 10-20 mile wide band could bust off a couple inches. That small threat appears to be north of HWY 20
Speaking of that temperatures will be marginal in that range of 30-32 during the event so it will be a wet sloppy snow. With the ground warmer from recent mild days.much of the accumulation could end up on grassy and elevated surfaces if snow rates are not intense. However, there is a good chance where the primary axis sets up it could snow hard enough for and hour or two to compensate for the warmer ground temps and still accumulate on hard surfaces. The snow is shown developing shortly after midnight and is gone by early to mid morning Wednesday from west to east.
The big question now is does the track hold? If it inches north just 10-20 miles that pretty much takes Waterloo and Independence out of the action. A little further south and then some minor accumulations are possible to HWY 30. As it stands now only a trace of snow is shown in Cedar Rapids and none at all in the Quad Cities.
If anything, systems like this tend to shift a bit north as opposed to south at this time of year but the EURO has shown little tendency to budge the past 2 runs so it has been consistent.
Here's the model forecasts for snow. The EURO is heaviest and also the most favored solution.
THE EURO
THE GFS
The 3k NAM
The 12K NAM
As you can see there are differences in amounts and location that need to be resolved and the only thing that will bring us concrete answers is time and more runs. I will keep you up to date as track and intensity becomes clearer later today and early Tuesday. I can say with certainty the chances of accumulating snow south of HWY 30 are slim and none barring some sort of meteorological miracle!
After this I do not see any wintry precipitation the rest of the week. In fact, the weekend promises a significant warm-up that should see widespread 60s Sunday. Roll weather...TS
