COOL, CALM, AND FAIRLY COLLECTED

The storm system that has dominated the weather pattern this week is finally on its last legs. It's parting gift was a dusting of light snow that in a few spots accumulated slightly more than an inch Friday. Marion, Iowa even measured as much as 2 inches. Here's the 24hour snowfall reports from the Iowa Mesonet.

While the amounts were light here, it was a different story to our NW where the storm blasted NE Nebraska, SE South Dakota, and central Minnesota with 1 to 2 feet of snow. Lakeville on the south side of Minneapolis racked up 17.5 inches. Fulton, South Dakota east of Mitchell was the big winner with 27 inches. Man, that's a whole winters worth of snow around here.

Speaking of the winter so far, here's the seasonal snowfall across the nation. With plenty of winter to go, its already been a big season for snow to our north (typical with La Nina's) where 2-4 feet of the white stuff has already fallen from the Dakota's through Minnesota, and NW Wisconsin. The majority of my area is sub-normal, generally under 8 inches to date. Another lame year in the white gold department.

From the looks of things the pattern remains relatively snow free for my area the next two weeks. Here's what the ensembles of the EURO and GFS indicate for total snow through January 20th. Ugh.

The EURO ensemble mean

The GFS ensemble mean has even less.

As I've been mentioning regularly this week, the deterministic models have shown no signs of any true Arctic air or significant cold ahead. The EURO ensembles indicate a zero percent chance of a temperature colder than 10 degrees before January 20th. I'll take that any time in mid-January.

In fact, the 10 day average temperature departures for the period January 10th-20th are astounding. Essentially, there's no cold air anywhere over the majority of North America. That's just wrong at the coldest time of the year.

That also flies in the face of the MJO (Madden Julien Oscillation) which by all major models is forecast to travel through January's coldest phases (8, 1, and 2) starting January 12th. Here's what the GEFS extended MJO looks like out to February 2nd.

Note the distinctly cold analogs of all those phases(8,1,2) in January.

Personally, I find hard to believe we don't snap to a decidedly colder pattern by January 20th. Yet, here are the EURO 5 day temperature departures January 15th to the 20th.

It may take 10-14 days but I expect a significant snap back to cold by January 20th as the MJO finally has its way. I think the EURO may be sniffing it out too showing a lot of cold over the nation January 22-29th. I would not be surprised if later runs are even colder.

For what it's worth (as a broad brush trend), the EURO weeklies show a fair amount of snow nationwide between now and February 20th. There has to be plenty of cold air in the pattern at some point in the future for the model to see snow of that extent. Bottom line, I still think there is plenty of winter ahead of us.

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THE WEEKEND AHEAD...

This weekend though appears to be uneventful. Friday will be dry and we should see some breaks of sunshine. Highs will be in the low to mid 30s. Saturday looks fine with some sunshine and similar temperatures. The only small concern is way down south Saturday night when a weak system tries to brush extreme southern Iowa and WC Illinois with some snow showers. The EURO remains dry in all areas but the GFS (as it has for several days) tries to amplify the system a bit more and brings some minor accumulations way down south. Here's the comparison of the two different solutions.

The EURO

The GFS

I still think the GFS is an outlier and accumulating snow remains just south of my region. Worst case scenario a dusting to areas near the Missouri border including places like Ft. Madison, Keokuk, and Monmouth (and frankly I doubt that).

Whatever happens, Sunday should see the return of partly cloudy skies and slightly warmer temperatures with highs ranging from 34 north to 38 south.

That's where I will wrap it up for now. Happy Friday to one and all and roll weather...TS