PLUM WILD, WHAT A WEEK...

Make no mistake about it, last week was one of the all-time greats for weather here in eastern Iowa and NW Illinois. Trouble is, what made it great was the fact it was so wild and extreme. It all began Tuesday when a moderate severe weather risk was issued. Temperatures down around HWY 34, roughly south of a line from Mt Pleasant to Galesburg reached as high as 82 in Macomb. Galesburg hit 80 with a dew point of 70, extremely rich and rare moisture levels for March 10th.

Near and south of thr warm front the instability and shear for supercell thunderstorms was significant, promoting the moderate risk issuance. Around 4:00pm. SPC issued a tornado watch for the area just southeast of the Quad Cities. Numerous supercells developed but only one produced a confirmed tornado

Three brief EF-1s touched down in Lee, County Iowa NW of Ft. Madison. That was the first tornado that early in that county since 1967.

Further north, in the more stable surface air north of the warm front, conditions were right for elevated supercells. These are not tornado producers but are often prolific hailers.

Between 6:30 and 7:30 pm. last Tuesday (an hour), 51 reports of severe hail were recieved at the NWS office in the Quad Cities. The largest stone near West Branch, was 2.75" in diameter, or near the size of a tennis ball. In any given year, the NWS in Davenport usually sees 6 reports of significant hail (that's the whole year). On this one day alone there were 10!

Following the storm, a ramped up pressure gradient produced extremely high straight line winds midweek. Anamosa hit 69 mph and Dubuque reached 66. To qualify for a severe thunderstorm (of which there were none) winds need to reach 57 mph. We went way aove that, another oddity.

About that time, word was circulating that wintery weather was returning to the Midwest with a massive 2 part storm. The first wave went well north into Minnesota and Wisconsin dropping 18-24 inches of snow in an intense band of warm advection ahead of the main trough still out west. As that punched into the are Sunday, it generated some aditional strong storms near and south of I-80 that produced thunderstorm warnings and more hail. After temperatures reached well into the 50s south, the cold front pushed east where a deepening low pressure wave passed along it south of Galesburg to just south of Chicago. In the cold sector of the storm, snow developed Sunday night that was accompanied by winds of 50mph and blizzard conditions, along with a 5-10 inch swath of snow that fell in my central counties, including the Quad City metro area. The totals ended up looking like this.

Our storm, and the wave ahead of it Saturday night produced combined amounts of 33.2 inches in Ephraim and 26.6 in Green Bay Wisconsin. Here is all the snow reported Saturday night through Monday.

So, I rest my case. Can you get a more extreme week of weather than what we saw the second week of March. Truely, that is March maddness at its finest, and we were here to see it!

A MORE LAID BACK PATTERN, BUT...

One more event is on the table before we go back to a more laid back pattern that will dominate our weather late week into Saturday. It's a clipper like set up with a southeasterly moving disturbance that starts drawing in warmer air Tuesday. As that overruns the cold air in place, it provides the lift for a period of snow Tuesday night. Moisture is not plentiful and warm air advection only lasts around 6-8 hours after saturation. I could see some 1 inch amounts, maybe two in a narrow band. It is all gone by Wednesday and then a nice warm-up commences. Models show this for snow totals Tuesday night. The CAMS are a bit higher than the operational models.

The EURO

The GFS

The National Model Blend

The 3k NAM

The HRRR

The melting process gets underway after that with readings steadily climbing out of the 30s and 40s Wednesday, to the 40s and 50s Thursday, and then close to 70 Friday. Saturday looks very toasty with dry air and westerly winds sending highs well into the 70s, maybe 80 in the far south.

A few showers are possible Saturday night and early Sunday as another very windy system drops readings to more seasonal levels. Not an overly boring pattern, but certainly one that is far less exciting than what we've been experiencing lately. Roll weather...TS

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