Another Snow Maker On Tuesday?

This blog will sort of go all over the place. Sadly it’s going to start with some bad news for the weather community. Yesterday evening a nationally recognized storm chaser was killed by a drunk driver in OK. His name was Andy Gabrielson and while you may not know his name, odds are if you follow the weather and are interested in severe weather and tornado chasing, you’ve seen his work. Take a look at a couple of these youtube videos. Andy was one to press it in terms of getting close to tornados. I didn’t personally know him but again I was very familiar with his work, and we often showed some of it here on FOX 4. He was connected as well to the Weather Channel and they too used a lot of his chasing work.

He was 24 I believe and had a 3 year old daughter. Very sad indeed. I’ve heard nothing but good things about him from the storm chasing community.

Let’s move on…next up is the snow that the KC area received last night/early this morning. For the most part accumulations on the north side were mainly on elevated structures, KCI reported .3″ in snowfall between late SAT night and early SUN AM. That brings our seasonal total up to a whooping .7″. There were some decent accumulations, close to 1″ on cars I noticed. The issue earlier this AM was a break in the cloud cover allowing temperatures to drop into the upper 20s. With the roads being wet, we had some slick areas develop, mainly on bridges and overpasses. There were a handful of accidents in the area. Snowfall amounts were up to about 1″ from St Joe northwards with some 2″+ totals up towards the IA border. Skies have cleared out nicely this AM, but there is a deck of clouds moving southwards through western IA that are holding together. IF they continue to move southwards and stay intact it may cloud right back up this afternoon. That’s something that I’ll watch for you this morning.

Another system is due on on Tuesday. At this point it doesn’t look like a big precip maker, again it may be a rain/snow thing or a snowmaker with temperatures near 35° during the event. So accumulations, if any, may again be a struggle.

After that we’re looking quiet for the rest of the week.

Here is a look at the satellite picture showing the extensive snowfield that now exists just towards the NW of the KC area.

I’m also going to link into another visible satellite picture that should update throughout the day for you, showing the snowcover better as the sun angle get’s higher in the sky.

It’ll be interesting to see if the clouds in IA hold together long enough to get here after lunch time. IF they do highs today may be closer to about 40° or so.

Finally, odds are you haven’t heard much about this, but it is nasty cold in Europe these days. Temperatures on the other side of the hemisphere have been really cold for quite some time, and they’ve been fighting snow in some areas as well. The cold has killed over 250 people. Snow has also been an issue in parts of the world that don’t see a lot. Rome has had some snow this week and apparently it’s a big deal there, and also VERY photogenic. Take a look at this article. some are saying this is the heaviest snow in Rome since 1985.

The snow has been so bad in some countries that they’ve called out the army to help with snow removal. There are still no signs of any prolonged cold heading this way. Cold shots, yup, but nothing that is going to lack in for any length of time.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Joe

Joe