Morning Snow Update
Here is a little insight into the way my mind operates, I’m guessing many of my colleagues go about this ritual much like me, but this is what I do AFTER I forecast a snow “event”.
I’m technically off today, but as you know I blog whether I’m off or not, so when my wife’s alarm went off about 15 minutes earlier than usual (5:15), see she listened to me yesterday when I said set your alarm 15 minutes+ earlier than you usually do, I put on my glasses, I get out of bed, slowly walk to the window, crack the blinds and hope I see snow and not grass. By those standards the forecast is either successful, and it’s going to be a good day, or not, and it will be a bad day for yours truly.
Today will be a good day for me, and probably for all my colleagues out there responsible for forecasting snow over the past weekend for today.
Everything has worked out nearly perfectly with this “storm” or whatever you want to call it. I said yesterday that whatever you had on the ground by 9AM or so would be it for the accumulating snow aspect of this system and that is what is taking place as I type this. The back edge of the radar echos of accumulating snow is now moving through the metro. The snow accumulations have averages out to about 2″, give or take a bit.
The roads are what they are, some OK some not so much, and while there have been a bunch of accidents, as I type this it looks like things at least are moving. This was a main point in my discussion yesterday. Also this afternoon’s rush hour will be much smoother that this morning’s, at least from a weather standpoint. Temperatures are in the upper 20s and will probably be near or above freezing later today so that will help tremendously.
Behind the snow, there will be some light freezing drizzle to contend with. I’m not expecting this to really mess anymore with the roads, IF they’re untreated, it won’t make them any better, IF they’re treated, it shouldn’t make them any worse. Tonight we’ll need to watch for some refreezing.
Here is a look at radar at about 7:15 AM. Notice the cutoff to the snow on the KS side and for the MO side that snow should be perhaps an additional 1/2″ IF you get under some of the core shading areas.
Aside from that update, everything else that was talked about for the past couple of days looks on track.
It was interesting last night, in the wee hours of the morning that it took a while for the snow to saturate the lower part of the atmosphere. That though isn’t that unusual give the bottom 5K feet of the airmass was pretty dry. What struck me was that between 1-2 AM the winds really started to pick up. This was a sign of the snow falling aloft and evaporating and cooling the air down. Take a look at a temperature trend map.
Click on that to make it larger.
About an hour before the snow started there South winds about 10-15 MPH. Right before the snow started there were SW winds starting to gust to 35 MPH, then we started to get the snow to make it to the ground and the winds dropped right back to to 10 MPH. in about an hours time. We also went from 33° to 27° in one hour, thanks to evaporating snow chilling the column.
Finally in my wonderful world of statistics. KCI reported 1″ of snow as of 6AM this morning. That ends the length of time it took for us to get our 1st inch of snow for the winter season at 2/13. This is the 4th latest in our recorded history. The record as I wrote yesterday goes back to 1931.
So how did the rest of the winter’s go for those 3 other seasons where we waited so long. Well in 1910-11 we had a whooping 14.1″. In 1933-34 we had 7.2″ and finally in 1930-31 we had 14.6″. what do we take from that, the odds really favor below average snows for the rest of the winter season!
Have a great Monday and I’ll get you another update early this afternoon.
Joe
