1/21/08 NOW: MN/IA/WI Winter Storm

[David Wolfson]

In Rochester, MN, now in heavy snow. Radar is showing a convergence line from Fairmont, MN, to LaCrosse, WI, likely to persist for several more hours. The area forecast has been successively upped from flurries to 1" to 1"-3" to 3"-5" to ??? Wouldn't be surprised to see a surprise foot or more when all's done late tonight.

Temps are in the mid-single digits with an east wind. Even growing up in eastern MA and central VT I've seldom seen such heavy, meaty snow with single-digit ground temps. Woowoo.

 

[Joel Wright]

Have had about 2.5" here so far. Bands of moderate snow are consistently redeveloping just west of me near the Quad Cities and "training" so to speak over my immediate area. Models indicate maybe another 2-3" by later tonight.

 

[Scott Weberpal]

5" here in Janesville so far. Lake enhancement in conjunction with a zone of strong isentropic lift just north of Milwaukee is causing significantly higher snowfall rates, with over 12" expected by the AM hours.

 

[Joel Wright]

Pushing 5" now. The moderate to heavy snow continues to almost backbuild in eastern IA and move right over me. Hell, I'm starting to think we may get 7-8" now. This was originally supposed to be a 2-4" event lol.

 

[Joel Wright]

Well, ended up with almost 8" out of that interesting little system last night. (I realize this is a "NOW" thread, but this system's not worth a "reports" thread IMO). We were only forecasted by the NWS to get 2-4" originally. Although it's not really their fault as the models severely under-forecasted QPF. Almost all of the models forecasted QPF in the 0.20-0.30" range. Which, when taking into consideration the ~20:1 snow to water ratio would fluff up to about 4-6". Amounts over 7" were fairly common across much of northern IL and into southern WI.

It's always nice to see an event become something more than what was predicted instead of the other way around. It seems like the big systems that we track for up to a week out have a tendency to disappoint, whereas the meager storms sometimes surprise us with more than was forecasted by the models.