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12/22-12/25/09 REPORTS: Ice, Snow, Wind, Sleet, etc. etc.

Chris Carter said:
My guess would be Nebraska probably saw 20-30 stranded vechiles statewide.
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LOL, I saw that many in just the 30 or 40 miles I covered today in Dodge and Saunders Co...

Been out in some of the rural areas now, 6' Drifts are everywhere, some 15'+ all along the shelter belts, drove through where a couple 8-10 footers had been "cut" kind of like driving through a narrow tunnel. Still a ton of roads impassible.

DRIFT4.jpg


DRIFT7.jpg



My Mom's not the tallest and I didn't use a great angle, but it's something for reference...
DRIFT2.jpg
 
REALLY disappointing for central MN as we ended up at 15.1" at our house. The third wave got killed by the warm tongue of air that got wrapped in last night. We were sitting at 28° about 10pm but it rose to 35° for most of the overnight so basically it dumped 4" of slush...had that warm air not been there and even at a 10:1 ratio, out storm total would have easily topped 20". What really stinks about this is the snow we did get is crap for doing anything as it has this layer of ice about 3" under the surface. Lakes are flooding on top of the ice now also because of the immense weight of last night's slush squall. Anyhow, hopefully the GFS is not playing games as we need the -30° temps to fix flooding issue.

09christmas_storm4.jpg
 
look at the reports from cedar rapids, ia on the 25th. it got colder and the rain switched to snow and the pressure started rising, but the winds switched from east to south when this happened?! don't think i have ever seen that before! synoptically, what happened at that point? this was probably when the low started retrograding northwest away from eastern iowa?? i know this low was so large and strong it was wrapping in warm air all the around to its north and west side, and it was colder on the south and east side of the low

07:52am E 20G 26 lt rain fog/mist 36 deg 29.13in
08:52am E 17 lt rain fog/mist 37 deg 29.13in.
09:52am S22G31 lt snow fog/mist breezy 34 deg 29.18in.
10:52am S 22G30 lt snow 30 deg 29.22in.
11:52am S 21G28 cloudy 26 deg 29.25in.
12:52pm S 17G25 cloudy 22 deg 29.26in.
1:52pm S 14G25 cloudy 20 deg 29.30in.
 
jshields said:
look at the reports from cedar rapids, ia on the 25th. it got colder and the rain switched to snow and the pressure started rising, but the winds switched from east to south when this happened?! don't think i have ever seen that before! synoptically, what happened at that point? this was probably when the low started retrograding northwest away from eastern iowa?? i know this low was so large and strong it was wrapping in warm air all the around to its north and west side, and it was colder on the south and east side of the low
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The boundary between the warm air being entrained to the north of the low and the cold air to its south was marked by an occluded front. Hence the wind shift and changeover from rain to snow. The same thing happened pretty much anywhere in the Midwest that was east of the initial track of the low. In the STL area, for example, the wind was southeast with rain before the front passed, then southwest with snow afterwards. This change moved northeast across Illinois with the occluded front. This can happen when systems get really wrapped up like this one, especially with the northward and eventually northwestward movement.
 
Here over the course of the last storm we had a rather significant ice storm before the heavier rain and gusty winds moved in..power outages affected about 15-30k people here. Lost Power here when a Transformer appeared to have blown behind me..
Ice was 3/4" on Branches and objects..from last Wed night into Thursday a.m.. Quite a storm !

More pics will be avail on my site shortly..
 

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John Farley said:
The boundary between the warm air being entrained to the north of the low and the cold air to its south was marked by an occluded front. Hence the wind shift and changeover from rain to snow. The same thing happened pretty much anywhere in the Midwest that was east of the initial track of the low. In the STL area, for example, the wind was southeast with rain before the front passed, then southwest with snow afterwards. This change moved northeast across Illinois with the occluded front. This can happen when systems get really wrapped up like this one, especially with the northward and eventually northwestward movement.
Click to expand...

That was without question a very impressive occlusion. I followed it on radar and what was interesting to note was how the CF was occluding as well and swinging up from the SW. It overtook the OCC and on radar, a boundary crossover like a pair of scissors occurred just to my NW. I don't know that it would have been visibly discernible but what was easy to spot and appreciate was the leading edge of the OCC as it approached our area at dawn.

CRW_2758b.jpg
 
Rare Christmas Eve Snow in Dallas Metro Area

What a joy it was to walk in the extremely rare experience of blowing and falling snowflakes, throwing snowballs and hearing crunch beneath my feet.
Here in Garland, we only had close to 1/2" of snow. Considerably more was reported west of here; up to 4" near the DFW airport.

Once re-sized as required, I will upload a photo of our patio just after sunrise. Holes in the table top snowpack are from ruler measurements I took the night before.

For a complete description plus more photos, check out my blog site www.birthingyourdream.com
 
I saw an accident just outside of Altoona today. I also heard of many accident's around Des Moines. What was really interesting is seeing the BP Gas Station in Altoona on fire. I saw a big cloud of smoke and flames coming from it and then a fire truck went by. I am not sure if it was a pump or the station itself. Lot's of blowing snow due to the cold Front that came through is making travel difficult on highways but most roads are clear and safe to drive on for the most part here in Iowa.
 
Omaha, Lincoln and Norfolk all broke the records the snowiest December. In just 3 snow events, October 5-6th, December 8-9th, and December 23-26th, Omaha and Norfolk are above average on snowfall for the year. We still have 3-4 months to go.
 
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