Potential Great Plains Blizzard Sunday-Tuesday?

snowfall anywhere east of the mountains looks minimal unfortunately.

Actually the GFS is dropping a healthy amount of snow with the secondary low Thursday night / Friday through the Great Lakes... NAM starting to look like it might resemble, but other models not nearly as dramatic.
 
Rob Dale;

You can bet I'm watching that secondary low! Lots of QPF under a pretty unstable system... Still a long way out to get specific, but a secondary low looks more and more likely with each run.

This will be one of those tricky situations where the stationary front / baroclinic zone has to line up just right, and the energy has to dive in at just the right time.
 
I woke up this morning to hear the hazardous weather outlook issued by LOT mentioning the threat of thunderstorms wednesday in the day and then temps doing a nosedive with snow at night.......not big news but what i was surprised to hear was "the chance of accumulating snow" thurs into friday far south and east sections of the outlook area, so that could only mean the main storm system will pass south of chicago and we only get clipped, or at least thats what the NWS LOT is thinking........

"TEMPERATURES WILL TURN SHARPLY COLDER LATE IN THE WEEK. AN
ACCUMULATING SNOW IS HIGHLY POSSIBLE IN THE PERIOD THURSDAY THROUGH FRIDAY. THIS MAY BE ONE OF THE FIRST MAJOR SNOWS OF THE NEW WINTER...BUT IS TOO EARLY TO DEFINE AMOUNTS AND HEAVIEST HIT LOCATIONS. DEVELOPMENT OR DETERIORATION OF THIS UPCOMING WINTER SYSTEM WILL BE MONITORED THROUGH THE WEEK"

well i take that back just took a little excerpt from the new outlook maybe we will get hit with a snow storm.....great just in time for finals.....i love driving 30 miles in a snow storm to go take 2 hour finals ha ha ha
 
Well those additional shortwaves I was hoping for look to be in the cards. I think what's happening is the full latitude trough is going to slow down long enough to "let" some other waves come around and develop a storm. Since it's still four days or more away, there's a lot left to be resolved. If the whole thing slows down even more (which it probably will) everything will continue to get pushed westward. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the swath of heaviest snow end up back in IA through WI.

A few more model runs should help clarify where all this is going to play out. Due to the fact that the Ukmet, GFS, and NAM (and even the ECMWF to some degree) show at least a moderate strength storm in the Ohio valley late this week gives me confidence in the development of a decent storm. It's just a matter of where and who gets it.

I'm happy this is what seems to be developing. I was very disappointed a few days back when it looked as if this strong cold push was going to blow in and out without at least a decent storm system in the eastern half of the country.
 
WOW! Just after I posted the above paragraph I went and took a gander at the incoming 18z GFS. The system is even further west. Yesterday the low was expected to track through PA, now it's darn near the border of IL/IN.

This thing may end up snowing heavily as far west as NE!
 
SREF shows some pretty big deviations across the Ohio Valley region (and points southwestward). At 850MB, there is a pretty broad area of 8C deviations... SFC pressure deviation is also pretty big, at 10MB. Being over 84 hours away, it's really hard to tell where this system will end up... As Joel noted, each run has been further west, so I would give that a heavier weight right now. That could mean much of the area from DMX eastward will be in the warm sector.
 
SREF shows some pretty big deviations across the Ohio Valley region (and points southwestward). At 850MB, there is a pretty broad area of 8C deviations... SFC pressure deviation is also pretty big, at 10MB. Being over 84 hours away, it's really hard to tell where this system will end up... As Joel noted, each run has been further west, so I would give that a heavier weight right now. That could mean much of the area from DMX eastward will be in the warm sector.

Why don't you go find a parade and rain on it?! :mad::p
 
00Z NAM is pretty interesting to say the least. 850-500MB VV's explode to the northwest of 850MB low, where temperatures are -6C to -8C. NAM outputs up to 1.50 inches of QPF, and using the "base" ratio of 10 to 1 would yield 15 inches in 6 hours, or a maximum of 15-25 inches near the Windy City over a 12 hour period. Nothing like wishcasting... ;-)
 
00Z NAM is pretty interesting to say the least. 850-500MB VV's explode to the northwest of 850MB low, where temperatures are -6C to -8C. NAM outputs up to 1.50 inches of QPF, and using the "base" ratio of 10 to 1 would yield 15 inches in 6 hours, or a maximum of 15-25 inches near the Windy City over a 12 hour period. Nothing like wishcasting... ;-)


Man, I'm sitting here looking at that 00z NAM and to be honest it's very hard not to get excited! I know it's over 60hrs out, and a lot can (and will) change by then, but MAN! If this is anywhere near correct my area of northern IL will get anywhere from 1-2" of rain and thunder, followed quickly by some very heavy wet snow of 8"+.

As stated by many above, these changes are ongoing and things are very likely to be tweaked in time, but wow am I excited for this!

I think it's now very safe to say someone is really going to get nailed by this, just a matter of who. The scary thing is the storm seems to be getting stronger by the run, which I guess is to be expected with the incredible trough/jet structure coupled with an extreme low level contrast.
 
The next few model runs are going to be very crucial, as they will likely be the solid solutions as to what happens. The main shortwaves that will induce this southern low are still diving south off the west coast. As these hit the shores in the next 24hrs or so and are well sampled we'll get a much more definite answer to just what we're dealing with here. It's possible (with the extreme strength of this trough) that this storm is still highly underestimated.

Just think, about 36hrs ago or so this was looking to be a weak open wave riding up the front....
 
Latest 21Z SREF is in, strong deviations continue at FH87. We have nearly 10C of deviation in the 850MB T's over the Ohio Valley. The 850MB 0C line is considerably more eastwards on the SREF than the operational 00Z run. While the "off hours" 06Z and 18Z models are nice, I'll keep up with the 00Z / 12Z runs as they sample the true upper air data.
 
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