WINTER STORM NOW 12/08-11/2007: KS, OK, NE, MO, IA, CO, among others

[Mike Umscheid]

Welp, I'm NOT going to like this drive in to work in about an hour. There has been persistent, light freezing drizzle falling here in Dodge city since about mid-evening yesterday. The temperature has slowly fallen from 30 degrees at the onset of the event to the current temperature (as of 6am) of 26F. Everything is ice... even my residential street out in front... Ice rink. Might as well break out the ice skates if I had them, and just skate in to work. it's amazing how much of a mess persistent -6 dBZ radar returns can cause. This is likely to continue all day... and Wow... how about Monday night!! I'm blogging about all of this at http://www.underthemeso.com/blog

 

[Jonathan Behle]

Yeah I agree about Monday Night through early Wendesday for Northern OK, Southern and Eastern Kansas and into Missouri on the potential for a major and crippling ice storm. We could easily have 1-2" of accumulating freezing rain with that part of these storm systems, and this does NOT include what is happening Saturday and Sunday in these areas

 

[Mikey Gribble]

I really haven't done much forecasting yet on this. I've been out of commission with strep throat for a few days. We are well below freezing in Wichita and have been getting drizzle all morning, but so far there isn't really anything freezing on the pavement. I went to the grocery store earlier and as I was walking out I stepped on the top of one of those parking place stop block things and damn near body slammed my groceries. That thing was definitely covered in ice, so I imagine the elevated roadways are starting to freeze around Wichita now.
I'm just getting into my forecasting now, but from the little I've looked at I was thinking this would be more of a sleet event for Wichita.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

We have a thin coating of ice south of KC here. There have been numerous accidents this morning as we have a thin, but very slick sheet of ice on the roadways. The rain is tapering off, but it will redevelop and intensify late in the evening which should persist through the afternoon on Sunday. I expect for us here around .25" of ice accumulation.

Also, I agree as well that we very well may see a crippling ice storm next week. I am hoping that school gets canceled so I can cover that event, but that's for another thread.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Curiuos why some of the obs in KS are showing freezing rain when there is no precip on radar - not even the slightest echo. Particularly at ICT. Freezing drizzle I could believe, but not rain. Are the sensors stuck maybe?

 

[Mike Umscheid]

Curiuos why some of the obs in KS are showing freezing rain when there is no precip on radar - not even the slightest echo. Particularly at ICT. Freezing drizzle I could believe, but not rain. Are the sensors stuck maybe?

KICT is indeed reporting -FZDZ, they actually have a human taking obs at that airport (-FZDZ in the metar for a number of hours now). Otherwise, freezing drizzle usually goes undetected by ASOS unless it's heavy enough. The freezing drizzle in ICT at this time is very light, only detectable as -5 dBZ or so within about 20 to 30 miles from the 88D site.

Edit: I might add, that when ASOS does detect freezing drizzle, it is reported as -FZRA. ASOS does not report Drizzle. AWOS sites do, though. This might be the source of your confusion perhaps.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Yeah, it isn't showing up on radar, but my driveway says otherwise. There's been a fine mist freezing out there all morning. I wonder if it's better to wait to apply salt, or to do it in stages during something like this -

 

[Dan Robinson]

OK - I see it now. The symbol on the map at:

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/surface/sfc_ict.gif

Looked like a dot rather than an apostrophe. Kind of hard to tell sometimes on those images.

Speaking of KC, they have a good network of traffic cameras to watch this event at:

http://www.kcscout.net/

 

[Tim Stoecklein]

Those are some interesting observations on the lack echos versus surface conditions. This would be very useful information for those people who check the radars before traveling.

Here in Colorado Springs we've seen the whole gamet(sp) of winter precip in the past 24 hours. We started yesterday morning with thick fog creeping down Pikes Peak and eventually blanketing us completely. From there we had freezing drizzle, freezing rain, sleet, and eventually snowfall. We are getting minimal impact compared to higher elevations, but it has been a fun experience, this storm.

This weekend has been almost identical to last weekend, with a one-two punch. The mid-week storm has been a shot from the NW followed by the weekends getting ample moisture from the SW flow thanks to the low camping out near Baja and points NW.

Oh, how I'd love to be in the mountains with skis on

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Here are Missouri Road Conditions. Can easily see the path through the state that is currently being affected. Lots of accidents across the area -

 

[Dan Robinson]

St. Louis getting hit also.

http://www.gatewayguide.com/atis/index.html

One accident visible on the cameras at the 70-270 interchange.

 

[Mark Farnik]

Out here in northeastern Colorado we've also had the full gamet of winter weather over the last 48 hours. When I went to bed Thursday night, it had just barely started to very lightly snow. I woke up Friday morning and was surprised to see over 3 inches of snow on the ground. The drive into Fort Morgan was TERRIBLE, Colorado 52 is always a major b***h to drive in snowy/icy conditions because of all the hills/canyons the road winds over and through, but this was the worst I'd ever seen in it. They hadn't plowed the road when I went in, which made it that much worse. My normally 20 minute commute took almost 45 minutes, and every second I was gripping the steering fiercely, trying to keep my mom's VW Passat from spinning off the road, and thankfully I made it without any major incident. It continued snowing most of the day in Fort Morgan, but by the time I got out of school the temperatures had warmed above freezing and the snow had turned into a light freezing drizzle/sleet mix. I had to spend ten minutes chipping a quarter inch of ice off of the car with a borrowed scraper before I could even get in because the doors were frozen shut.
Thankfully the drive home was much less hairy than the drive in, they had plowed the roads and put gravel down, and as such the roads were just slushy with occasional icy patches. Woke up this morning to freezing fog, which turned to light snow by 11 a.m., and then after lunch it really picked up in intensity with an average rate of 1/2" per hour with bursts approaching 1" an hour. Last time I measured, we we're sitting at 8 inches of snow since Thursday night, and we're supposed to pick up another 2 to 5 overnight, so we'll wind up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-13 inches of snow. Which is fine with me, because we've been terribly dry since about late September, it's about time we got some moisture.
Thanks to the freezing drizzle yesterday, all the paved and gravel roads are coated in black ice, and with the snow on top of that, driving conditions are going to be postively beastly this evening and into tomorrow morning. I'm very glad I don't have to go anywhere, so I can just curl up by the fireplace and sip a mug of hot cocoa while watching the snowflakes fly past the living room window...

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Its interesting, check out the Div II football game in Marysville MO on ESPN and note the weather, then check the radar for that area.

Looks as though it could get pretty nasty come next Monday/Tuesday, interesting to see high prob of >.25 of frz rain 3 days out. I haven't been monitoring this system very much but it seems as though things have trended further North the last couple of runs.

 

[Chris Hayes]

It's weird seeing an ice storm warnings up, and very little on the national radar. We're under a winter weather advisory for ice accumulation through tommorow, and there's more precip in Ohio through Illinois than there is in the ice storm warning area.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Chris this is because the bulk of that precip won't fall until late tonight into much of the day tomorrow.