Major ice storm in progress...

Moderate to heavy snows and on-going freezing rain and sleet continue to fall over the Lower Ohio Valley early this morning. While the snowfall is significant, the amount of icing is most impressive with this large system pushing east-northeast. The latest radar from Indianapolis (to the right) clearly shows the enhanced reflectivities with the freezing rain and sleet over southern and eastern Indiana.

The higher reflectivities result from two processes... First, from the radar beam reflecting off frozen precipitation particles. Secondly, from the radar beam being reflected off melting nuclei (ice particles melting at the point where ice pellets aloft are entering the shallow warm-layer between roughly 850 and 800 mb. RUC forecast soundings late last night were fairly indicative of the shallow warm layer. The NAM and GFS were both overestimating the thickness of the layer, thusly had much more freezing rain than sleet (there's been plenty of reports of sleet throughout the Ohio Valley tonight) and had it more southeast. Luckily, I found this out before leaving my forecast behind at the end of my shift tonight.

Either way, this will be one of the nastiest ice storms in quite some time over portions of the Missouri, Tennessee, and Ohio Valley's. I didn't get around to it last night at work, but if I think about it, I'll post some of the observations we saw tonight from Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas with this system. We saw a few different stations that had well over an inch of ice and one site, in particular, that received 0.43 inches of freezing rain in one hour! Pretty incredible. I also read an LSR (local storm report) earlier tonight of a report of 2 inches of ice in Fox, Arkansas! Now that is a crap-load of ice!

The shocking thing, this storm is long from over... Precipitation likely won't pull entirely out of Indiana until this afternoon and I could easily see several more hours of freezing rain and sleet over far southern and southeastern Indiana. There have already been numerous reports of 3/4" of ice already in these areas and with several more hours of rates like this, these locations will also likely see ice accruals of more than an inch. Of which, would result in power outages and widespread damage to trees and power lines.

The web-cams will be interesting to watch later this morning as dawn breaks. Assuming they, themselves, won't be covered in two inches of ice!

And to see the extent of this system, take a look at the NWS Advisories graphic in the sidebar to the right. Unbelievable how widespread the Warnings are. From Ice Storm Warnings in Texas to Winter Storm Warnings in Northern Maine!

Temperatures in flux

We've had some wild fluctuations in temperatures over the past few weeks across the Northern Plains. While we remained rather cool through a good chunk of December, January has begun rather cold.

An arctic outbreak entrenched much of the central and eastern parts of the country the last two weeks and with a slight moderating the last few days, another shot of cold air seems to be on it's way.

By this time, tomorrow night, we'll likely see temperatures in the double-digits below zero once again here in the Valley with even colder temperatures expected over northern Minnesota. The NAM shown to the left has the H50 heights near 522 over us, with even lower heights to the east and northeast.

So, we'll see another cold, January weekend.

Looking ahead, the GFS doesn't really show much in the way of any major pattern shifts, with several troughs pushing east-southeast out of Western Canada through, at least, the next couple of weeks. February could start out rather cold, as well, with the extended GFS showing this early in the morning on Feb. 3rd:



Yes, that is a 516 isoheight over the northern valley!

By the 7th, however, a decent ridge begins to build over the west and I'm hoping this will slowly translate to the east, bringing moderating temperatures and warmer temperatures. That would certainly be welcome...

Record snows...

And now you all see what kind of life a storm chaser leads during the winter months. I haven't really had much to write about in the last month or so. Some chasers get pumped at winter storms. I do not. Especially, those that affect me. They only reinforce what I already know. That my car doesn't handle the ice and snow at all. ;)

Anyhow, we were affected by a couple of major winter storms here in the Northern Plains the past 30 days and as such, the NWS has officially announced that December 2008 went down in the record books as the snowiest December on record. Both in Grand Forks and Fargo:

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE EASTERN NORTH DAKOTA/GRAND FORKS
712 PM CST THU JAN 1 2009

...RECORD MONTHLY SNOWFALL AT GRAND FORKS UNIV. (NWS) SITE FOR
DECEMBER 2008...

30.1 INCHES OF SNOWFALL OCCURRED IN DECEMBER 2008 AND THIS IS THE
HIGHEST EVER MONTHLY SNOWFALL FOR DECEMBER.  THE ALL TIME MONTHLY
SNOWFALL FOR ANY MONTH IS 31.5 INCHES SET IN JANUARY 1989.

...RECORD MONTHLY SNOWFALL AT FARGO/MOORHEAD FOR DECEMBER 2008 AND
FOR ALL-TIME...

OFFICIALLY 33.5 INCHES OF SNOW FELL IN FARGO/MOORHEAD FOR DECEMBER
2008.  THIS WAS THE HIGHEST TOTAL FOR DECEMBER 2008 AND FOR ANY
MONTH.  THE PREVIOUS RECORD FOR HIGHEST MONTHLY SNOWFALL FOR ANY
MONTH WAS 31.5 INCHES IN JANUARY 1989.

Northwest flow early in the month brought several Alberta Clippers to the state, while a pattern shift brought a more westerly flow near mid-month. This brought Ali, the first full-blown blizzard in many years, to Eastern North Dakota. And since, we're back into the northwesterly flow and thusly have experienced clipper after clipper pretty much every other day for the last week and a half. No significant snowfalls really, but each has dropped between 2 to 4 inches. So, yes, we have well over a foot of snowpack out there and that doesn't do anything to help our temperatures.

Yet, today... More impending doom:



We have bright sunshine out there right now, but these clouds heading our way will be bringing more snowfall, potentially 6+ inches, to the area. The NWS Advisories map to the right will show you the winter weather advisories that are in affect across the area.

A great way to start the 2009 year... more snow! :(

Happy New Years, everyone. Hope you all had a great holiday season.