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!

Ice coats Hoosier-land

The major winter storm that was forecast to sock the Midwest and Ohio Valley certainly lived up to it's billing last evening and through early this morning. Not only did areas of Southern Iowa receive all sorts of ice and sleet accumulations, but northern areas of Illinois and Indiana did as well.

In fact, the following image from Decatur, Indiana clearly shows a quarter-inch or better accrual. And given the image is from Southeast Elementary, it's pretty clear there was no school today for the kiddies back in the Hoosier state. At least, not in Decatur. Unfortunately, my home town of Bluffton doesn't seem to offer any webcams whatsoever, so I have to accept the Decatur AWS cam as my local look into my hometown.



It can't be so much different of a look in Bluffton given there is only about 15 miles separating the two towns.

Either way, I'm sure glad the ice and sleet is occurring there and not here. We will have Winter Storm Watches up for the Valley for this next system. Yes, the active pattern continues to wreak havoc across the Northern Plains. The inverted trough and upper-level wave will bring the threat for moderate to heavy snows across much of the area possibly as soon as tonight, with activity likely continuing through tomorrow evening. What this means is that another 5-9 inches will be possible here by then and that strong winds will once again bring Blizzard-like conditions to the area.

Granted, there are some chasers out there that are suffering through SDS so badly this time of year, they're more than willing to go out there and chase these systems. I'm definitely not one of these types... I may have let you all know that already. If I have, I apologize. I think it's worth saying again!

I have the weekend off again, and as with Blizzard Ali, I'll be staying inside where it's warm to watch. If I feel brave enough, I may get out in the elements at some point tomorrow to possibly get some photos. We'll see how motivated I am to do just that. ;)

In the meantime, stay safe everyone. No matter where you are, I'm sure you have some sort of winter weather to be concerned about.