Wednesday Night Update on this Weekend's Winter Storm

1am Update:

And  now the Euro is available and with this evening's run it is pulling the storm significantly further North and West, and for the first time in a while it's taking the heaviest snow well West of the Quad Cities!  You can scroll down to see the GFS and the NAM, and note the fairly big discrepancy in where the heaviest snow falls.  What this means is more time's needed to iron out the details...but it is starting to look like we might have a rain/snow mix on Saturday before the precip changes over to all snow Saturday night or early Sunday.  That would keep snow totals down to something along the lines of 2-5" for the Quad Cities!


 

Late night Euro run

10pm Update: 

Here is your first look at the GFS snow forecast, freshly available for your viewing pleasure!  It looks the heaviest snow totals are down a bit, but still located right across the Quad Cities area...The model runs over the next 24-36 hours will really start to help us out as we pin down the forecast for snow totals this weekend...

GFS Wednesday Evening Update

Previous Post (8pm:)


There is still a very good chance of heavy snow this weekend in the Quad Cities...and travel late Saturday and Sunday could be very tricky!   Before the weekend gets here remember there could be a little freezing rain very early on Friday morning. 

Frz Rain possible Thursday night after midnight

Heavy Snow a very good possibility

The evening models are underway right now and the results are now starting to trickle in.  The 1st available data comes from the NAM, which is a shorter term American forecast model.  Here's the snow output from this model, note a minor change pulling some of the heavier snow back SE of the Quad Cities.  Importantly, this is the snow total thru the end of the model run, but this only goes through early Sunday morning!  More snow will fall Sunday afternoon...

The GFS and ECMWF model runs from tonight will be trickling in over the next couple hours, they'll offer more solid guidance on how much snow to expect around the Quad Cities this weekend.  Once they are available I will post them with an update to this blog post later tonight!