Saturday Snow Update - Winter Weather Advisory

10pm Update: 

No significant changes to the forecast tonight, snow should begin Saturday morning and last through Saturday afternoon.  It will be heavy at times so if you have to head out on Saturday be prepared for slow driving!  If you can hold off til Saturday night or Sunday you'll be much better off as things improve quickly Saturday night! 

What I'll be watching closely Saturday - if the storm nudges a little back to the NE as opposed to the more SW path it's been looking to take over the last few days then snow totals will be lighter in the Quad Cities and heavier just to the NE.  As of 10pm tonight this doesn't look likely so I'm leaving the forecast as is!  Have a great weekend!

GFS Friday Night Model Run

WRF Model

Previous Post:

Starting about 24 hours ago the weather models began pulling Saturday's storm a little bit further SW and placing the Quad Cities in the heaviest snow band (about 3-4") and that trend hasn't changed much today.  Based on this track and the potential for a few inches of snow the National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for the Quad Cities on Saturday from 6am through 6pm.  Most of the snow will fall from about 9am through 3pm.

Winter Weather Advisory

There are many things to look at when making a snowfall accumulation forecast and here are just a couple things we've been looking over today...

CBS4 Model Run

Several models and snow methods displayed
 

 Rather than a specific model forecast here's a map with snow ranges for our area on Saturday...I've placed the Quad Cities in a range of 2-4" with an expectation of 3 or 4 inches of snow from this quick moving clipper.  It's not quite an Alberta Clipper, only because it's coming from a different part of Canada...but it's definitely a quick mover.  Based on the intensity of the snow things would be worse if the storm wasn't in and out so quickly on Saturday!


Snow forecast