Friday, November 07, 2008

First accumulations of the season to come tonight!

Cold, upper-level low pressure will continue to provide light snow overnight. Some minor accumulations are possible into early Saturday morning, mainly on grassy surfaces. 70° temperatures early this week caused the ground to warm and will inhibit most of this snow to pile up. In any event, we're definitely in the spirit of the winter season. The 7 Day Outlook has three different systems worth watching. The Monday night/Tuesday system bears some close attention as we're on the cold side of a storm that will work up along the Ohio Valley. Models have trended further northward with each run so this could bring more available precip into our area. Right now will solidly forecast rain/snow mix with my honest opinion being 50/50 chances for each. Model evaluation over the weekend will determine how much cold air is in place for this to work with. Again, ground temperatures will be warm so it'll be hard for anything to pile up.

Stay tuned and have a great weekend! -ERIC

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Snow and sleet has been falling nearly all day, with some periods of very light accumulation. Snow and sleet would accumulate to 1/10 or 1/5 of an inch and then melt away today, right now snowing moderately and beginning to stick again, around 1/10 of an inch so far.
If we do get some snow out of the Monday/Tuesday storm how much will it be, I know it is far out, but an educated guess?
By the way, I live in Eastern Iowa, 10-15 miles west of Dubuque.

WI Weather Buff said...

I drove to Madison and back (to Beloit) today and it was snowing/sleeting a lot of the way, especially early in the afternoon.

Toward that end, someday I want to talk about not-quite-micro-climates ... how about mini-climates?

I've been noticing for the past year that there is a stretch of I-90 in WI, approximately between mileposts 157-147, that seems to have a "mini-climate" all its own.

I commute that way to work & back every day, so I've seen a lot of it.

The area does have a (very mild) elevation rise and is not as flat as the surrounding terrain; I think its where a finger of the Kettle Morrain comes down through that part of the state. I wouldn't have thought the change in elevation or terrain would be enough to actually produce noticible climate differences -- but in some respects that area seems (to me) to ACT a LOT like a "mini" version of a mountain pass (I used to live in California where there were plenty of mountain passes).

Its often raining through that stretch when its not raining the rest of the way; snowing through that stretch when its raining the rest of the way, icier on that stretch than it is the rest of the way (between Madison and the state line). The locals even refer to that stretch of highway as the "Bermuda Triangle" because it is infamous for having noticeably more wintertime accidents than the stretches of highway on either side of it. It is the area where that 2000 vehicle traffic jam originated last year (when I-90 was clogged for 24 hours by a massive traffic jam during a showstorm).

I want to know if it is possible for an area that size, with only a SLIGHT elevation change and a SLIGHT difference in terrain and vegetation, to actually have an effect on what kind of ground level weather occurs there!

Inquiring minds want to know...

Anonymous said...

what's really funny is, is that we cut down our hosta's a few weeks ago for the winter... and then this week new growth was coming out of the ground from being so warm! crazy stuff!