Light snow will develop over Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin late tonight into Thursday morning. Accumulations will most likely be around an inch (or two at best) in the Rockford metro.A more potent system will work out of Kansas on Friday in a track that is more favorable for snow for our area. Early forecasts indicate the potential for 3-6 inches with lighter amounts south of Rockford. A Winter Storm Watch is in effect for Green, Rock, and Walworth however the NWS in Milwaukee may have put that out too early as the models have trended downward with snowfall forecast amounts. It does not appear that this will warrant anything more than a Snow Advisory (or perhaps a Winter Weather Advisory for areas south of I-88). More details to come. -ERIC
10 comments:
I honestly think milwaukee did jump the gun a bit with their winter storm watch. I could possibly see an advisory going up either tomorrow or tomorrow night for friday unless milwaukee sees something that no one else sees. We will have to see. What will be interesting is next week with this supposed arctic blast coming. I read that if things come out right, temps may be in the negative digits for highs on wednesday. We will have to see.
only 3-4 inches in rockford?? Why so little??
Tony: Please try to keep the arm-chair quarterbacking for the football games this weekend and not on the blog. We don't need to mingle other people's forecasts with ours here. There won't be negative digit highs at least for the next week or two (at least).
Joe: This storm is pretty progressive. I don't think it'll be hanging around long enough to provide more than 6 at the most...hence the 3-6" for Friday on the 7 Day Outlook. -ERIC
Sorry eric. When I said that about the negative digits, I had read it on the forecast discussion on the NWS forecast page. Trust me, I don't try to compare your forecast with the other stations. I probably misread it anyhow. That is why I trust this blog more than anything. Heck I don't even trust the weather channel half the time. If I offended this blog, I am very sorry.
Don't worry about it! ;)
Thanks buddy. I love to visit this blog. Bring on the snow even though christmas is over.
I think its fun to compare the weather channel forecasts... what do they base their forecasts off? It seems like their forecasts are just computer generated or something.
Flip flop ... haha.
Now the Milwaukee office of the NWS has downgraded Friday's storm & canceled the Winter Storm Watch but the Chicago & Quad Cities offices of the NWS have upgraded it & issued a Winter Storm Watch for their areas. As nearly as I can tell its not the storm track thats so much in question this time, just the storm impact that seems challenging to predict.
Man, some days I'm really glad I'm not a meteorologist. I often wonder what it would be like if the media were broadcasting every little detail of me struggling to do my job every day - yikes! ("What, you didn't receive that memo? Oh, you did? No, wait, that was a different memo. Hold it - which memo are we talking about anyway?")
The NWS in Chicago has a newsletter (PDF - long download if you have a dial-up connection) at
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/lot/newsletter/winter2007.pdf
with an interesting discussion of the difficulties of winter weather forecasting.
Oops, part of that link I posted (above) got cut off - maybe some friendly Blog editor can fix it (the article is really interesting!).
Also wanted to say - Hy 51 in Rock Country is snow/ice covered and very slippery. Watch it on Rock County highways this morning - the plows are out but there is a layer of ice underneath the snow that is still slippery even after the plows have gone through. Traffic was only moving about 35 mph - give yourself extra time to get to work if you aren't one of the lucky folks on vacation this week!
wi weather buff: I may be a friendly blog editor, but I don't know how to do that! :P -ERIC
Will post an update on Friday's snow shortly.
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