Weekend System (Model Update #2)

Here is another quick summary of the models from this morning, first paragraphs talking about the winter weather potential over the northern plains. The second group of paragraphs is going over the severe weather threat in the central plains with this system. Some of the areas that are stuck in between will likely see significant amounts of rain, as the moisture with this system is outstanding. Flooding is thus a concern for many of the NWS office throughout the plains as snow melt this week along with potential ice jams with heavy rain on Saturday...

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As far as snowfall goes from this mornings' run I think that there will still be some good potential for snowfall. Only concern may be what type of snow it is, as even though the winds are likely to be high if the snow is heavier thanks to all of the warm air around then it may not blow around anyway. Nonetheless, you aren't going to be able to look just at the 540 line on 1000-500 mb critical thickness to figure out if it will fall as rain/snow. You are going to have to look at all of the values throughout the sounding to see if the whole column is supportive of snow.

This first looks to occur by midnight Saturday, over areas of northeastern Nebraska (North of Sioux City to Lincoln Line). This is the first area where the entire column is supportive of snow... By sunrise on Sunday it looks like eastern NE, northwest IA as well as most of MN will be supportive of snow. That is pretty much as far as the snow makes it before the low really weakens and takes off over the Great Lakes. Thus, heaviest amounts of snow are likely to be in eastern NE/western IA and then southern half of MN. At least based on the current best track of the low... Areas of central Iowa never get cold enough for snow I don't think, as the lower levels are just too warm thanks to the warm air wrapping around the low.

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Definite dry line setup with such a strong dry slot working in to the low, currently this looks to be a favorable setup for anywhere from northeast Texas through eastern OK/KS and potentially further north. However, this system also seemingly is pushing the storm mode from supercells to a squall line fairly quickly and thus that is a concern I have as far as chasing goes. Storm motions will be quite quick and I'm not sure how the actual conditions will be during the day on Saturday.

Some of the things to consider will be cloud cover, how much sunlight can we actually get ahead of the system. It looks as though we will have continuous clouds throughout the day on Saturday. Also the dry slot working its' way and enhancing the dry line may also hamper development eventually, depending on its' strength and movement the dry slot will seemingly overrun the surface dryline and thus push storms even quicker or kill them off... Still a lot of information to come in as this system is still over 100 hours out. As it nears more values should be available and you can see exactly how bad of severe weather this could potentially bring. Currently you can't rule out anything, as the potential may be there for large hail, damaging winds and tornadoes with such a potent system.