Winter Storm: Feb. 7/8

Another winter storm featuring two waves of energy will impact the Plains states beginning Sunday afternoon and continuing through the day on Monday into Monday night.  A trough coming onshore that has just came ashore in the Pacific coast will continue eastward overnight and begin to deepen, pulling additional moisture northward into the central Plains once again. This will begin our snowfall during the afternoon/evening hours for Kansas/Missouri and will combine with the stronger northern system during the overnight and continue to produce snowfall for the day on Monday and into Monday night for eastern portions of Missouri.  This northern system is a strong closed low that will rotate down into the Plains, pulling with it a strong push of arctic air.  As the system moves east it will once again setup portions of the east coast for another significant snowfall event.

With another complex system comes another complex snowfall forecast, with even a few NWS offices not tipping their hand as to what they are thinking.  It does appear that we will have a significant area of 6"+ snowfall over Kansas/Missouri/Iowa/Minnesota by Tuesday morning.  A few areas may be able to pull off an 8"+ snowfall amount, especially those further east.  Compared to the last system, this one will see snowfall become much drier, and therefore lighter allowing the wind to become a factor.  This is especially true as a cold front brings northwest winds gusting upwards of 25 mph which will provide blowing and drifting snow over a large area of the Plains. With this systems' start time late Sunday, we will start to see NWS offices upgrade their winter storm watches to various advisories and warnings. An additional update tomorrow morning will put a final rough estimate of expected snowfall for the Plains states...