A low pressure system will move through the Great Lakes Sunday 1/21 -> Mon 1/22. Rain, snow, and mixed precipitation is expected with this system. Models have been trending north since the start of this week suggesting more rain for Wisconsin. The storm track will KEEP CHANGING as we get closer, but this is what it's looking like right now.
Moisture for the Sun-Mon storm will come from eastern Mexico and western Gulf of Mexico. What I call a "moisture front" arrives just as storm #1 pulls away. The moisture will get buffeted slightly early next week but will be ready for #2 as it crosses the country. The stage is set moisture-wise for some interesting weather late January and Feb. If we can get the AO to slide back positive while holding onto a weakly negative PNA we will be in good shape. Curious to see how things come together in that 6-14 day period. It's been such a boring winter to this point.Â
Southern trend in most models today following the EC's lead. At the surface most models are pretty close to the EC. The ensembles are leaning in that direction. At 850-700mb I see some things that need to be sorted out. Storm is coming on shore now. GFS CMC storm track is actually from Dubuque to Sheboygan, EC slightly south of that.Â
WIWX 6.2 launched this afternoon! Don't forget to refresh your browser cache or hit F5 + CTRL to update page appearance if it looks weird. Will try to fix this for next update.
Our first snowfall prediction map for the Sun-Mon event. Forecast coming soon. Watching freezing rain potential in central Wisconsin, possibility of locally higher amounts in the 6-12. Rain to the south. Keeping Tues AM wrap-around precip out of for now
Strange forecast on the AO today with many taking a nose dive by Feb 1. I don't buy it yet since I do not see it on the models, but -AO of this magitude will certainly lead to cold. Then on the PNA side you have one member totally going negative while the rest trend toward positive.
Two main precipitation regions splitting west and east of Wisconsin right now. The space between will fill across north-central Wisconsin today as the low moves through. The western region is at the left exit of a diverging upper level jet. It has the strongest forcing, what I would call the true deformation zone, and starting to look pretty good. The right is mostly WAA, accompanied by weak upper divergence and the moist axis. Both areas have strong 850mb WAA. I see this happen often where weak returns are found between two clumps of precip. North-central is in between with dry slot sneaking into the south. You'd have a better chance are reaching forecast snow accums in either the west or east clump. This explains the trends in models this morning.
Forecast looking really good right now
A few thunderstorms in southeast Wisconsin tonight! Small pea sized hail is common with these but severe weather not expected. This cluster will change to snow overnight and may produce a quick burst of 1-3" in the southeast! From tstorms to winter wx advisory. That's pretty cool! -JP
Plenty of updates, fixes, and changes since Saturday in addition to a northern Wisconsin snowstorm. Going to slow down this week. Always looking ahead towards future storms and projects.
The second craziest thing that's happened this winter.8" of snow in southeast WI is more than most places in the snowstorm up north! Saw it for about 20-30 consecutive runs bouncing around southeast Wisconsin lol. There were many ways this could have been missed. I saw it as minor/small scale wrap around, weird surface low relocation thing. Bigger snows to the north took priority so I pushed this off into it's own separate bucket planning to deal with it but never did. Never thought of it as a 4-9"er. When MKX issued the advisory I thought they were just doing what they always do lol, but it was a great move on their part. Just fell through the cracks.