1/29/08 NOW: Winter Weather

[Brian Stertz]

Front went through before dawn and now getting a pretty good burst of snow here in Overland Park KS (KC suburb). Snowflakes are pretty small in size so it may take a prolonged snowfall to start getting any accumulation this morning.

[Chris Frost]

Blizzard-like out here on campus today. After being spoiled yesterday with 60+ temps today is just miserable. Im actually going to be dreading the walk across campus to make it to my Atmosperic lecture. It's days like today that make me feel like spring will never come. From 64 to 19 in less than 24 hours. When I looked at the forecast last night models showed that the front wasn't supposed to move through until after noon. Ah well it's January and I'm in Kansas and not Hawaii.

[Bob Schafer]

We had strong winds yesterday in SE CO with a reported gust of 54 mph at Lamar at 1953Z.

http://www.met.utah.edu/cgi-bin/roman/meso_base.cgi?&unit=0&time=GMT&stn=klaa

This resulted in blowing dust up to about 3000 feet in altitude (my estimate), which persisted for about an hour. I would estimate visibility was down to about one mile. After a high T of 63 yesterday, our low was 21 this morning.

I didn't get any pics. My bad. I swear it'll never happen again.

[Josh Richardson]

Conditions have been deteriorating all morning here as well of course. Visibility is now down to .25 mi in city limits with a decent snow falling at the moment. Out at the airport we have sustained winds of around 30 mph gusting to near 40 mph. Blizzard warning has now been add for our northern tier counties of the DMX forecast area.

[Craig Maire II]

Still cold and crappy here, winds have been gusting to probably 45 mph (should have brought my new anemometer to work), it's currently 5F and it's not snowing yet. Still waiting for my pizza to get here! Pizza man must have gotten blown away! :D

[David Draun]

Still warm here in Dekalb west of the big-nasty Arctic front. Looking for FROPA here in probably an hour or so. Couple of boomers starting to fire SW of here moving NE. One or two SVR warned cells are out there too. It would be cool to get clipped by one of them before the snow and wind hit. I got my blinds open and am looking out the window to watch the dramatic change.

[Brian Stertz]

Well just finished up with a bout of S+/BS and now back down to lower end S/BS. We have a solid 1" of snow and looks like we may end up with another 1/2" before it winds down this afternoon. Roads are partially snow covered...pretty impressive since we were 52 degrees at 6am this morning here. And to look east and see STL at 70 degrees...all I can say is WOW

[Dan Robinson]

Amazing temperature and wind direction change on either side of this front.

http://adds.aviationweather.noaa.gov/data/metars/2008012920_metars_evv.gif

[David Draun]

LOL, two formerly-hibernating insects; a rather large fly, and an Asian ladybug have crawled out of the radiator in my room and are perched on the screen. I closed the storm window trapping them and will now watch them freeze to death. :p

Now at NIU:

33F (down from 48F at the top of the hour)
WSW 12 G31
Light Fog/Mist

[Joel Wright]

It touched 50 at 9:30 this morning, but now it's already down to 13 and dropping fast. Pretty impressive drop in less than six hours. Not sure what the windchill is but it's gotta be approaching zero.

Blizzard warning is in effect. Radar returns are fairly sparce. Barely got a dusting of snow. Looks like the blizzard warning will be laughed at as previously thought.

[Craig Maire II]

Receiving light to moderate snow with strong wind gusts right now lowering visibilities, temp is 1F. I'll be getting off work soon and have to take highway 20 home :eek:

[Jarrod Cook]

Blizzard warning is in effect. Radar returns are fairly sparce. Barely got a dusting of snow. Looks like the blizzard warning will be laughed at as previously thought.

Looks like you're right, as the BZW has been cancelled.

The temperature changes have been fascinating with this system. We've gone from 53 at 11 am to 22 at 3 PM. I was watching some private wx station data earlier and some sites were dropping 1 degree/minute for 10 mins or longer!

[Joel Wright]

Yeah the St. Louis International Airport observation at noon had them at 70 degrees! At the 3pm ob it had dropped to 35! Windchills in the teens! That's freaking amazing man. Went from a springlike airmass with even the potential for tornadic thunderstorms, to an all out arctic airmass in three hours.

At noon while it was 70 in St. Louis, the windchill in Huron South Dakota was at -22!

[Danny Neal]

I am so gonna get mine in the next twenty minutes.....47 at my house, 40 at NWS LOT (20 miles from my home) 32 in Morris (40 miles from my home) and then a balmy 12 in the Quad Cities! Wow. Got my windows open waiting for that icy blast from the west!

[Joel Wright]

Down to 21 in St. Louis now, with a windchill of 2. So essentially the way it feels outside has dropped almost 70 degrees in five hours.

Strong winds all over too. 55mph wind gust at the top of the hour at St. Louis and the DVN station.

[Mike Hollingshead]

This was a pretty fun little surprise this morning into the afternoon. It was around 59 around Omaha yesterday afternoon, by mid-day today it was low single digits with winds gusting up to 50(guessing there were bouts sustained over 40...at least out in the middle of the flats of western IA where I was). The 3 degrees or so with high winds felt worse than the -20 the other morning. If I took my hand out of the glove to mess with the camera, it was quickly toast and in serious pain(I really need to stop doing that..grabbing the metal tripod legs doesn't help). There were some fun whiteout conditions on this gravel road where I estimate the viewing distance was about 3 car lengths at times. While shooting cars on highway 30 I about had a big accident happen next to me off the shoulder. There was a turning lane and then a decent shoulder, so I felt it was safe enough. That was till some semis and cars about crashed right there. 3 miles or so to the west at the bridge I guess a semi smashed into a van. Sounds like there were likely fatalities there. Pretty amazing what about 1 inch of snow can do in the open. Will post a report later. It's largely being a retard playing "hurricane chaser" standing in the wind. That along with highway near whiteout scenes and some decent sundogs.

[Jim Zandonai]

Yeah the storms most impressive features by far in this area was the rapid and amazing temperature differential /fall and wind increase.. Winds here gusting to near 45mph..and 53 at DVN earlier..
We lost over 40 degrees from the high today of 48.
Yeah Joel called it..the Blizzard Warning although maybe merited by forecast criteria probably shouldnt have been used it seems. Although the impressive T-storms stayed well south it kind of gears one up for Spring. But in anycase at least the predicted wind and temp fall materialized..

[Robert Dewey]

Sustained winds and gusts getting pretty high over IL:

CHAMPAIGN FLURRIES 9 2 73 W45G60 29.63R WCI -17

[Joel Wright]

Sustained winds and gusts getting pretty high over IL:


Wow. Some other sites in IL and IN are pushing 60 as well. Pontiac IL, Muncie IN, Gary IN, for example. Surface low is down to 977 now over northeastern lower-Michigan.

Power went out here for a few minutes earlier. Winds have been gusting between 40-55mph since mid-afternoon. Haven't been out to see if there's any damage, but here in my yard there doesn't appear to be anything. At least not yet lol.

Looks like MI and OH will be getting in on the high winds here very shortly.

[Aric Cylkowski]

We're receiving high winds, light-to-moderate snow and reduced visibilities up in Mount Pleasant, MI on the main campus of Central Michigan University. Reports from friends and other residents indicates that the roads were rather bad starting around 8pm, and conditions have deteriorated.

BTW, it was around 45 degrees today in Mount Pleasant... and now its 23 degrees with 53 mph wind gusts... and I've just learned that the Winter Storm Advisory has been upgraded to a Winter Storm Warning.

We're in for the rough of it here in Central Michigan.

[Aric Cylkowski]

APX has passed along a Civil Emergency Message alerting people to stay off the roads until further notice due to blowing snow and Central Michigan University is closed until noon. I'm not seeing that much snow on the ground, so I'm assuming its an ice nightmare right now.

[Mike Kovalchick]

Mackinac Bridge is partially closed due to blowing snow and winds in excess of 50 mph. The Winds are out of the West-undoubtedly channeling/accelerating through the Straits. The webcam view for the bridge is impressive.....

http://www.mackinacbridge.org/

"Currently we are experiencing winds of sufficient force in the Straits area to close the Mackinac Bridge to all vehicles except passenger cars, passenger vans, and empty pickup trucks. Winds are blowing across the bridge surface in excess of 50 miles per hour.

Motorists are being instructed to reduce their speed to 20 miles per hour as they approach the bridge and be prepared to stop. Bridge personnel are stationed at both ends of the structure to provide instructions regarding how and when to proceed across the bridge.

Passenger cars, passenger vans, and pick-up trucks without campers are being permitted to cross, but drivers are asked to exercise appropriate caution. Strong winds are blowing across the surface of the bridge. Motorists are asked to drive 20 miles per hour or less."

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/08-1-29.htm

Report from that storm. Since I may be the only one bothering with a report, I didn't figure it was worth a new thread.