Storm is Still on Track...

It appears as if a late winter storm will hit the Stateline with a significant snowfall beginning late on Sunday continuing through the day on Monday.  A WINTER STORM WATCH has been issued for the north central counties of Illinois from 8 pm Sunday night through 12 am on Tuesday.   A WINTER STORM WARNING has been issued for Stephenson county, and the rest of northwestern Illinois from 3 pm Sunday afternoon until 6 pm Monday evening.  A WINTER STORM WATCH is also in effect  for all of southern Wisconsin from Sunday evening through Monday evening.

Here is the setup.  The southern stream jet is juiced for action.  It has been very active through this moderate El Nino winter, and continues to be loaded with energy.  A strong short wave is riding along the jet out of Arizona this evening across New Mexico.  It will move out of the mountains tonight, across the Texas panhandle on Sunday morning and move through the our region Sunday night and Monday morning.  As is moves northeast it will generate a surface low  pressure system over Oklahoma by noon on Sunday.  It will intensify some as it moves northeast  across Missouri by midnight Sunday night.  It will be in an ideal position at that time to draw significant amounts of  moisture northward into the Stateline Sunday night, and early on Monday.  Right now it looks as if the heaviest of the snowfall will occur overnight on Sunday night into the early morning hours on Monday.  The National Hydrometeorological Center has outlined the  Stateline as the area most likely to receive heavy snow.  The NWS office out of the Quad Cities  believes that the axis of the heaviest band of snow with this system will extend southwest to northeast from Fairfield, Iowa across the Quad cities to near Freeport.  If one were to extrapolate that band to the northeast it would take it across northwestern Winnebago county into Rock county Wisconsin and on towards Milwaukee.  The Hydrometeorological Center outlines north central and northeast Illinois and extreme southeast Wisconsin of at least a 10% chance of more than 1 foot of snow from this system.

So, it looks like the heavy snow will occur on Sunday night with a good chance of 4" to 7" in the overnight hours.  Heavy snow will wind down during the morning hours on Monday with storm totals mostly between 6" and 10" with an average around 8".  However, there is that possibility of some localized areas that will get up to 12".  Light snow will continue into Monday afternoon, but it will be quite windy with northerly winds gusting close to 30 mph. Even with the wind, excessive drifting of the snow is not expected because of the fairly wet nature of the snow.

After the storm exits off to the east, a modified late season arctic air mass will drop down out of Canada providing the Stateline with below normal temperatures for the rest of the work week.  With the late February sun shining much of late week, and providing double the solar energy we were getting 2 months ago, it will not seem all that cold.

Blog by
Eric Nefstead