Flakes to fly already?

As the northeast continues to dig out of a record breaking snowfall from this past weekend and the Rockies get ready to deal with another winter storm, it's possible someone in the Midwest may see a few flakes fly as early as Thursday morning. 



GFS Thursday morning



NAM Thursday morning

A cold front will sweep from northwest to southeast Wednesday afternoon bringing rain to the area and pulling down cooler air behind it.  The heaviest of the rain does appear to fall Wednesday night as winds within the jetstream move through the Midwest in just the right fashion to help enhance lift through the atmosphere.  Colder air will get wrapped in on the backside of this system, but just how cold will it be?  Temperatures going into Thursday morning will likely stay in the middle/upper 30s thanks to the clouds and rain.  Most of our weather models keep the precipitation falling in the liquid form because they're not as intense with a surface low that will develop later today as it moves through Oklahoma, into Missouri and through southern Illinois by Thursday morning.  They also aren't pulling down significant cold air.  The one outlier has been the past few runs of the NAM weather model.  This one develops the low but lifts it further north up through St. Louis and into central Illinois by Thursday morning.  In fact, it has a few inches of the wet snow accumulating from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City!  The freezing line will come very close to our northwest Illinois counties late Wednesday so while it's not out of the realm of possibilities that a few flakes could fly I think it will be more of an issue for areas further northwest of us.  Let's just hope there isn't a flip-flop by tomorrow morning!