Heavy snow south of Rockford Wednesday

The forecast called for half an inch, up to an inch of snow Wednesday morning, but for residents in Carroll, Whiteside, Jo Daviess, southern Ogle and Lee counties the snow added up to quite a bit more.  In fact, anywhere between 4" to 6" of snow came down quickly during the morning commute.  Compare that to the 0.3" that was recorded at the Chicago Rockford International Airport.

So, what happened?  A very narrow band of snow developed to the north of low pressure Wednesday morning.  While the low itself was fairly weak, it had enough upper level support and lift in the atmosphere to give the snow a more convective characteristic- meaning more instability...more lift and therefore heavy snow.  Visibility was low and the snowfall rates were high allowing the totals to get as high as they did.

Here are a few snow totals from those areas:

Scales Mound: 3.0"
Lanark: 4.7"
Dixon: 6.0"
Oregon: 4.5"
Lake Carroll: 5"-6"
Polo: 4"-5"