Iowa Weather Report February 24th 2014 – Iowa Weather Network Archives

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COLD WEEK AHEAD: A cold week is in store across the state with some snow possible today. The snow will move in during the late morning into the afternoon hours. This will last through the overnight hours with accumulations likely in the one to two inch range. Highs today will be in the teens and 20s to near 30 for highs. Tomorrow the sun returns but the temperatures drop into the single digits and teens for highs and lows Tuesday night into Wednesday morning will plummet below zero for most of the state. Record lows are possible Wednesday morning in some areas. Sunshine will be around Wednesday and Thursday with readings similar to Tuesday with single digits and teens for highs and lows in the single digits above and below zero.

INTO NEXT WEEKEND: A system moves into the state on Friday that could bring some light snow to the area. It’s too early to determine accumulations at this time but it does look similar to the storm today, but we’ll wait and see in the coming days. Another more powerful storm begins to take shape over the weekend. This may bring some snow across the state on Saturday into Saturday night. This run of the GFS however does dissipate the precipitation for most of the day on Sunday as High Pressure tries to bring in drier air down from the north shunting most of the precipitation farther to our south. There may be some snow over the southern half of the state again Sunday night into Monday as the storm moves to our south and southeast of the state. As mentioned in the report yesterday this is why we continue to watch trends, because as you saw yesterday it had possible heavy snow over the area and now most of that has shifted south of the state. We’ll have to wait and see if this trend continues or the model moves it back northward once again. Another thing of interest is possible thunderstorms well to our south and southeast that may rob some of the moisture from the cold side of the system that could lower snow amounts. This is likely the reason for the somewhat lower totals than forecast from the last storm last week. We’ll continue to monitor this storm for the rest of the week as it comes in our direction.

MARCHING ALONG: Heading into the month of March a bit further, the GFS is showing temperatures moderating a bit with several shots of cold air coming in from the north possible, especially one around the 9th and 10th that may bring some snow to the state if this model run were to verify. This would be followed by a big plunge of polar air from the arctic. Again, as seen earlier with the weekend storm, things can change even just a little bit and can drastically change a whole forecast. So this is not set in stone as yet.