Iowa Weather Report December 23rd 2014: O’ Come O’ Come, Some Snow May Come Today

COUNTING DOWN TO CHRISTMAS: The weather will be sloppy today across the state with some rain over the eastern counties mixing with some snow, while the western counties may see all snow. Most of the accumulations will be across the northwestern half of the state with the heaviest likely being in parts of NW Iowa. In those areas, 2-4” of snow is possible with lighter amounts surrounding that. Highs today will be in the 30s northwest to the lower 40s southeast. Temperatures will drop only slightly as we head into Christmas Eve but another low pressure center will be quickly developing and racing north-northeastward across the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes. This may skirt the eastern counties with some snow or perhaps some rain snow mix across those areas. This run has it a bit further west than 24 hours ago, however any heavy snow still looks to stay just to our east over Illinois and eastern Wisconsin. Any deviations in track could bring some of that accumulating snow into our eastern counties. Readings on Wednesday will be in the 30s across the state with mainly cloudy skies even outside the precipitation chance over the eastern counties. At this point, Christmas Day looks to be the quietest of the next several days with partly to mostly sunny skies around. The GFS is showing the winds switching around to the south and southwest ahead of a system that will be dropping into the central Rockies and Plains by late in the day. This may boost readings well into the 30s or even a few 40s across the state. Of course any snow pack will keep readings tempered down a bit.

THROUGH THE WEEKEND INTO EARLY NEXT WEEK: The system mentioned previously will move into the state Friday into Friday night with some light snow showers or a few flurries. It doesn’t look like a big accumulation will come out of that system. This will drop readings back into the 20s and lower 30s for the weekend with partly to mostly sunny skies around. The big change comes Monday as an arctic front looks to drop in from the northwest. This will be moisture starved with perhaps only a few clouds around and perhaps a flurry. What it will do is bring much colder weather into the state to end the year. We will see readings plummet into the teens for highs on Tuesday if not colder and we may see lows close to zero. Any snowpack around may bring these readings down even further. It will also be breezy and that will drive wind chills down well below zero as well. More or less, winter is arriving and it’s going to come regardless of whether we have snow on the ground or not.

NEW YEAR: Looking into the New Year, the temperatures look to remain near seasonal levels perhaps a touch below on some days. It does look rather quiet as well until the end of the period where the GFS has a large storm system that may affect the state at that time. We have plenty of time to watch that in the coming days so we’re not concerned about this as yet but if a trend develops we’ll become a bit more so.