Iowa Weather Report January 3rd 2015: Some Snow and Bitter Cold

SATURDAY-SUNDAY: Storm will be moving into the state today bringing with it a plethora of precipitation to the area. The precipitation will start out as some sleet and freezing rain in the southeastern counties before changing over to rain during the late morning into the afternoon hours. The rest of the state should see mainly snow with some possible freezing drizzle mixed in early on. Highs today will be in the 20s and 30s across the state. The storm will slowly move out of the state late tonight into Sunday. With this temperatures will tumble into the single digits above and below zero by sunrise Sunday. This run also shows that the snow may linger into the morning hours on Sunday in the eastern counties. Snow accumulations of 2-4” are possible across the southern and southeastern counties of the state with lesser amounts elsewhere. Skies will slowly clear on Sunday from northwest to southeast but it will not help readings any as they look to stay fairly steady if not fall even further (mainly in the eastern counties of the state).

COLD WEEK: There isn’t a whole lot to talk about when describing what next week looks like except the word cold. It will be brutally cold throughout the week with readings well below seasonal levels for the early part of January. Highs in the single digits and lows below zero will be commonplace. The GFS still has a clipper system moving through Monday into Tuesday with snow possible. It’s a bit early still to talk about snowfall totals given the fluidity of this current system, but we should be able to get a handle on this later this weekend. There looks to be a brief warm-up on Thursday but don’t be fooled, another arctic front drops in Thursday night and the bitter arctic air returns for Friday.

MOVING ON THROUGH: The extended period according to this model run doesn’t show much of any significant weather at this point. Temperatures look to remain near seasonal levels if this is correct, with another plunge of arctic air around the middle of the month. However, given what we saw last January and what we’re looking at seeing next week, don’t be surprised to see the cold air lasting longer than what is currently shown on models.