Iowa Weather Report January 29th 2015: North by Northwesterly Flow

COLDER AND COLDER: The days of the warmer than normal temperatures are gone for a while and in to replace it will be readings more typical of late January which looks to then be replaced by Arctic air as we head into the beginning of February. Highs today will be early on in the 30s to around 40 and slowly fall through the afternoon behind a cold front that will have passed the state earlier in the day. The next system this weekend is one that is becoming harder to get a handle on especially with this GFS model run. This run still shows that the snow will move in late on Saturday and last through the day on Sunday, however the big change from what was shown yesterday is that most of the precipitation looks to stay along and south of Interstate 80. This also looks to bring much less snow than what might have been seen in earlier runs as well. This is more likely due to the cold arctic air moving into the state earlier and drying out the atmosphere and limiting snow farther south than what was seen yesterday and even days earlier than this. We’ll have to wait and see if this trend continues on upcoming runs before settling on this solution. Just one slight change like this can reverse a whole forecast. (Example being the two runs 24 hours apart). What we are confident in is the cold air that will filter into the state for next week with readings likely in the teens for highs and lows in the single digits above and below zero (dependent on snow cover). There will be (at least according to this current run) a few chances of some snow showers with some disturbances that will move through, but we’ll get to them when we’re more confident in any storm systems next week.

FEBRUARY FREEZE: Looking farther into February, the GFS is consistently showing that readings are looking to stay near or below seasonal levels for the period through the middle of the month. There looks to be several systems that could impact the state with some precipitation but it’s too early to pinpoint timing of these systems when the models are struggling with systems that are only a few days out. However we’ll keep monitoring for any systems during this period over the next couple of days.