[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhi5LsQNHWc&w=480&h=360]
SKIMMING SNOW: A storm system will be moving from the lower Mississippi River Valley into the Great Lakes today and tomorrow bringing with it some snow across MO, IL and parts of southern, eastern and southeast Iowa. Some light snow or flurries will be possible everywhere except the northwestern counties with the heaviest snow over the far southeastern counties. Right now the amounts are looking to vary quite significantly across even the southern and eastern counties of the state. Amounts from a dusting to an inch over the central and northeastern counties (around Des Moines to Waterloo to over 6+ in far SE Iowa especially in Lee County. This has been a very hard storm to forecast with factors of dry air coming in from the north and much of the moisture moving to our south and southeast. We have a pretty good idea now what is going to occur with this system, but there’s always room for a surprise to pop up. Snow should taper off Wednesday as the system lifts in to the eastern Great Lakes.
COLD AND DRY: The rest of the week into the upcoming weekend looks to stay at or slightly below average for this time of the year as a trough will carve out through the eastern half of the country. With the flow coming out of the northwest, this will keep us dry for the foreseeable future with only a few scattered clouds from time to time. A more modest increase in clouds with the next storm doesn’t look to take place until late Sunday into Monday of next week.
BEYOND THAT: That system early next week may bring some snow or rain to the state but this system looks to be starved for moisture so it doesn’t look to be that big of a precipitation maker at this time. The pattern look to shift to a more zonal pattern for a few days before the trough reasserts itself over the east one more time. The GFS however is showing a more active northwesterly flow at that time with several shots of precipitation at mid month.