Snow Cover on 3/22/10 Using MODIS
O.K., after a sick and draining Saturday, I have the energy to discuss this winter (spring?) storm! My apologies for missing “Upstream” Friday night and what have likely been a special edition on Saturday too. I also wasn’t able to attend a NWS conference on Saturday morning. I hate being sick!
Anyway, there are three aspects to this storm which people are asking a lot about 1) isn’t it too late in the season for this 2) how can we have just been in the sixties and are forecast to be back that warm in a few days and 3) what’s with the big differences in precipitation type and totals over short distances in the Ozarks?
Well, first off, big March snows are not unheard of at all. The last one I remember was in the late nineties and although I don’t have an exact date handy, I can tell you it occurred the same weekend that the men MSU (SMSU) Bears went to the NCAA playoffs. It was a Saturday night…I believe portions of the Ozarks received over 10 inches! Another big storm occurred sometime in the late eighties (again, I don’t have access to detailed records here at home, this is all by personal recollection). That storm just about shut this town down and you should know it was seventy degrees only a few days after this storm! Finally, the small difference in average snowfall between February and March should tell you something about March snow potential.
You think you’re in shock over this, think about what the folks in Kansas were feeling last year in late March.
"Cut-off" Low at 7am Sunday at 500 mb.
As for this “winter sandwich” we seem to be in, with warmth on both sides of the storm, this is best explained by the “cutoff” nature of this weather system and by the fact that spring is simply an extreme time of year. Because the cold air was drawn into a circulation that cut itself off from the main jet stream flow, it will only be a matter of moving the cold core to experience a rapid temperature recovery.
This same closed-off and slow-moving structure explains how the precipitation was laid down. Greene County, which was correctly forecast to be “on the line”, certainly lived up to this with 6″ plus snow/sleet totals over the extreme western portion of the county to rain and freezing rain in the eastern portion (I have about a 1/4″ of ice on my trees here in eastern Springfield). Nightfall determined precipitation type here in Greene county as temperature adjusted down a bit.
A transition from rain to sleet to ice to snow is not unheard of in most winter storms. In non-low pressure storms involving a front, this is usually much more noticeable and is responsible for nearly all of the worst ice storms. But low pressure type storms such as this weekend’s are usually moving too fast and have narrow mixed zones so that mixed precipitation is not usually an issue. But as we already know, this storm “cut off” and was slow-moving, allowing a everything to exaggerate. The ice and the quick transition to heavy snow totals are the two aspects to this storm that I think were largely unexpected.
Because of the heavy rains and a snowpack which is expected to melt quickly later in the week, river flooding will likely be an issue for some.
I’m thinking about an “Uptream” later today, probably in the early evening as I’ll be working the late shows tonight. Send in photos and storm reports!
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