1" of snow, 15", or 30" ???

Appreciate your interest on the blog as we get ready for not only some ridiculous temperatures AND wind chills, but more snow. A social media snow forecast posted Wednesday was all the buzz and prompted many questions. Will Kansas see that much? Why aren't you forecasting that much snow? Is it really going to be that bad? There is strong potential of heavier snow later in the weekend and it could be one of the more significant snows of the winter. 

First wave of snow - Friday/Saturday:

A dry, powdery snow is expected to begin in western Kansas Friday and move southeast into the night and continue Saturday. This should be a solid 1-3 inch snow for much of the state. As cold as it is, it will take about 20-25 inches of snow to get 1" of actually liquid. So it takes a lot of moisture to get heavier snow.

Second wave of snow - Sunday-Monday :

This one looks heavier, but also comes at a time when it will be VERY cold. I think we will already have 1-3 inches on the ground in many places, so we will have a head start when the brunt of the storm gets going. Given what we are seeing this morning, it is safe to expect the heaviest snow (which will probably end up being 7 inches or more), for the southern half of Kansas. Farther north, especially north of I-70, I would expect at least 3-6 in the Sunday/Monday time frame. We will fine tune this forecast and put some more numbers down on the map after looking at new data Thursday afternoon.

Why so cold?

The cold air is has been pushed up against the Rockies with no place to go. And our winds have been out of the northeast, continuing to funnel the cold air right into the region. We've also had an upper low spinning near the Great Lakes, which continues to push the bitter cold south. It's almost like the perfect storm of cold weather - I have never seen this in my 20 years of forecasting in Kansas. 

How much longer?

 

The center of the Arctic air hits Sunday/Monday when the high pressure slides into Nebraska and Iowa. That's when we have a strong chance of seeing record lows Monday morning and maybe even Tuesday morning. Once this high pushes east of us, we will begin to scale back the cold little by little. What will temper the upward trend is the snow cover.