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Monday, January 25, 2010

What a Mess! Storm System Report. Rain/Snow over the weekend!


Rainy Conditions January 23th


We had a messy weather storm system which passed over the weekend. Actually it was very complex storm system, It brought every preip type in the book practically! We got Freezing Rain, Rain, Sleet, and Snow. Systems That bring Rain in January, are actually not unheard of, but they are not very common, One of the interesting things is, This is the second winter storm system, that brought rain with it along with snow, I've also noticed our weather systems are coming out of the South quite a bit this winter, an El Nino Weather Pattern is partly the cause of this, it seems to be pushing large low pressure systems more north, and there are more frequent weather systems. I remember last year in January when we only had 1 day above 32.F in the entire month! this year so far we've had 7! this is because last year we were stuck in a cold Northwesterly flow.


The first low pressure system past to the West of the area, This dragged warm air ahead of it, and at first brought Freezing Rain Friday Night, we got a coating of ice, This made for very Hazardous travel conditions, later Saturday, it turned to plain old rain! it did mix with wet snow flakes during the day Saturday, before turning back to Drizzle and Rain showers overnight. Actually overnight Saturday Night, we even had a Moderate rain shower!
Moderate Snow Sunday January 24Th

this is where the system got complex, Sunday a second low pressure system came up from MO, and pushed over Eastern Wisconsin, This brought a band of Moderate Snow over all but the very western sections of the 6 county area in my backyard, We got a quick 0.75" of an inch of snow, Warm air was still in place when the second low pressure system passed, the snow was wet and slushy as the temp was between 33.F and 34.F during the entire time of the snow, and actually most of that 0.75" of snow we got was melted off everything by evening. This system brought much more snow up in Northern Wisconsin/ Northeast Minnesota where places such as Duluth,MN reported over 8 inches. This storm system also had some winds to it, but the most windy conditions were Saturday, where my station reported at 31MPH wind gust, on Sunday the winds actually died down. Snow continued on Monday and this snow was powdery, since temps cooled to the lower 20s So in Total so far from this storm system I got 0.22" of rain/wet snowflakes! and 1.75" of snow! it was a interesting system to watch.

Now we are into Monday and Much colder air is finally being brought down across the Upper Midwest, There are Very strong winds behind This weather system, Blizzard Conditions are being reported in Western Minnesota, a 58MPH wind gust was reported there! this system will increase our winds later tonight as cold air continues to be pulled down, winds could gust over 30MPH at times, with this, light snow will continue though evening.

1 comment:

Timothy Burr; northlandweatherblog.com said...

Nice recap on this latest storm Derek, now back to the arctic chill this week. Snow totals varied greatly in Duluth, up over the hill around 10", below the hill (closer to Lake Superior) maybe 2-4" at most.