Chris's Corner - Valentine's Day Winter Storm

pretty heavy rain and some thunder in ofallonmo this morning. gfs has a pretty wet 2 week period coming up overall with not much in the way of any prolonged unseasonal variations in temps. just an active pattern.

Interesting orange blublocker-like tint this morning ahead of that line.

Had some pea size hail briefly here in ofallon.

Crazy how fast the grass is greening up.

Warm water droplets makes a huge difference in the greening of the turf

12 z models really seemed to have cut the rain totals around here quite a bit and shoved it south and west of here,

Um...ok...



That's from 55kt wind at 700mb plowing into the range head on.

GFS is cranking out like 5-6 feet or something of snow for Boulder CO...lol.

I know a couple who are getting married in Estes Park on Saturday. I was talking with them several days ago about the possibility of snow and they were both super excited for the possibility of a solid thumping on their wedding day. I spoke with them again last night and now they are concerned that it may be too much and cause problems with the wedding. The GFS snow depth product is showing 90" of snow there.

I should point out for those that are unfamiliar and care to know what's being shown in the GFS model cross section I posted.

The purple shading along the front range of the Rockies is omega. That's a meteorological quantity that expresses vertical motion when the vertical coordinate system is defined by pressure (rather than height). Since atmospheric pressure generally decreases with height a negative omega value means air is rising (pressure decreasing). I've never seen an omega signal that strong through such a deep layer in a non convection allowing model before (though if I'd ever bothered to look it probably happens all the time along the Sierra Nevada range). If we were to look at a cross section of in-plane winds we'd see them decelerating rapidly at the range with that moist air piling up and being forced to rise.

Thanks for sharing that.....I am surprised no one has accused you of trying to upstage Chris' naughty snow maps.  
I really appreciate when people post a model snapshot and explain it. Earlier, on SPC Mesoanalysis, I was trying to see why the tail end of our morning convection was the tail end. Meaning, why did the line stop abruptly where it did just north of KY. I never found a tell tale reason. 

My daughter in Park Hills said she had small hail when it went through. I asked her if she reported it to NWS. She said she reported it to her "personal weatherman"   

I did tell her that NWS likes to hear when storms have hail in them, even if they are not severe.

Looked like there was a couple areas of rotation with those storms...although it was probably mid-level/mesocyclone.

I bet its rained an easy inch here already.