Below is the regional radar mosaic as of 5:00 am CST. The snow/freezing rain line is advancing east across Southwest Kansas… we will probably see a brief period of snow here before the dry slot overtakes us on Dodge later this morning. Up in northeastern Colorado and northwestern KS… it’s all snow, and their event is just beginning where major snow accumulations will occur of a foot or more.
Well, it actually managed to stay right at 32°F the whole night while the moderate precipitation moved through Dodge City. Here is the result:
This is a zoomed in portion of the photo above:
I shot this photo outside my front door around 4:30am during a break in the rainfall. This is roughly 1/8" accumulation of ice. Had it been about 29° or so, it would have accumulated a lot more…. like what the far southwest portion of Southwest Kansas experienced, where there are power outages in several towns like Johnson and Hugoton
1215 AM ICE STORM HUGOTON 37.18N 101.35W 12/20/2006 STEVENS KS LAW ENFORCEMENT TREE LIMBS AND POWERLINES ARE SNAPPING DUE TO ICE ACCUMULATION. MOST OF THE CITY OF HUGOTON IS WITHOUT POWER. ROADS REMAIN WET.
0306 AM ICE STORM JOHNSON CITY 37.57N 101.75W 12/20/2006 STANTON KS LAW ENFORCEMENT TREE LIMBS AND POWERLINES DOWN. POWER IS OUT IN JOHNSON. PRECIPITATION CHANGED TO SNOW AT ABOUT 250 AM CST.
SHORT TERM FORECAST NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DODGE CITY KS 436 AM CST WED DEC 20 2006 CLARK-ELLIS-FINNEY-FORD-GRAY-HASKELL- HODGEMAN-LANE-MEADE-NESS-SCOTT-SEWARD-TREGO-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...ASHLAND... CIMARRON...DIGHTON... DODGE CITY...GARDEN CITY... HAYS...JETMORE...LIBERAL...MEADE... NESS CITY... SCOTT CITY...SUBLETTE...WAKEENEY 436 AM CST WED DEC 20 2006 NOW WIDESPREAD AREAS OF MODERATE FREEZING RAIN ARE OCCURRING ACROSS A GOOD PORTION OF SOUTHWEST KANSAS AS OF 430 AM CST. ALL AREAS ALONG AND WEST OF HIGHWAY 283 AND EAST OF HIGHWAY 25 ARE BEING AFFECTED. SIGNIFICANT ICE ACCUMULATIONS ON TREES, POWERLINES, AND OTHER ELEVATED SURFACES WILL CAUSE POWER OUTAGES AND PROPERTY DAMAGE DUE TO FALLING TREE LIMBS. ROADS FOR THE MOST PART REMAIN WET DUE TO WARMER GROUND TEMPERATURES, HOWEVER REPORTS FROM AREA LAW ENFORCEMENT STATE THAT THERE ARE SOME SLICK SPOTS, ESPECIALLY ON SECONDARY ROADS AS WELL AS BRIDGES AND OVERPASSES. DRIVERS ARE URGED TO EXERCISE CAUTION IF YOU ARE TRAVELING ACROSS SOUTHWEST KANSAS DURING THE EARLY MORNING. RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF UP TO AN INCH AS WELL AS ICE ACCUMULATIONS OF UP TO A HALF INCH ARE POSSIBLE BEFORE THE PRECIPITATION CHANGES OVER TO SNOW FROM WEST TO EAST LATER ON THIS MORNING.
Late evening update. Well, I got home from work with the temperature around 33°F here in Dodge City with light rain falling… I had my bowling league this evening (finally shot a freaking 600 series after three consecutive nights of 520s) and the temperature was falling slowly to around 30° with a bunch of rain moving in from the panhandles. On the short drive home from bowling, there was certainly an accumulation of ice on the tree branches and other exposed surfaces here in Dodge, but not terribly thick. The temperature has notched back up 1 degree to 31° at 10pm, and there is a very significant area of precipitation moving into Southwest Kansas. I think we will continue to slowly warm to 32F over the next couple of hours…then to above freezing sometime overnight, and we’ll melt the ice here in Dodge… the same cannot be said farther southwest though, where a very significant accumulation of ice continues…and will continue through much of the night in the Liberal, Elkhart, and Garden City areas it would appear. Here is a regional radar mosaic from around 10pm CST with a little annotation of where it is rain vs. freezing rain. The yellow star is Dodge City:
So close, yet so far away…
Well, here in Dodge City, after our morning light freezing rain shower, the temperature rose steadily throughout the morning and afternoon to the mid 30s…melting away all the ice. As it appears now, we will see mainly plain-old cold 33° to 35°F rain. For a winter weather weenie junkie… this is as bad as it gets!!! The upper storm is just too strong and too far to the west…encompassing too much low level warm air… the pre-existing remnant cold airmass that was in place yesterday was just not cold enough for here in Dodge City…. but….
Just west of here it is a mess. Widespread freezing rain with temperatures between 28° and 31°F in areas like Liberal, Hugoton, Elkhart, Dalhart, Boise City. The ice accumulation will be significant in these areas tonight as tremendous lifting of very rich low level moisture will really get going tonight.
Snow? Try the Cheyenne Ridge. Two feet expected and the Cheyenne office is going to issue a Blizzard Warning for the Cheyenne Ridge area… amazing. So in the span of about 2 and a half weeks… I will get shafted twice!! …once to the east (the Ozark Winter Storm of Nov 30th) and once to the north-northwest. One foot of snow accumulation will probably get as close as east-central Colorado…. I’ll keep ya posted… it’s quite a fascinating storm.
One little shower moved through about a half hour ago with a mixture of sleet and freezing rain here in Dodge City. The temperature is hovering around 31-32°F at this time. There is a thin glaze of ice on my windshield. Looking in the TX Panhandle at the observations, a lot of 29-32°F readings with freezing rain over the central and western TX Panhandle developing. The event is just now getting started down to the southwest! The map below, 0816 UTC = 2:16am CST… I contoured the 30° and 32°F isotherm.
Here is a map of my forecast of the event…a "best guess" of the corridors of primary precipitation types. We’ll see how close this comes to verifying.
What is interesting to note is that the actual surface temperatures are just a little bit cooler through midnight per some of the short-fuse RUC forecasts. Below is an indication of this with a comparison of a 06z (midnight CST on 12/19) RUC surface temperature analysis compared to the 3-hour forecast valid the same time (from the 03z run). Note the greatest discrepency over West Texas and the TX-OK Panhandles… I think this kind of interrogation is important because all it takes is only a couple degrees to turn an ordinary cold rain event into something much more significant with regards to icing in areas like Dodge City.
The first major winter storm of the 2006-07 winter season is approaching Southwest Kansas. As for Dodge City where I live, it will be very close to a mostly freezing rain versus "plain" rain event as the 30-32°F line will be very close to Dodge City for a bulk of the event. The QPF (quantative precipitation forecast) values from the models are really impressive for a storm in December in Southwest Kansas. Below is a storm-total QPF from the December 19th 00z (6pm CST) NAM model run:
Below is the Area Forecast Discussion I wrote at work yesterday concerning the approaching event.
..SIGNIFICANT ICE EXPECTED OVER PORTIONS OF SOUTHWEST KANSAS MAIN CHALLENGE IN THE FORECAST CENTERS AROUND SURFACE TEMPERATURES...AND DEGREE OF WARM LAYER ALOFT WITH RESPECT TO PRECIPITATION TYPE. THERE IS A LARGE DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE IN WIDESPREAD 0.75 TO 1.25 INCH TOTAL LIQUID EQUIVALENT PRECIPITATION. UPPER LOW WILL BEGIN INTERACTING WITH VERY RICH LOW LEVEL MOISTURE CURRENTLY RESIDING ACROSS MUCH OF TEXAS PER 295K ISENTROPIC ANALYSIS WITH 14-16C H85 DEWPOINTS PREVALENT. INGREDIENTS ARE COMING TOGETHER FOR SIGNIFICANT ICE PROBLEMS...LARGELY BECAUSE OF A) TREMENDOUS RESERVOIR OF MOISTURE ACROSS TEXAS...B) PROLONGED SOURCE OF LIFT WITH INTERACTION BETWEEN QUASI-GEOSTROPHIC FORCING AND MESOSCALE FRONTOGENETIC FORCING...ESSENTIALLY "TRAINING" OVER SOUTHWEST KANSAS FOR 12 TO 18 HOURS...C) SURFACE HIGH IN PLACE KEEPING COLD ENOUGH TEMPERATURES AND VERY DRY LOW LEVEL AIR AT THE ONSET OF THE EVENT FOR WET-BULB COOLING EFFECTS TO KEEP SURFACE TEMPS IN THE 28-31F RANGE. THE MOST SIGNIFICANT MODEL DISCREPANCY BETWEEN THE GFS AND THE NAM IS THE MAGNITUDE OF THE WARM AIR ALOFT CENTERED AROUND 750MB. THE NAM SUGGESTS THE ADVECTION OF +2 TO +3C AS FAR NORTHWEST AS JOHNSON AND SYRACUSE THROUGH MUCH OF THE EVENT. CURRENT THINKING NOW IS THAT AN ALL-SNOW SCENARIO LOOKS MUCH LESS LIKELY OVER EVEN THE NORTHWEST SECTION OF THE CWA. THINK EVEN IN HAMILTON COUNTY THERE WILL BE A SIGNIFICANT PERIOD OF SLEET MIXED WITH FREEZING RAIN...THEN BECOMING SLEET MIXED WITH SNOW. SNOW ACCUMS OF 1-3 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE IN THESE AREAS. THE NEXT CONCERN IS THEN SURFACE TEMPERATURES FOR THE REST OF THE CWA...BECAUSE WITH SUCH A PRONOUNCED WARM LAYER ALOFT...THINK THAT ALL SNOW FALLING THROUGH WARM LAYER WILL COMPLETELY MELT...THUS WOULD TAKE A VERY COLD SURFACE LAYER TO RE-FREEZE AS SLEET...SO THE THINKING IS THAT A MAJORITY OF THE EVENT WILL BE FREEZING RAIN WEST OF A LINE FROM DODGE- NESS-WAKEENEY ALL THE WAY WEST TO LAKIN-ULYSSES-HUGOTON. MODEL QPF FIELDS ARE IMPRESSIVE WITH LARGE MODEL CONSISTENCY IN 1 TO 1.50 INCH QPF. THINK THAT A LARGE PART OF THE FORECAST AREA WEST OF DODGE-NESS-WAKEENEY WILL SEE THREE-QUARTERS OF THE EVENT AS FREEZING RAIN AND CONFIDENCE IS QUITE HIGH IN THIS SCENARIO. THUS WILL GO WITH A WINTER STORM WARNING...PRIMARILY FOR UP TO A HALF INCH OR MORE OF ICE ACCUMULATION ON TREES/POWERLINES. WEST OF THE DOMINANT FREEZING RAIN AXIS...A NARROW CORRIDOR OF MAINLY SLEET FOR THE EVENT SHOULD EXIST...REALLY TOUGH TO PIN THIS DOWN OF COURSE AT 30-42 HOURS...HOWEVER UP TO AN INCH (OR MORE) OF SLEET MAY ACCUMULATE ESPECIALLY IN THE FAR WESTERN COUNTIES. COLD AIR CENTERED AROUND THE 750MB LAYER WILL EVENTUALLY FILTER EASTWARD BUT NOT UNTIL A BULK OF THE PRECIPITATION IS OVER WITH...HOWEVER THINK THAT SNOW MAY BE QUITE HEAVY FOR A BRIEF PERIOD OF TIME WEDNESDAY MORNING AS IT MOVES SOUTHWEST TO NORTHEAST ACROSS THE CWA. WEDNESDAY...AS UPPER LOW WINDS UP TO OUR NORTHWEST...DRY INTRUSION WILL WORK IN FAST AND THE EVENT WILL BE OVER WITH FOR SOUTHWEST KANSAS. WE SHOULD EVEN BREAK OUT INTO DECENT SUNSHINE IN THE SYNOPTIC DRY SLOT.
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