High Plains Drifter

Still in the 20s!  It’s cloudy and cold right now in Dodge City with the 3pm temperature of 28°F — a far cry from the lower 40s the GFS and NAM had for highs for us just yesterday.  Maybe one of these days, the boundary layer non-hydrostatic physics will improve in the NAM model, and shallow arctic airmasses on the High Plains will be better forecast.  So, it’s colder, and also drier, with a dewpoint in the single digits.  It’s a no-brainer that our precipitation type tonight will be in the form of freezing rain (maybe some sleet mixed in initially).  The question, then, is how much precipitation will we get?  At this point I’m thinking about 0.15" of mainly freezing rain here in Dodge City.  By the time the expansive precipitation area organized later tonight and into tomorrow morning, the "show" will be lifting rapidly northeast of here.  The two graphics I present in this post are the 21z (3pm CST) surface observations in Img 1 and the 3-hr forecast of surface temperature and wind from the NAM model in Img 2.  As you can see, across pretty much all of western Kansas, the 3-hr forecast (3 hour!!) is off by a significant margin.