Here in Dodge City, the total snowfall for the 2005-06 winter season has been around 5.5″ as of today. This is pretty much the case for much of the central High Plains in what has been an extremely dry winter. We have already had two significant storm systems blow through with very strong winds (March 12th; 60 mph wind gusts… 15th; near 50mph wind gusts) causing reduced visibility in blowing dust with a couple of large grass fire events.
What I love about the month of March is that the swing towards spring can throw the planetary scale pattern into a chaotic re-adjustment leading to a wide diversity of possible sensible weather outcomes. March 12th was a perfect example, as a historic tornado outbreak consumed the lower Missouri River valley. As can happen a lot of times in March, the following week’s weather could continue this jump right into spring…or the weather could take a step back into winter. Well, in this case… March 2006… we appear to be following the latter. A very significant storm will be digging into the southwest states this weekend. The huge difference between this storm and and the March 12th storm is the fact that there will be cold air in place across much of the plains out ahead of this large storm… instead of a large warm sector across the plains.
Despite there being an intrusion of much cooler air ahead of this storm system… there will be an abundance of low level moisture advecting from the Gulf of Mexico. This is evident as of the time of this writing (Friday 7pm CST) by the mid to upper 60s dewpoints advecting northward through south Texas.
For about 3 weeks around the vernal equinox…there is a climatological “peak” if you will…for the best juxtaposition of remnant winter cold air and the resurgence of Gulf of Mexico moisture. It is this combination that allows for robust development of synoptic scale extra-tropical cyclones that can cause major winter storms in western Kansas. Looking back at some of the snowstorm records I’ve compiled for Dodge City, KS, 4 of the top-5 snowstorms in Dodge City since the late 1800s have occurred within 2 weeks of the vernal equinox:
- 20.5″ — Feb 24-27, 1903
- 18.5″ — March 22-25, 1957
- 18.2″ — March 12-17, 1924
- 18.0″ — March 9-10, 1922
- 15.7″ — March 12-13, 1999
Other one-foot snowstorms centered around the vernal equinox include March 15-16th, 1970 (12.8″), March 23-24th, 1987 (11.5″). An early spring blizzard in 1938 produced 14.3″ of snow on April 7-8th.
Will we also add March 19-20th, 2006 to the list of one-footers in Dodge City?? The models are painting a very rosy picture in the 72-84hr time frame for a significant snowstorm for portions of western Kansas. It’s still unclear who will really get the bulk of this storm, but there seem to be all the ingredients necessary for a one-foot snowfall for at least a couple locations north of the surface low in western Kansas.
From the 12z model runs… the ECMWF, Canadian, and UKMET models show at least 6 to 8″ of wet snow for Dodge City. The GFS and NAM show the bulk of the precip just north of Dodge towards I-70… like the Wakeeney to Hays areas. Stay tuned!!!