The huge winter storm is still on track to blitz much of the central plains from southwestern KS into the southern Dakotas. It appears there will be two waves of winter precipitation. The first wave will be developing late this afternoon over eastern Colorado which will expand into northwestern KS tonight and into Nebraska. This wave will produce moderate to heavy snow amounts in central/northern Nebraska into South Dakota. Then the main storm will begin to eject out of New Mexico tomorrow night. The rain snow line will slowly shift south Sunday night from the I-70 corridor down into Southwest Kansas overnight. We will probably change over to snow here in Dodge probably around or shortly before dawn Monday Morning. There will be a warm pocket at 800mb to overcome before we go over to all snow. Just massive warm/moist advection late Sunday night into the first half of Monday. The classic 500/700mb low tracks would actually put the heaviest snows from roughly WaKeeney into north central KS to just north of Kansas City. This is certainly indicated in both the GFS and NAM snowfall outputs, as shown below. This will be one for the books, certainly, for someone in northern KS and central Nebraska. The southern portion of the snow storm, closest to the 500/700mb lows, may see some thundersnow. We will be near the gradient here in Dodge between a ton of snow and not-so-much snow. It’s very tricky. If the 700mb low tracks just south of Dodge, we will likely see very heavy snow for several hours, piling up to near a foot by late Monday. If the 700mb low tracks along or just north of Highway 50, then the I-70 corridor will blitzed. Either way, SOMEONE will see well over a foot when all is set and done. A very nice, and MUCH NEEDED widespread precip event for the farmers all across the central plains!
