The storm came…. and went on this, the vernal equinox of March 20th. We snowed in Dodge from about 5:30am through most of the day. The snow began to let up in the mid afternoon after about 6″ at the airport. Around 6 and a half inches will the offical total here as it’s still snowing lightly as I type. The most snow fell just north of the strengthening 700mb low from the Sublette to the Garden City area, just as I had discussed might happen based on what the GFS and the other models were showing. Unfortunately, the whole system was rapidly occluding and weakening as the afternoon went on and most of Kansas was left in a large dry slot with only scattered snow/rain showers east of a Dodge City to Hays line. This resulted in a busted snowfall forecast (predicted 10-14″+) for areas northeast of Dodge City…especially heading into portions of central and northeast KS. The upper cyclone underwent fairly explosive deepening early this morning in the western OK Panhandle and as quickly as it deepened and matured… it began the weakening process only hours later. A very dynamic meteorological situation with high bust potential for some forecasters… which indeed did happen. There were forecast successes, though, for western Kansas and much of Nebraska where predicted 8-12″+ amounts did indeed verifiy… with amazing 20″+ amounts in Central and Northern Nebraska since Saturday night.
