Thur-Sat, Jan 14-16th Minor Snow Event Update #2

(11:45AM - 1/14/21) A storm system will move through the region today through Saturday, bringing a minor/nuisance accumulating snowfall to a large portion of the state.

Summary...
A developing storm system is moving into the Midwest today. This storm system will quickly becoming occluded and vertically stacked as it meanders around the Midwest today through Friday, eventually sliding through the Great Lakes on Saturday. A shield of precipitation developing this morning across Iowa and Missouri will spread across the state on this afternoon into tonight, as the storm system initially moves into the region. As the storm system occludes and becomes vertically stacked, precipitation will continue to wrap around the storm system and across a large portion of the state, tonight through Saturday early night. A period of rain is expected along the front portion of the precipitation shield today, before changing to snow for the rest of the event for affected areas. After the model guidance discrepancies the past several days, guidance came to agreement on a solution late yesterday, and that agreement has continued. With this update there was little in the way of change needed from our previous update Wednesday night.

Forecast...
​A shield of precipitation developing this morning across Iowa and Missouri will spread across the state, from this afternoon into tonight. Precipitation will initially start as period of rain for the state, before steadily changing over to snow across Northern and Central Illinois later this afternoon into early tonight. Behind the aforementioned initial shield of precipitation, periods of snow and snow showers are then expected across Northern and Central Illinois from tonight into early Saturday night, as the storm system becomes occluded and vertically stacked. Periods of snow and snow showers are also expected across Southern Illinois, Friday morning into early Saturday night. All snow with this event will come to an end across the state early Saturday night.

​What's Expected...
Final snowfall totals upwards of 1-3" are expected across portions of far Northern Illinois, with a dusting to 1.5" or so expected across the rest of the state.

​Below is the snowfall forecast for this event.

JP