Tue-Wed, Jan. 22-23rd Winter Storm Update #5

(10:30AM - 1/22/19) Our storm system and eventual Midwest winter storm has slowly continued to organized overnight and into early this morning, now progressing eastward across the central and southern plains before moving in the direction of the Midwest. ​

​A brief update follows below..

Taking a look at the surface features, we can see that a still fairly weak and broad surface low is located across the southern plains this morning and this will continue off to the east and eventually northeast later today as it moves into Missouri. 

Also, strong low level winds overnight have led to strong warm air and moisture and advection (in red below) up and over the cold air further to the north, leading to the development of precipitation this morning across portions of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri. ​

As the upper level low and surface low continue in the direction of our area here in the Midwest, precipitation will follow, moving into portions of western and northwest Illinois later this morning. Expect freezing rain to continue east and northeast into the rest of northern Illinois during the late morning and early afternoon hours, becoming the dominant precipitation type. The loop below runs from 7am to 4pm today and is a model forecast of precipitation type. ​

​We are continuing to eye this very tricky forecast for not only freezing rain/ice accumulations but for several inches of snow as well across northern Illinois. Model guidance again overnight and early this morning has shown a southern track to the surface low which ends up leading to a better chance at accumulating snow over a larger area across the northern half of the state. 

Below is one models take on how things will look at 6am tomorrow (Wednesday morning) as the surface low finally gets into Illinois with snow to the north (circled in orange) and rain across much of the state to the south. However, even though we are very close to this event, models are still differing on the exact path of the surface low (in red) and any further south track would lead to that rain/snow being pushed further south. 

​Below is our latest thinking on both ice and snow accumulations across the state throughout this winter storm. 

MP

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