Hoosier

Indeed. Regarding wave 1, the Canadian has been insistent on a somewhat respectable corridor of ice running through here or nearby. It's interesting because southerly/southeasterly flow is not really favorable to be locking in freezing rain for a long time, especially without a prime antecedent airmass. I guess something this has going for it despite the S/SE flow is that warm layer aloft is not extremely warm this far north and the surface low is still relatively weak and organizing as it's passing through.

May be the first time someone typed hors d'oeuvres on a weather board. Congrats

Whether or not it's enough to help me, I would hold out hope about the extreme northwest track not verifying. It is not easy to get a track from the TX/LA border coastal region toward the Quad Cities. Yes, it can happen, but it really has to be forced and any relatively minor change aloft could serve to deflect the system more northeast.

Thanks. Just curious, what option did you select on there to do that?

Yep... as long as that e/ne flow is there in the lowest couple thousand feet, there's a real possibility it would delay the climb above freezing at the surface. Even if it did manage to stay AOB freezing for a longer time, it doesn't necessarily mean that accretion efficiency would be great the whole time as marginal temps and heavier precip usually makes it tough to build up a lot of ice.

Nice pencil thin band of snow on the northern edge of the precip shield at the end of the NAM.

I was a little surprised it changed to rain as quick as it did given the e/ne sfc winds as you mentioned. That is quite a surge of warm air off the deck though so maybe that is why the low level cold layer eroded so quickly even with the e/ne surface winds.

Shore temps have dropped to around 40 with the recent cold spell. Would be an interesting test to see if downtown could get any ice with that or if it would stay above freezing the whole time.

It'd be better than not having snow on the ground, but the impact is often overstated. And assuming the snow from wave 1 doesn't melt in the meantime, which is a distinct possibility.

Katy bar the door. Not looking good on this Euro run if you're hoping for a significant southward shift with part 2. Down to 995 mb in the Arklatex.

Was talking more locally about what happens and where in the LOT cwa.

Strongly agree. Get it as far south as possible for our purposes wrt the second storm.

Pretty poor model agreement on the details with wave 1, including all-important thermal profiles.

Can really see the holiday impact on the reporting. There were only about 18k new tests in IN and we've been averaging closer to 50k per day. Plus it's Sunday so we may really see some artificially low numbers.

Great point about sleet. Seems a little strange that the output isn't depicting more sleet in the area you mentioned. Where 850 mb temps are around 1-2C and 925 mb temps are around -4C, that is often highly suggestive of sleet unless the warm layer is obscenely thick, but chances are it's not. Edit: I checked 700 mb temps and they are below 0C along/north of the Kankakee River at that time.

Holy ice batman, especially on Euro and GEM. It's a pretty wide area that gets clocked with it too.

Last 5 runs of the GFS, all valid at the same time

For anyone concerned that the GFS has suddenly locked into a solution, I'd encourage them to loop the runs just from today. There has been a monstrous trend toward a slower solution, and also west.

It's a fairly atypical track, but it or some version of it (say, AL to IN) happens from time to time. The fact that some models are showing such a hard north move suggests there's a greater than usual chance of it occurring.

I am guessing that at least 90% of the time when a surface low comes out of the GOM into Louisiana in winter, you don't have to worry about it raining in Chicago because the track is gonna tend to have a significant enough easterly component to keep it far enough south. But then there's the other percentage of time, when the track is basically due north into the Quad Cities.

Hopefully it stops stepping before it falls down the stairs.

Way too much commentary for an 84 hour NAM, but the end of the run has a weak sauce 1009 mb low in Iowa. Transition zone is present with lingering cold air at the surface thanks to the surface high in place earlier on. In theory, a weaker surface low would mean less of a pressure gradient, thus weaker sfc winds, thus slower warming at the surface compared to having a stronger low, but the counter to that is that it's still southerly/southeasterly flow out ahead of the surface low and many areas don't have any snowcover to try to slow down the temperature rise.

A miss west or east is on the table, but I think I'm a little more concerned about a deeper/western track (yes it goes against the trends that we have often seen in recent years). Ridging is pretty robust in the east and this type of upper level look with such a robust southern wave scares me. Would be nice if the system behind it could act as a bit of a kicker to limit how far west our system comes. Of course this assumes that the upper level pattern actually ends up looking like this.

Another cousin of my mom has covid. Has a fever, bad cough and loss of smell/taste. He is late 60s and in a LTC facility. He went into the hospital for a procedure in fall 2019, ended up having a lot of complications and spent months in the hospital before going to live with his daughter for a while until she just wasn't able to take care of him anymore. He is in a better condition to fight covid now than he was a year ago but it's still kinda concerning.

Whether we call it the main or secondary system, I can make good arguments for it missing west or east of us. Maybe that's a good sign as it reflects that we are solidly in the envelope.