cyclone77

The Davis gauge has started to record precip for the first time this evening, as apparently it's warm enough that melting has commenced. Temp has bumped up from 31 to 32. Surface thermal ridge will pass through shortly, and any melting should subside in the next hour or two. Freezing rain is apparently now just rain, but the back edge is almost here. This has been a pretty fun event to watch to be sure.

Looks like about 0.2" accretion here best I can tell. Think the marginal temps, particularly the past few hours has cut down on better accretion. If temps would have been 3-5 degrees colder, and with less wind we'd probably have over 0.4" accretion by now.

Back edge of the precip is approaching, so luckily it won't get too out of hand here. WAA aloft is about to cut off anyway, so snow will become the dominant precip type in about an hour or two at most. My 0.5-1.5" snow call from last night will end up being pretty decent in the end.

Been holding at 31 for the past 2-3hrs. Pure freezing rain continues. Some models gave us more sleet than freezing rain, so there were multiple layers of fail depending on which model you used. The sleet and snow from earlier has now glaciated into a solid sheet of ice that will be very difficult to remove off the driveway and sidewalks.

Hey, welcome to the party!!

Hey you and me both bud. DVN just upgraded us as well. This has got to be a pretty rare occurrence lol.

Lights are flickering. Probably not a good sign lol.

Ouch, that's a scary looking graphic lol. I would guess that would be wind gusts.

Just stepped out a bit ago, and it's pretty nasty out there when the wind picks up. Getting some gusts over 25mph. Hard to tell how much ice is on the trees due to the darkness, but it looks like a nice glaze has built up. Luckily the winds should drop off a bit towards midnight, but the high winds later tomorrow could cause some trouble. EDIT: I can hear the trees crackling in the breeze even inside the house now lol.

The freezing rain is turning the 3/4" sleet/snow that fell earlier into a solid sheet of ice.

Haha I'm good with this mix bag. It's been pretty entertaining watching the phases change throughout the event. If I were to choose I'd definitely want an all snow event, but we've had a great season so it's all good. Looking ahead to tomorrow I'm wondering if there may be a window for some heavy snow squall action rotating around the back side of the cyclonic circulation. 3km NAM soundings show pretty steep low-level lapse rates over northern IL.

The sleet has given way to mostly freezing rain the past hour or so, with a few rogue ice pellets now and again. Looks like the change back over to snow won't occur till after midnight when the precip event is largely over.

Sleet is really piling up out there. Probably 1/3" to 1/2" already on top of the 0.3" of snow that fell earlier. CC doing a great job at showing the snow/mix line. The loops shows the snow/mix line slowly advancing northward as well.

It wasn't aggressive enough with the warm layer at 850mb. The latest run has finally caught on though, and now keeps us all sleet and freezing rain until after midnight. Using a 3:1 ratio for sleet, it's looking like 1-1.5" of sleet, but if some of that is freezing rain that will cut into that. There is a smidge of freezing rain mixing in now, so wouldn't be surprised to see freezing rain become more dominant than sleet for awhile at some point.

HRRR/GFS looks like they will end up being incorrect in depicting a mostly snow event for this area. So far sleet has dominated and the main surge of WAA is still on the way. Good chance we get 1"+ sleet out of this.

Back to mostly sleet, but picked up a quick few tenths of snow. Came down nicely with large flakes.

Precip has now changed to mostly light snow, with a little sleet still tinging off the east windows.

Interesting battle between NAMs and HRRR/RAP. NAMs have bumped back north a bit with the 18z, and bring mostly sleet and eventually even rain into the QC. HRRR and RAP continue to show mostly snow with a few brief periods of sleet. It's always tough to bet against an aggressive layer of warm air aloft in a situation like this.

A mixture of light freezing rain and light sleet has begun here. Temp at 31.

Yeah she's moving in pretty fast. Wasn't expecting any precip here until at least 4, and it's already knocking on the back door. I've been called worse!

Haha maybe. I hope you guys get at least 6-8". Everything seems to point that way for you guys, but I know you've had some bad luck this season at the last second. Hope this storm more than makes up for it. As for here, the HRRR/RAP bring the sleet in an hour earlier than the previous run, so the trend actually reversed at least for this run. The HRRR/RAP would equate to a few inches of snow followed by a sleet-fest verbatim. It's so close though it could go either way. It's about time to say screw the guidance and just watch it come in, but I know I won't be able to help but check on each run that comes in lol.

Now about 6-8hrs from the start of the event and it's still a little muddled as to what to expect. The GFS has consistently been showing an all snow event for the QCA, and other guidance seems to be trending in that direction. HRRR/RAP/NAM3 still bring the snow/mix line up to this area by mid evening. RGEM still gets us into all rain for a period, but it has trended south as Chicago Storm pointed out. Compared to yesterday the period of mixing is substantially less. It would still appear the northern/western DVN cwa has the best shot at the most snow, but if trends continue the QC may end up doing quite well out of this yet again. Apparently it's just one of those seasons when everything seems to trend in our favor in the final 24-48hrs.

RAP pretty far north with the snow/mix line, similar to the RGEM. Think a blend is probably the best way to go at this point. First call for here/QC is 0.5-1.5" of snow, and a minor glaze of ice. May also see a period or plain rain later tomorrow evening.

The difference in the placement of the snow/mix line is just lol worthy for being less than 24hrs out. GFS is an all snow event here and buries us with 6"+, while the RGEM says we'll be hearing the pitter-patter of rain on the roof all night.

Models still aren't giving much clarification for this area, as p-type and amounts still vary quite a bit. Euro also very slow to get precip in here compared to other models, and also more meager on QPF. First guess is a messy mixture throughout, with mixing p-types cutting down on anything too significant for a single p-type. I'd much rather be sitting up in the nw DVN cwa where they have a good shot to receive mostly snow. Should be a nice snow for CR crew.