12z UK is similar to last night. It has the initial weak wave that drops a bit of light snow up here, then there's a second, stronger wave, then a third good wave for eastern areas
12z GFS is a big step backward. The northern stream digs a little more again, which grabs the strong western energy and stretches it out and yanks the northern part of it eastward. We end up with a weak, positively-tilted system.
We are getting a major change tonight from the UK and Euro. They are now trying to hold a lot more energy back to the west, so it is able to spin up a better wave that tracks much farther nw. At the surface an organized "big" storm is not quite there, yet. Both the UK and Euro drop a few inches of snow through Iowa.
Terry Swails blog post this morning about the 1967 tornadoes/blizzard, if you haven't read about this before.
https://www.tswails.com/single-post/2020/01/28/GOAT-THE-GREATEST-48-HRS-OF-WEATHER-ALL-TIME
What the GFS is showing this morning will probably vanish on future runs. It feels like a flukey run. Models are generally just showing a strong cold front sweeping through the midwest. This is the first model run that shows a flattening of the fropa with a nice wave or two riding along the front. I'd have to see more models doing this, and stick with it, before I'd get excited.
My final snow total is 3.1". That's makes my combined wave total 6.0".
My season snow total has quietly risen to 27.4", only a few inches below the average full season total.
Another 2.8" here overnight with another decent band moving through now. It is very pretty out there. This entire messy system has worked out pretty well for my area.
My wave 1 snow total is 2.9". It seemed fairly fluffy last night, but it seemed a bit wetter and heavier while shoveling this morning. My liquid total in the gauge is 0.29", so it's close to 10:1.
I picked up 2.2" from the first wave. The snow seems fairly fluffy. I was hoping light snow would continue all night, but it looks mostly over. Maybe I can pick up a couple more inches if the wave 2 defo band can get up here in decent shape.
The snow is really struggling to get going over here. For a couple hours it was mostly very light freezing rain and sleet. Now it's just brief spurts of flurries.
The area of light precip moving through my area is flipping back and forth between very light freezing rain, sleet, and snow.... mostly non-snow. At this point, I'm not expecting any snow accumulation until later.
It is switching to snow right now.
This snow will have trouble sticking to the wet, dark pavement, but there is still a solid glaze of ice over the snowpack and patio, so I'll measure there.