Action 3 News Weather Blog

I arrived at work at 3:00 am today and saw the snow started to fly during Action 3 News Live This Morning right before 6:00 am.  It’s certainly here!

A WINTER STORM WARNING remains in effect until 6 pm Thursday for the Action 3 News coverage area, including the Omaha metro.  For your reference, here is the color-coded advisory map from the Omaha/Valley National Weather Service office website:

Current radar trends indicate snow will continue for the remainder of the day today, with the back edge of the snow shield (covering the Northern Plains) arriving into our area after midnight.  The snow is centered around an inverted trough of a surface low pressure system centered over eastern Wyoming.  The following map shows the surface features overlaid on a radar composite image, from NOAA’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (map valid 1330 UTC, or 7:30 am CST):

No need to change my initial snow forecast of 3″-6″ for our area, so I left my current snow forecast map untouched: 

The dry, powdery snow will stop accumulating after midnight, but a cold front (which was the inverted surface trough) will arrive early this afternoon, cause a wind shift and increase wind speeds between 20-40+ mph.  The end result will be falling temperatures into the single digits this afternoon and evening, on top of the blowing snow…yielding near whiteout conditions and bitterly cold wind chills.  We will also see drifting snow that will cause troublesome road conditions, perhaps leading to impassable roadways in the open country later tonight and tomorrow.  The National Weather Service is well-justified sustaining the Winter Storm Warning through 6 pm Thursday, since blowing snow and near zero visibility along with unhealthy wind chills colder than -20°F will remain a high threat through Thursday.

The main threat after the snow ends will be the continued dangerous wind chills ranging between -20°F and -40°F on Friday, mainly during the morning hours.

Be very careful, if you plan on being outdoors from this afternoon through Friday morning since we’re dealing with another blast of Arctic cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills.

Keep watching Action 3 News for more updates on this storm!

-C.T.

Hi all,

Just to follow up CT and give you the latest on our next winter storm. The winter storm watch has been up graded to a winter storm warning for Wednesday and Thursday. The going snow forecast of 3″-6″ still looks good, although looking at the latest info this afternoon we should be closer to the 6″ here in Omaha. The other factor will be the winds increasing late Wednesday into Thursday. So even though our snow accumulations will be about half of the last two storms, near blizzard conditions will be possible once the wind increases.

Good Afternoon, Everyone!

FYI…I have personally decided to disable all comments on my own posts.  Subjective and irrelevant comments were getting out of hand the last time I chose to allow comments, which were getting in the way of the purpose of this blog.

Here are my current thoughts (as of noon Tuesday) on what snowfall amounts our next Canadian Clipper system will bring into our area:

As you can see, it hasn’t changed from my initial forecast I showed on air Monday morning at 5 am.  Just glancing at the 1200 UTC MOS for Omaha (Eppley), the snowfall codes for the NAM (MET) guidance are snowfall codes 1+4 through 1200 UTC Thursday…which translates to Trace-2″ + 4″-6″ and the GFS (MAV) guidance are and 0+6…which translates to 0 + 6″-8″.

At this point, I still feel comfortable keeping my initial forecast of 3″-6″ for our entire area, including the Omaha metro.  As with most events, there will be isolated higher amounts, in addition to drifting snow since wind speeds will increase to 15-30+ mph by Wednesday evening.

A BIG concern after the accumulating snow ends Wednesday evening will be the increasing winds, ushering another fresh batch of Arctic Air.  Forecast wind speeds will likely exceed 30 mph from Wednesday evening through Thursday, due to a very tight pressure gradient from 1018 mb at the center of the low over southeast Wisconsin and the 1050 mb high pressure ridge centered over Montana.  Forecast wind chills for Omaha, according to the National Weather Service, will approach -40°F by Friday morning.

Assuming a wind chill of -40°F occurs, frostbite is possible within 10 minutes, which presents a high health danger…certainly a big concern for those standing outside Friday morning.

With the bitterly cold wind chills, I’ve also implied that blowing and drifting snow will be a concern.  Be extremely cautious if traveling Wednesday evening (especially) and on Thursday.  Due to the dry, powdery nature of the forecast snow, it won’t take much of a strong wind gust to temporarily cause white-out conditions…which will make things hard to see.

Be sure to watch Action 3 Chief Meteorologist Ryan McPike at 5, 6 and 10 pm for the latest on the forthcoming snow and cold!

By the way…I’m on Facebook!  You can find my official Action 3 News profile and add me as a friend.  I’ll post the daily forecast in your news feed Monday through Friday!  Click on this link to find me http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1492954296 or search for “KMTV C.T. Thongklin”.

Hello all!

Hopefully everyone is having a good start to 2010. One thing is for sure, the weather is the same. After another bitterly cold start today we will be back to the -10 to -20 degree readings tonight. We will remain cold all week and the other big story will come Wednesday as another snowstorm effects the area. Right now we are on track to recieve 3 to 6 inches of snow. The other problem will be winds on the cold side of this system that will gust over 30mph causing blowing and drifting snow.

Happy New Year, everyone!

It seems like this winter has been relentless…and doesn’t show any signs of changing anytime soon!  It also seems like if there’s any chances of snow days in advance, someone gets wind of it and the talk about more snow seems to spread like wildfire!

The “flurry” of talk for the next event is associated with a clipper-type system originating from the British Columbia and Alberta provinces late tonight and will dive southeastward into the Plains by Tuesday night and into Wednesday.  Here’s a snapshot of where our Threat Tracker stands today:

Before I talk about the snow, I should briefly address the bitterly cold wind chills that we had this morning…and will continue to have today.  We had morning wind chills colder than -30°F which is unhealthy, but we’ll likely have wind chills, at times, approaching -20°F this evening and tonight.

About the snow…I have a first guess of 3″-6″ for the KMTV viewing area, including the Omaha metro, that I showed on air earlier this morning.  Based on the 1200 UTC GFS and NAM model output…I feel no inclination to change my current opinion.  The GFS MOS is predicting a range of 2″-4″ for Omaha (however the end of this model run ends during this snow event) and the NAM MOS is looking at 4″-6″, but the model run terminates in the middle of the snow event, too.  We’re looking to start the snows from late Tuesday night, but the accumulating snows will be finished Wednesday evening.

Since this will be a dry, powdery snow and the winds will range between 20-35 mph, blowing and drifting snow will become a real hazard on Wednesday.  This is similar to what we experienced Saturday night, but we’ll see more accumulation from this event.

So…here are my thoughts (graphically) on the new snow accumulation for this storm:

On a related note…if you’re curious how we stand in terms of actual snow versus our seasonal average, here it is:

As of this morning, we are 3.0″ above normal, with a total for the season at 31.0″!  Since Spring will officially begin on March 20, we have a long ways to go.  The last season where above normal snowfall occurred was 2003-2004, where we had 3 successive snow events occur by Valentine’s Day in 2004.  By the end of the third event, Eppley Airfield had a snow depth of 26.1″, which was 0.9″ away from the deepest snow on record (27.0″ – March 1960).  If this keeps up, we’ll certainly set some new records.

Stay tuned to Action 3 News for the latest, and any changes to our snowfall forecast!