A GUT PUNCH...
Shazam! Has the tide turned, or what? What a sensational day we enjoyed Friday. Readings all across the board were in the 50s, outperforming what was expected by several degrees. Dry ground, dry air, lack of snow cover, and strong warm air advection ahead of an Arctic front all combined to bring a classic January Thaw! Feast your eyes on these temperatures at 2:45pm. Friday. It will likely be some time before we enjoy readings like this again. We are in for a real gut punch. Read on if you dare.
Muscatine soared to 57 after a morning low of 18. Moline was right behind at 56. Steve Gottschalk in Lowden, Iowa, tied a record with his reading of 56. I took down the Christmas lights, cleaned the garage, and raked up some lingering fall leaves in a sweatshirt. It was pretty sweet.
Here you can vividly see the sunshine that helped support the warmth. You can also see the low clouds on the Iowa border that marked the incoming Arctic blast. Friday evening around 9:00pm., winds in NW Iowa had reached 48mph and temperatures were well into the teens. The mild party is over, and we'll all be very aware of that Saturday
To put some perspective on the change, these are wind chills on the EURO early Tuesday, just before daybreak. In Dubuque (where it was 51 Friday), the wind chill is shown at -29. If that verifies, it will "feel" 80 degrees colder than it did on Friday! I say heck no to that....
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NASTY WIND CHILLS PROMPT ADVISORIES
In advance of the worst of it, the NWS has gone ahead and issued cold weather advisories for the northern half of my area late Saturday night into Tuesday morning. It is likely, that additional counties will be added as the worst of the bitter cold drops in on Monday. Wind chills of -15 to -25 (perhaps -30 far north) are expected from Saturday night into Tuesday morning.
Further north, extreme cold warnings have been issued for North Dakota and northern Minnesota, where wind chills of 55 below are possible. Those are very dangerous conditions.
The coldest lows are anticipated Tuesday morning, and some spots could reach as low as -12 to -14 in the north.
It still appears on the EURO that the area is prone to seeing 850mb temperatures (about a mile up) near minus 30. If the EURO is right, 32 below is pegged at the NWS office in Davenport, that would break the current record of 29.5 below. Records at DVN go back to 1995. This is no ordinary air mass, to be sure.
Relative to average, the coldest 850 temperatures in all of North America will be centered over Iowa. That includes the North Pole and all the Arctic Circle.
Here you can see at 500mb, the bulge extending southward to the Gulf that is the cold surge. Winds aloft are very powerful, transporting the cold into the entire eastern half of the nation by late weekend. The Presidential inauguration, Monday in Washington, will be the coldest in 40 years, and most likely the 2nd coldest of all-time.
Below is the building high that will deliver NW wind gusts of 30-35 mph Saturday and Sunday. Those packed isobars will make sure of that.
The core of the cold begins to lift out Tuesday afternoon, and it's looking like highs Wednesday will be back into the mid to upper 20s. Springtime! Beyond that, there is quite a bit of variance between the EURO and GFS on where and how much amplification takes place in the storm track. It seems to me, the region will remain in a vulnerable position to at least get glancing blows from a couple of additional Arctic air masses. At least for now, the most likely time for another healthy shot is towards January 31st.
While the GFS shows a more generous precipitation pattern in the week 2 period, The EURO is still staunch on the idea of dry weather continuing the remainder of the month. It shows this for precipitation totals through February 2nd.
That results in another 2 weeks with significant precipitation departures.
Snowfall is anemic.
I have chosen to show the more dire scenario of the EURO for precipitation and snow as opposed to the GFS, due to the strength and duration of the dry pattern we've been locked into the past 2 months. If the GFS wins out, I will gladly take the defeat, for the need of precipitation is great. Have a solid weekend despite the wind and harsh cold! Roll weather...TS