The late Sunday afternoon early evening radar shows heavy snow over western KS & south central NEB with widespread 70% coverage … significant rain with thunderstorms covering 75% of KS as well as the the eastern half of NEB, southeast third of SD, 75% of Iowa, 60% of southern MN, 60% of northern ILL AND western IND… and storms over central KY, TN, 70% of AL.
As you may know, there are blizzard conditions over western and far north western portions of KS with snow amounts there up to 12″ expected in many locations. Significant snow was also over southwestern and central NEB with somewhat lighter snow amounts over the SE portions of SD and into sw and central MN.
RAINFALL LAST 24 HRS ending 0700 Sunday
Yes the rainfall has shown up as forecasted. But it must be remembered that the precipitation is still ongoing. If you look at the precipitation ending Sunday morning 0700 cdt it appears that Iowa has missed out of most of the precipitation. Of course the actual current radar shows Iowa getting pounded — so to look at just the rainfall totals pending Sunday morning would be deceptive and inaccurate. There are areas in the last 24 hours in south central MO which have received up to 8-9″ and many areas have received anywhere from 3-6″ of rain over central and southern MO … most of central northern ARK, far southeastern KS… far northeastern OK … central and southern portions of ILL and far southwest IND. Most of KS has also seen significant rain of 0.5-2.0′” but some of this fell as snow. In the last 12 hours since 7:00 AM cdt additional 1-3″, 25-75mm has fallen over much of LA, MS, eastern ARK, the eastern half of MO, the southern third of ILL, far western KY and far southwestern IND. In far northeast ARK some areas have received an additional 4 or 5″ / 100-125mm of rain.
1-5 DAY = is SOMEWHAT WETTER — the big rains over the Mississippi Valley will come to an end by Monday afternoon BUT there is another system which we talked about last week. Low pressure coming out of eastern TX will drop 1 -3″/25-75mm rains across 60% of OK, eastern third of TX, southeast KS … the southern half of MO and ARK on Wednesday May 3. This precipitation will spread northeast with additional 1-2.5″/ 25-60mm for southeast MO, south central KY, the southern half of IND, ILL and Ohio. Heavy rains will also fall along the central gulf coast. Temperatures will continue to run quite cool for this time of year but so far I don’t see any signs of a late season frost for any portion of the upper plains or Minnesota.
6-10 DAY = Things look about the same as we saw last Friday but in this case the 6-10 DAY a has a new rain event which was not there last week. The European model has a moderate rain event that drops 0.25 1.0″/ 6-25mm with 60% coverage over MI, northern ILL, most of IND and Ohio on May 10. The GFS has this feature but it’s much weaker and only shows a relatively minor rainfall event.
11-15 DAY = The model agreement is very good in the 11 to 15 day. Both the European and the GFS extended ensembles show significant rain of 0.5- 1.5″ /12-38mm covering 70% of KS, NEB, OK, northeast TX, MO, ARK, TN and KY with lighter rainfall amounts over the heart of the ECB. This is fairly similar to what the data was showing last Friday.
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