Blizzard Warning - January 5th Major Winter Storm

A storm is in progress and let's take a look!

Welcome to the Weather 20/20 Intelligence Report live from the blizzard in Kansas City. This storm will be long gone by the time everyone arrives for FarmCon in a couple days. Right now we are in the middle of a developing blizzard.

The Major Winter Storm is centered near Kansas City with a severe weather risk farther south. Over a foot of snow is likely in a few spots as this storm takes a perfect track to bring KC one of its largest snowstorms in recorded weather history. If there is 12”, then it will be the second largest 24-hour snowfall.

This segment of the cycling weather pattern is right on schedule and if you remember the Christmas Eve post, we predicted then that there was a 90% probability of a Major Winter Storm. Read through our prediction for this storm from a couple weeks ago. Here is the link to that report:

What is a blizzard? A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds and low visibility, lasting for a prolonged period of time—typically at least three or four hours. The winds will be over 30 mph causing considerable blowing and drifting of the snow.

This may lead to snow drifts six feet high in spots. It is intensifying as I am writing this.

The Arctic Oscillation is dipping negative at the perfect time to have an impact on this storm system:

In the upper levels of the atmosphere, around 18,000 feet up, we can see the strong upper level low just south of Kansas City at 3 PM Sunday. The Kansas City Chiefs are in Denver, as they would have been playing in a major snowstorm if the game was in KC. The Chiefs airplane, a 787 United Plane, was stuck on the runway in KC due to the ice on Saturday, but the finally took off and got to Denver where the weather is a bit calmer.

Here is that map once again, shown on the above slide. with KC near the middle of the heaviest snow. The severe weather risks are shown on the next two slides:

We will have our next full report for premium customers next week after FarmCon. We look forward to sharing the weather forecast Thursday morning at the conference and discuss the LRC and answer any questions.