February 18-20 Potential Winter Storm

There is potential for a winter storm to strike the Midwest and Plains from February 18th to 20th.

The GFS model has been forecasting a fairly strong storm hitting the Midwest for a few days now, off and on again every few runs. The track has varied from run to run, but more times than not it has had the storm go into the Midwest. And when it does go into the Midwest, more times than not it takes the track shown above. As is my favorite guideline to abide by when tracking storms, always look for the trends and not the individual runs. I post this individual run because it sums up what the GFS has been showing for multiple days now.

Even more significant is that the ECMWF model (top) and their prestigious ensemble system (bottom) have joined in the fun. The ECMWF does have the key difference of two low pressure systems in the Great Lakes during this time, while the GFS only has one. The presence of two storm systems would aid in warm air advection and cut down on snowfall for cities like Chicago and northern Indiana, who are slated to get snow from this system per the above GFS forecast. The ECMWF Ensemble system has a single low pressure system, but it is in southern Lake Michigan. This would still support an all snow solution for the aforementioned city and region, but the heaviest snow would certainly be north in northern Wisconsin into Michigan. I do want to watch that area in east Arkansas and to the northeast where the pressure contour lines jut out further south towards the Gulf Coast. That can either mean another low pressure system or the more-likely cold front.

Confidence in a fairly strong storm system hitting the region shown by the GFS: 15% confidence

Andrew