Heavy Snow — Cole, Missouri

2022-02-01 to 2022-02-03 · Cole, Missouri

Event narrative

As temperatures dropped during the late evening hours, rain changed over to freezing rain. By midnight on February 2nd, around one to two tenths of an inch of icing was reported across Cole County. Then the liquid precipitation changed over to snow. Between six to ten inches of snow fell across Cole County.

Wider weather episode

A cold front, that was draped northeast-southwest across western Iowa and eastern Nebraska/Kansas, moved south and entered the county warning area during the morning of February 1st. Broad moist isentropic ascent and overrunning precipitation developed across the entire county warning area gradually through the late morning into the afternoon of February 1st, with the baroclinic zone initially serving as the focus for rain. This first round of precipitation stayed nearly all rain, but snow did begin to mix with rain in northern Missouri and west-central Illinois during the afternoon hours of February 1st as colder air advanced south behind the front. The cold air became more established in the northwest half of the CWA with wet snow and a snowfall rate approaching 1/hr across parts of northeast Missouri and west central Illinois north of the I-70 corridor during the early morning hours of February 2nd. The first round brought a wide swath of at least 6-10 inches of snow (with some sleet mixed in) across central/east-central Missouri and west-central Illinois. A second round of heavy snow fell along and south of the I-70 corridor with snowfall rates in excess of 0.5 per hour and occasionally brief periods of 1.5 per hour on Thursday, February 3rd. An additional 6-8 of snow fell in this area during the morning/afternoon hours of February 3rd with lighter snowfall over northeast Missouri and west central Illinois.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1010214. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.