Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Blizzard like conditions will be experienced across the Midwest later today through Thur. There will be a swath of 3-6 inch snows across most of the Cornbelt. Some spots may pick up as much as 8 inches of the white stuff. Travel will become very difficult once the winds pick up from the north and nortwest at 20-30 MPH with higher gusts on Wed. night & Thur. The strong winds will first commence in the west ton. and gradually reach the east during Thur. Visibility out in the open country will be near zero at times with the combination of the fluffy snow and strong winds. The air mass behind this system will be frigid to say the least. In fact, during Thur. temps will be falling all day, especially west of the Mississippi River with wicked wind chills. For example, Des Moines will fall from the single digits above zero early Thur. to well below zero by late Thur. This air mass is so cold and the associated Arctic high pressure system is so strong that it likely will result in a damaging freeze for the Orange Juice area of Florida for this Sunday and Monday mornings. As extreme as the weather is here in the U.S. Midwest, it is very benign in the South American corn and soybean growing areas. The concerns about drought in Argentina more than a month ago, quickly faded with each heavy rain event over the past month. The outlook is for pretty much a perfect weather pattern continuing here for the forseeable future. In Brazil, the rains have been very heavy in places for several months now. There is no end in sight to the normal or above normal rains and near normal temperatures. The current moderate to strong El Nino is obviously in full force in South America as both Argentina and Brazil typically have bumper crops during El Nino episodes. However, it has not at all been an El Nino type winter in North America so far. With moderate to strong El Ninos, the winters are usually warmer than normal across the northern U.S. while the South has a wet pattern with near normal temps.
