Soon, March will be approaching 1/3rd of the way through, and it really has not been since early February that we have had a decent storm system affect the Metro. February 1st recorded 6.2 inches of snow, as for the rest of the month, it was moreso an extreme associated with temperature fluctuations.
Now that March is here, we have the “typical” late winter/early spring set-up that involves a combination of rain, rain/snow mix, and snow with a 100 mile stretch! Alright, this is not uncommon for this time of year, but it makes for an interesting forecast with little room for error.
The current thinking with the system for Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning involves a rainy scenario for the Metro (possibly mixed with wet flakes) during the afternoon and evening. In fact, the precipitation may be moderate at times. The current track of our storm system is just not quite far south enough to drag in enough cold air for an all snow event in Omaha. The snow chances for Omaha will increase Tuesday night and continue into Wednesday AM, but it seems as of Monday AM, 2 to 3 inches would be the worst case scenario! It is a whole different story literally just a set of counties west and north of Omaha. A 35 to 50 mile difference in those directions could lead to double the snow (if not more in a few isolated areas).
As for parts of extreme southeast NE, extreme southwest IA and northwest MO, rain will be the biggest factor with any light snow chance not coming into play until Wednesday AM. Indeed a lot of variation in a small stretch spatially! This is still a very tricky forecast, it will not take much fluctuation in the expected storm track to create a different forecast scenario (on both ends of the rain or snow spectrum). In this case, it just so happens that the two most populated cities in Nebraska happen to be located where any forecast fluctuation can have the biggest impact on what type of precipitation falls from the sky and when.
