Our most recent winter storm generated a somewhat rare situation with the National Weather Service issuing coincident Blizzard (#3) and Severe Thunderstorm Warnings (#25, #26) early into the event Wednesday morning. The featured chart presents an IEM accounting of when this has happened, along with Tornado Warnings, nationwide since the implementation of warning event tracking on 1 Oct 2005. Only one other event is shown for Iowa during 2014. An item to note is that this feature does not imply that Blizzard and Severe Thunderstorm conditions were simultaneously observed, but just that the warnings were coincident. In situations like on Wednesday, the NWS messaging sets the start time of the Blizzard Warning at a consistent time over a larger area and sometimes the eastern border of this area is experiencing thunderstorms before it transitions to a Blizzard. The chart shows the relative timing of when the SVR,TOR warning appeared during the blizzard and it is often near the start of the blizzard event.

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Tags:   blizzard