Heavy Snow Showers of February 11, 2006

Isolated heavy bands of snow set up over portions of central Illinois during the morning of February 11, and continued through early afternoon.  Hardest hit areas were in Sangamon County, from just south of Sherman through Springfield, south to Chatham, Glenarm and Divernon.   Reports from the Springfield area ranged from 4 to 7 inches.  A second band of localized heavy snow set up further northwest, from east of Pleasant Plains to Farmingdale.

      

The first image is a visible satellite picture taken the morning of February 13.  Skies are clear across the area, except for cloud cover in the northeast corner of the image, near Chicago.  The white bands displayed consist of snow on the ground.  This lines up quite nicely with the radar estimated precipitation amounts (second image), with the dark blue and green areas showing the heavier bands of snow.   In the third image, the reported snow totals in Sangamon County are displayed.  The 4th image shows the 2-day snow totals from around the state, showing the nature of the showery precipitation.

As seen above, snow showers can be fairly similar to summertime rain showers, in which large changes in precipitation totals are noted across small distances.