High-Impact and Far-Reaching Winter Storm Continues; Cold Expands and Persists

A major winter storm will shift its impacts into the Northeast U.S. with heavy snow through tonight while over the Mid-Atlantic, sleet and freezing rain will diminish. Extremely cold air behind the storm will prolong dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts. Sub-zero low temperatures are expected nearly every morning from the Northern Plains through the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast. Read More >

The Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) that operates at the Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield (station KSPI) has been experiencing technical difficulties for a few weeks. Technicians have been unsuccessful thus far in repairing the system, and continue to work with our regional headquarters and the supply depot on potential fixes.

The following impacts will continue:

During the hours that the control tower is in operation, air traffic controllers are supplying manual observations into the system. However, this data is not available overnight (10 pm to 6 am) when the tower is closed.
Because low temperatures typically occur during the early morning, the low temperature each day generally is not available. High temperatures can often be obtained based on the control tower observations.
Rainfall is being provided by the nearby observer that normally takes snowfall observations.
On our climate summaries for Springfield, average wind speed and peak wind gusts will generally be not available or incorrect, because the entire sample of the day is not available. Similarly, when high or low temperature is missing, heating and cooling degree days cannot be calculated.
Areas on our forecast pages that use Springfield as the home site will frequently have the observation missing.
On the hourly weather roundup for NOAA Weather Radio station WXJ-75, the Decatur observation will be used when Springfield is not available.

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High-Impact and Far-Reaching Winter Storm Continues; Cold Expands and Persists

Information on Observation Outage at the Springfield Airport