A broad area of low pressure remained over northern Texas and Oklahoma. The IR loop shows blossoming of the cold cloud tops over southeast Colorado. By 1500 UTC a surface low developed over western Oklahoma and southwest Kansas. The cloud tops have continued to cool over southeast Colorado. A strong pressure gradient between the low over Kansas and high over Wyoming intensified the surface winds.
Isentropic plots indicate strong isentropic upglide over southeast Colorado.
The strong surface low developed as the upper disturbance reached the baroclinic zone over western Kansas and western Oklahoma. As a result, Q-vector plots very likely are noisy. I'm certain there are strong QG signals in this situation as well. At 1800 UTC the blizzard continued. The surface low remained nearly stationary over southern Kansas and the 500 mb low slowly moved east.