1-16-18 Northern Plains: Dangerous wind chills today, but a warm-up in sight! B.

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Good Tuesday morning.

As far as precipitation, there is virtually nothing going on across the region this morning. Some scattered flurries and snow showers cannot be ruled out in far eastern portions of Minnesota throughout today. The big story this morning is the dangerous temperatures most areas are seeing. The latest wind chill map shows the extent of the dangerous wind chills through much of the north central US.

Wind chill warnings are in effect for values of -25 to -45 until 11AM CST. Frost bite can occur in less than 10 minutes in these conditions! Luckily, relief is on the way. As an upper-level ridge pushes east into the central US, temperatures will quickly moderate. Overnight lows will not go below zero in most areas tonight, and the western Dakotas begin to rise above freezing the next 3 days.

In fact, the European model is depicting high temperatures in the upper 30s and 40s for all of the Northern Plains on Friday.

Throughout this warmer stretch, there is only one real disturbance to track. A clipper system could impact northern portions of the region Wednesday night into Thursday. There could be some minor accumulations with this system.

Here’s our current thoughts on areas that could see up to an inch of snow Wednesday night and Thursday morning: 

On Friday, a weak clipper system and a bit of energy from a storm entering the west coast could potentially drop some very scattered snow or rain showers in northern portions of the region. However, the next main storm will arrive late on Saturday and into Sunday. Models are locking onto the idea of a potent lakes cutter that could produce widespread snowfall to portions of the Midwest and Northern Plains. Here’s a look at the simulated radar from the European model from late Saturday into Monday: 

We will be watching trends throughout this week and fine-tune a forecast for a *potential* high-impact event in the region late this week and early next week.

Have a great Tuesday!