Good Saturday morning everyone! Just wanted to give a quick update on the ongoing Blizzard in portions of the area.
Here’s a look at the current radar across the region. As of now, the heaviest banded snow looks to be occurring in southern Minnesota and far eastern South Dakota. These bands are moving at a very slow pace and if anything they are moving slightly back to the NW.
The HRRR initialized well with the current radar and seems to be handling the evolution of the storm well. Overall, most models are in decent agreement of where the heaviest snow will fall throughout the rest of this event. Here’s a look at the simulated radar over the next 18 hours from the HRRR.
Note, snow will really pick up in SE South Dakota over the next few hours where we are currently seeing some breaks in the snow swath. The storm will move very slowly to the east, which likely leads to another 18 hours of snow for SE South Dakota and Southern Minnesota. Spots in Central South Dakota likely see snow completely push east around mid-day today. The NAM3 continues the storm through the night and most of the day on Sunday:
TIMING: It finally moves the majority of the snow out of Southeast South Dakota by tomorrow morning, but backside snow showers likely continue into the early afternoon hours. For Minnesota, models are hinting at the potential for redevelopment of this storm especially over Wisconsin on Sunday. This likely leads to snow expanding north to include more of Central Minnesota overnight tonight, with snow even pushing into Northeastern Minnesota Sunday morning. Snow showers likely continue for much of Central and Southern Minnesota until snow begins to diminish from west to east late Sunday evening into Sunday night. However snow showers could continue, especially for Eastern Minnesota into mid-day Monday.
With all of this in mind, the NAM3 solution makes sense with perhaps some heavier accumulating snow possible in Eastern Minnesota as the storm re-develops (note some of the snow in South Dakota has already fallen). However, the brunt of the storm still looks to occur today and into tomorrow with a band producing an *additional* 12″+ in portions of Eastern South Dakota and Southern Minnesota.
Of course, winds are still going to be a huge problem. Blizzard warnings remain in effect and wind gusts of up to 50 MPH have been reported with this storm.
Strong wind gusts likely continue throughout the day today, but diminish a bit overnight. Regardless gusts of 25-35 MPH are likely throughout the day tomorrow.
Temperatures likely drop close to zero in spots for Sunday and Monday morning and areas with snow pack likely stay below freezing into early next week.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out. Stay safe, and have a great weekend!