Greetings and welcome!
Here we are again. We have a pretty good winter storm going on right now. We could have used this before trails closed and frost came out of the ground.
Anyway, as usual the weather buddies are getting all excited. Here is the NWS forecast for my house near Caldron Flls Flowage..
Tonight
Snow showers, possibly mixed with rain, becoming all snow after 8pm. The snow could be heavy at times. Patchy blowing snow after 9pm. Low around 30. Blustery, with a north wind 17 to 22 mph, with gusts as high as 41 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 7 to 11 inches possible.
Wednesday
Snow showers before 1pm, then snow showers likely, possibly mixed with rain. Patchy blowing snow before 2pm, then patchy blowing snow after 5pm. High near 37. Breezy, with a north northeast wind 17 to 22 mph, with gusts as high as 47 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches possible.
Usually the NWS is pretty conservative in their predictions. Here they are talking about 9-15″.
This is a very significant winter storm and finally a good one lined up on us. The models all agree to some extent that we are in for at least a 8″ of snow. Some go higher, including the pretty accurate short term models.
The RAP (short term) model is showing 10-12 with a lot of the area getting to 15″. That same model is showing as much as 2-3″ of liquid precipitation equivalent. Golly.
The HRRR model that only goes out 18 hours is showing 8-10″ of snow and 1.5-2″ of water equivalent. That doesn’t paint the whole picture though. The storm is expected to loop back around for an extended play and last more than 18 hours.
Some notes-
-The snow is coming down hot n heavy at about an inch an hour. I can’t see the grass tops anymore after about 90 minutes of snow. It is snowing faster than my Starlink dish can melt it off. I already had to go clean it off once and I am on my phone WiFi.
-The snow is wet and heavy. The storm has already had strong winds, but the forecast is for winds up to 55mph. That could lead to power outages as trees and branches heavy with snow take down power lines. It might be a generator night.
-The wet heavy snow will make for some slick roads as it willingly packs down into ice.
-The snow would last for weeks in winter but probably won’t last much past the weekend. We are looking at 50 and sunny Saturday, and by next Tuesday 60 & sunny.
The storm is expect to rock right into tomorrow. I will update occasionally with snow totals.
RJB