Friday, April 04, 2008

Winter Storm Watch Issued for Grand Forks/Nrn Minnesota

A winter storm watch has been issued for eastern North Dakota and northern Minnesota for this weekend, south of a line from Grand Forks to Lake of the Woods. A storm system over the northern Rockies Friday will move across the Dakotas over the weekend, bringing a swath of heavy snow across portions of eastern ND and northern MN Saturday night before moving into NW Ontario Sunday. 10-20 cm of snow is possible in the watch area as well as northwestern Ontario between Kenora and Thunder Bay. People planning on travel this weekend south and east of Manitoba should be prepared for possible poor driving conditions as this storm system develops.

11 comments:

  1. Looks like there is a lot of dry air at lower levels in the NW corner of MN, so I doubt we will see much snow in the Lancaster and Hallock areas. Current dew point is -9 with an air temp of +1. It's going to take a lot of moisture to get that 10 degree difference even close to saturation. They were calling for 10 to 20 cm in the Grand Forks area, but I really doubt they will get anywhere near that much.

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  2. Thanks Bruce..

    I see GFK is now calling for only 5-8 cm now. Looks like it could be mostly a northern MN/NW Ontario event where the greatest QPF is forecast. Duluth is calling for up to a foot of snow for the International Falls area by Sunday night! EC also calling for up to 25 cm in parts of NW Ontario.

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  3. The NWS here has knocked snow chances and amounts way down. I don't know where they got the idea we'd get hammered here. I never saw it on the models. Earlier, one model suggested 1.1 cm of snow for this area, and then that all but died out. NWS had been calling for as much as 15 cm here at one time, but now they've pretty much ruled out any significant accumulations.

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  4. At this point I am finished with snow. The environment canada forecast is for temperatures in the 8 to 12 degree range here by mid week.

    A question for Rob.. Do you know why Environment Canada has been calling for very warm temperatures, when in fact they are multiple degrees off. For example, Monday the high for Steinbach was 8 degrees at one point during the day. The actual high struggled to reach 2. I was looking at the WRF/ETA and it was clear 8 degrees had no chance of happening, even the 6 degrees forecast later was a long shot. Is this just a result of the unpredictable season, or are the models there not in proper sync with the conditions?

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  5. Another thing I just thought of relating to your poll. What is the definition of losing the snowpack? Does that mean every last bit of snow is gone, or just the main parts, with some hills left over?

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  6. Scott..

    I've noticed some wonky temperature forecasts lately as well.. this often happens in the spring when we're transitioning from a snowcovered to snowfree surface and it takes the model guidance a few days (or few weeks) to catch up with its temperature correlations.

    As for snowcover, I generally am referring to snow cover in exposed wide open areas. Drifts, snowbanks, and snowcover in shaded areas is not considered representative. This year, I notice the snowcover is quite variable.. generally snowfree in level open areas right now, but still plenty of snow left in shady areas, and in leftover snowbanks or snowdrifts.

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  7. There are reports of near 20 inches in locales south of Bemidji. Pretty impressive and isolated to a very narrow band.

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  8. 2 feet of snow or more through parts of northern MN over the weekend with a report of up to 32 inches of snow (80 cm) in St Louis county between Duluth and International Falls. WOW!

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  9. That ended up being a huge winter storm, but we just weren't in a position to get hammered by it. We didn't get any snow here at all.

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  10. This morning's satellite picture clearly shows sharp edge of snowline extending from just north of Fargo to Red Lake,MN area. Nothing north of this line.. pure white south.

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  11. Yeah, they missed the track by quite a bit on that one.

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