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Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News
Craig Edwards

Boston braces for blizzard; snow scarce in central MN

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An area of light snow mixed with freezing rain continued to move through northeast Minnesota and western Wisconsin this morning.  Precipitation is expected to quickly travel east.

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Radar showed the snow holding on in northeast Minnesota before daybreak.

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Screen capture of radar at 645 a.m. Image:Wiunderground.com

I went against one of my main forecast philosophies last Friday, when I over promised and under delivered on the snow forecast for our neck of the woods.

Some spots may have tallied near 1 inch on Saturday night, but most places received a mere dusting. Forecasters from the Twin Cities to Indianapolis, Ind., were posting on Facebook the tale of the missing snowfall.

Here's a brief write-up on our collective alibi for last Saturday night's phantom snow-making system from the La Crosse, Wis., National Weather Service Office.

Snow cover shown on this image depicts the snow-starved landscape of the upper Midwest.

DLY_SNDP_MAPS_central-0 (2)
Snow depth Saturday morning, January 23, 2015. Image:Midwest Regional Climate Center.

The snowfall departure from the norm for the last 30 days is remarkable. The region from Grand Forks to Fargo in North Dakota is running around 20 inches below normal for the season.

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Snowfall departure for the last thirty days, ending on Sunday, January 24, 2015. Image:Midwest Regional Climate Center.

So far this winter season the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has received 20.4 inches of snowfall, more than 11 inches below normal.  In parts of central Minnesota, the snowfall departure is approaching 20 inches below normal.

It would be nice to export some of the snow forecast for the next 36 hours near Boston, where a blizzard is expected to rage tonight into Tuesday.

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National weather map for Tuesday.

Forecasters are predicting some places just west of Boston may accumulate 30 inches of snow by Wednesday morning, driven by 50 mph winds.  It will be challenging to measure the actual snowfall due to the drifting.

Flights into Boston for Tuesday were already being canceled by some airlines.

Temperatures are expected to be unseasonably mild in our neck of the woods today, with only a slight drop in temperatures on Tuesday.

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Maximum temperatures for today. Image:National Weather Service

A cold front dips south on Friday bringing more January-like temperatures.

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Predicted low temperatures on Saturday night.

Still searching for a significant snow for central Minnesota!