Relentless February continues; and will continue into March

Here are your headlines this windblown Sunday evening:

• Heavy snow fell on southeastern Minnesota

• Very gusty winds continue to cause blowing and drifting snow, and dangerous travel

• Blizzard warnings are scheduled to expire Sunday evening

• Dangerous wind chills will develop Sunday night as temperatures drop

• Frigid weather will stay with us for about the next two weeks

Snowfalls

While the Twin Cities picked up just a few inches of snow early on Sunday, the core of much heavier snow fell across southeastern Minnesota as expected. Reports of around a foot of snow came from the Rochester, Wabasha, Winona, Albert Lea, Hayfield and Minnesota City areas.

Wind

The wind has really blown the snow around all day Sunday, especially in open areas. Some of the more impressive gusts I have seen include 58 mph at Rochester, 55 mph in New Ulm and Clara City, and 54 mph at Redwood Falls.

In the Twin Cities area, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport had a gust to 45 mph while Flying Cloud and Crystal Airports reported 48 mph.

Coupling the fresh, fluffy snow with screaming winds led to widespread significant drifting, whiteout conditions, spinouts, crashes and many closed roads. Nearly all of the road closures have been across southern Minnesota. Here is a look at some of the road closures (red circles) and spinouts/crashes (purple diamonds) reported by Minnesota DOT Sunday afternoon:

Check Minnesota road conditions at this link.

Winds will diminish gradually Sunday night, down to around 10 mph by daybreak on Monday.

Blizzard warnings

Blizzard warnings continue this Sunday evening but will expire gradually from the west.

Blizzard warnings for central to west central and southwestern Minnesota will end at 6 p.m. on Sunday while they will continue for south central and southeastern Minnesota along with west central Wisconsin until 9 p.m.

Dangerous wind chills

Although winds will do a slow drop overnight, plunging temperatures to subzero readings in this arctic blast by Monday morning will create dangerous wind chills. Wind chill advisories for expected wind chills of around minus 25 to minus 35 have been posted overnight for generally central to southern Minnesota including the Twin Cities metro area.

Frigid weather will continue, and continue to continue

The jet stream will remain well to our south and prevent mild air from reaching us from the southern states.

High temperatures on Monday will be just in the positive single digits across most of Minnesota while highs of just zero to 5 below are likely in the northwest.

Tuesday should bring highs of singles to low teens.

Slightly milder temperatures should arrive for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Scattered areas of light snow should pop up just about daily with light accumulations.

First weekend of March

Going into March is unlikely to warm your thermometer. Forecast models indicate that much of the state might struggle reach 10 degrees for high temperatures next weekend.

The six- to 10-day temperature forecast indicates the almost certainty of colder-than-normal temperatures for March 2-6 across a large part of the country:

Looking way, way out

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Forecast System model run at midday on Sunday is forecasting colder-than-normal temperatures to continue for Minnesota for about the next two weeks before a persistent warmup kicks in.

Below is a forecast for temperatures and winds at midnight, the very end of the day on Friday March 8 (06Z on Saturday in Universal Time).

Note the forecast temperature of just 6 degrees over the Twin Cities. By that date our average low is 21 and our average high is 37.

Keep the cocoa coming.