Winter storm warning Friday includes southern Twin Cities
Blizzard warning for parts of southwest Minnesota and northern Iowa.
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The season’s first major winter storm is on the way Friday for most of Minnesota. The storm has been trending north in forecast models since Wednesday afternoon. The latest forecast model runs suggest heavier snow will push further northward into Minnesota including the greater Twin Cities area.
The southern Twin Cities has been added to the winter storm warning zone this Thursday afternoon. Blizzard warnings have been issued for parts of southwest Minnesota and northern Iowa. You can see the warning zones on the map above.
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE National Weather Service Twin Cities/Chanhassen
3:09 p.m. CST Thursday, Jan. 11 2024
...WINTER STORM ARRIVES EARLY FRIDAY AND LINGERS INTO SATURDAY, THEN DANGEROUSLY COLD AIR FOLLOWS INTO NEXT WEEK...
Accumulating snow will make its way into southern and eastern Minnesota around midnight tonight and will gradually make its way north into central Minnesota and western Wisconsin overnight. This will be a long duration event, with relatively low snowfall rates around 0.5 inches/hour or less. There is higher confidence in 6+ inches of snow in areas south of the line from Redwood Falls to the southern Twin Cities metro and over through Chippewa county in Wisconsin.
A Winter Storm Warning is in effect for those areas. Snow amounts across the rest of central Minnesota will range from 3-6 inches where a Winter Weather Advisory is in effect. As the forecast confidence increases, the advisory may need to be upgraded for portions of central Minnesota and western WI.
Northwest winds will increase Friday afternoon in Saturday, gusting up to 40 mph in portions of southwestern MN. This will lead to blowing snow and the potential for brief white out conditions. Confidence is high that dangerously cold wind chills will follow into Saturday night, with widespread values of -25 to -40 likely through early next week. A Wind Chill Watch has been issued for much of western and southern Minnesota.
The system
A deepening low-pressure system will track from Missouri to the south of Chicago by Friday. This system has an open channel to rich moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and a feed of cold subzero air to the north. That’s the perfect recipe for heavy Midwest snow.
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NOAA’s NAM 3 km model brings snow into southern Minnesota early Friday morning, and into the Twin Cities during the morning hours. It will likely snow most of the day Friday through Friday night before tapering from west to east early Saturday. The forecast model loop below runs between 6 a.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Saturday.
Heaviest snowfall across southeast Minnesota
This system will likely produce more than a foot of snow from eastern Iowa through Milwaukee and Chicago. The heaviest snowfall totals in Minnesota will favor southeast Minnesota communities such as Rochester, Albert Lea, Owatonna and Winona. A foot of snow is quite possible in parts of southeast Minnesota.
The Twin Cities will ride the mercurial northwest edge of the heavier snow zone. A sharp cutoff in snowfall to the northwest means that even a 40-mile shift in storm track will mean a big difference in snowfall totals across the Twin Cities.
Forecast models present a wide range of snowfall possibilities for the greater Twin Cities area. I’ve seen solutions as low as a couple of inches from the European model to nearly a foot of snow from NOAA’s suite of short-range mesoscale models like HRRR, WRF and FV3.
Right now NOAA’s digital snowfall output looks pretty reasonable to me.
Here’s the wider view for all of Minnesota.
It should be noted that higher-end solutions crank out heavier snowfall totals for the Twin Cities. Here’s NOAA’s HRRR model.
Blowing snow and subzero cold
This storm brings the season’s first transition to deep winter. High winds will cause blowing snow and difficult travel across most of Minnesota.
The season’s first subzero air mass will push temperatures well below zero this weekend.
Winter weather has finally arrived. The next two weeks are the coldest weeks of the year on average.