Ice, rain and thunder snow, oh my! The latest on the system passing through Minnesota

CATHY WURZER: Around Minnesota right now it's messy. Rain, snow, fog, winter storm warnings continue for western, central, northwestern, and northeastern Minnesota with a blizzard warning for the North Shore of Lake Superior. At noon, in Duluth, thick snow, 31 degree. 35 degrees with fog in Rochester. And outside the Stomping Grounds Lodge in Ilkley, Minnesota, it's snowing in 32.

I'm Cathy Wurzer with Minnesota News Headlines. The top story is the weather. We'll get an update in just a minute. The Minneapolis City Council has okayed a new ordinance that will change how the city handles complaints filed by citizens against police officers. It was an hours long session yesterday that resulted in the passage of the ordinance that will create a community commission on police oversight, 15 members who will sift through information gathered from review panels, then forward recommendations to the police chief who will then make the final decision on whether an officer should be disciplined.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating an incident at the Beltrami County Jail after an inmate there was taken to a Fargo Hospital and died. Tim Nelson has more.

TIM NELSON: Authorities are releasing few details about the incident or inmate beyond saying that the Beltrami County Sheriff's Office requested a state investigation. The inmate was found unresponsive in his cell about midday on December 7th and taken to Sanford Medical Center and initially put on life support. The Bemidji Pioneer reported the inmate had attempted to take his own life. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety has since confirmed his death.

The jail in Bemidji is the same facility where another inmate Hardel Sherrell got sick and died in 2018. Care TV reported earlier this year that a federal grand jury is looking into that death. The station says the medical care provider for the jail at the time recently filed for bankruptcy. I'm Tim Nelson.

CATHY WURZER: Lake Superior is always impressive during a storm. Now add thick snow blown around by 50 mile an hour winds off the lake, 12 foot high waves, and it's a magnificent mess. Dangerous too. A full fledged blizzard is battering the North Shore from Duluth all the way up to the Canadian border right now. Ketzel Levens is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Duluth. Ketzel's on the line right now to talk about what we can expect next from the storm. Ketzel, are you safe. How are you doing?

KETZEL LEVENS: Yeah. We're doing really well. There were a couple of us who actually slept in the office last night to make sure that we were staffed here at the National Weather Service. But we're holed up as we watch this blizzard spin around off at the moment.

CATHY WURZER: I understand there was some thunder and lightning earlier this morning. And that usually indicates some intense snowfall. How much snow has fallen there so far?

KETZEL LEVENS: Yeah. We've had some really impressive snow totals. We did have thunder snow this morning, a couple different times in Duluth, which was very cool to experience. Other than that, as far as snowfall totals across northern Minnesota, we've seen a widespread at least 4 to 6 inches. But we do have some locally higher totals over the Brainerd Lakes, over the I-35 corridor, and then stretching up into the Twin Ports of 8 to 12.

We take our official observations here at the National Weather Service office every six hours. And as of 12:00 PM, we were at an official snowfall of 10.3 inches so far here up on the hill in Duluth.

CATHY WURZER: How much per hour? Have you noticed that because of that intense snowfall?

KETZEL LEVENS: Oh, yeah, for sure. We actually have been taking supplementary observations every hour just to get an idea of those rates. And for the last basically six hours since things really started to ramp up around 6:00 AM, we've seen snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour easily with some areas, I'm sure, that probably exceeded that. That's actually because of this super warm moist air that we have coming up, portions of the system are actually convective. So more similar to some of our summertime weather, just dumping snow. And so it allows for these really heavy snowfall rates.

CATHY WURZER: I noticed, Ketzel, a Northeast wind gust at the harbor last hour of 52 miles an hour. Is this a classic nor'easter off the lake?

KETZEL LEVENS: Kind of. In the sense that there are easterly northeast winds coming off the lake, yes, It is a classic nor'easter. What makes this a little bit different is actually the track of this storm that it took was really, really unique. So as this low pressure system came out of the Rockies, it started to go Very south To north, kind of took this very straight path northward. But as it kind of arrived into the northern plains region, it ran into this blocking high pressure over Hudson Bay and Canada.

And because of that, it's now taking this west To east track. And so that's what's creating this storm to kind of stall out over our area and really put us under the gun for a long period of snow but also a longer period than usual of northeast winds over the lake.

Normally, we would expect to see maybe 12 to 36 hours of these easterly winds. But at this point, we've had easterly winds since yesterday. And we're expecting those to continue at least through early Friday.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. That is long. And because you're getting such thick snow, I'm going to assume there's a lot of water in that snow. I mean, I saw your video. I don't know who you sent out to take the video behind your office in Duluth. It was on Twitter. It shows all this snow just loading on to trees in the area. How much water content's in the snow right now, do we know?

KETZEL LEVENS: Yes. That's a huge part of this system. The video itself that you're talking about was actually a loop from a Mindot cam near Ascot on I-35, coming up from Hinckley. But the fact that this snow is so wet and heavy is a really impactful part of this storm because normally, in the northern part of the state, we see lighter snow is what we're used to seeing.

But because of the warm nature, we're sitting right around freezing right now, we're super, super wet, expected to see liquid precipitation of 2 to 3 inches total with this storm. So how we measure that is something called the snow-to-liquid ratio, which is basically if I take the amount of snow on the ground, how much liquid does it melt down to.

And a very standard snow to liquid ratio is 10 to 1. So 10 inches of snow, 1 inch of liquid. However, with this storm, some of the observations that we saw this morning and through noon have actually seen snow to liquid ratio is more like 5 or 6 to 1, which is really that kind of heavy concrete snow. Sometimes it's called heart attack snow because of the effort it can take to clear it.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. Because you're close to the Duluth Airport, well, you're right on top of it almost. Have you heard of flight delays because of visibility problems?

KETZEL LEVENS: That's not something I'm necessarily partial to. Though, I imagine that it's certainly been difficult we forecast for aviation as well, and we're really, really down in the soup. We've seen visibilities less than a 1/4 mile basically since the heaviest snow started around 6:00 AM.

And I do know that we've had a ton of school closures and Duluth Police are recommending no travel advised at the moment. So when will the snow stop. That is a great question. So this is really important because we don't want people to be fooled. We actually have a little bit of a lull in our snow moving into the area right now.

We're looking at areas like the Brainerd Lakes over to Hinckley. They're starting to see some of that precipitation kind of stop or at least become lighter. And we want to make sure that people know that this is not the end of this storm. So because of that track that I talked about earlier, that west To east, this low pressure system is just going to sit on top of us.

Because of that, we actually have this secondary slug of moisture that is actually barreling towards us at the moment. We can see it on our water vapor satellite imagery. And that's going to lead to a second round of snowfall almost starting this evening into Thursday morning. So if you need to clear snow this afternoon or evening, probably going to be a good time to do it.

Though I recommend taking frequent breaks and being easy on yourself. But don't be fooled by this lull or kind of easing of precipitation rates this afternoon because snow will come back tomorrow. Another heavy round similar to what we've seen this morning is expected into Thursday morning, tomorrow morning. And then again, because of the nature of this storm, we're going to have light snow showers that just kind of linger through the day Friday.

The good news about that is that as we go into Friday, our temperatures are going to cool down and our snow should be getting at least a little bit lighter. The one place where all of what I just said is not true is going to be on the North Shore. So for portions of Lake and Cook County, things are actually just getting started for folks up there. Because of that, you're going to see heavy snowfall rates if you're up the North Shore you're going to see those snowfall rates super heavy just continue through this afternoon and into Thursday plus a little extra on the backside of this.

So really things they're not going to improve on the North Shore probably not going to see that lull that we're expecting elsewhere.

CATHY WURZER: So I'm going to assume that folks along the Shore are going to measure the snowfall total of the time it's all over in feet, not inches?

KETZEL LEVENS: Most likely. Yes. Especially with what we've seen happen here in the Twin Ports. Like I said, we were at 10.3 inches as of noon. Here in Duluth, we're probably going to measure this storm in feet and then that is just exacerbated on the North Shore because of these easterly winds off Lake Superior.

And the elevation change that happens with the sawtooth up along the North Shore. They can get extra lift called orographic lift with that terrain elevation. And we're really expecting it to just absolutely dump for those folks up the North Shore. And we are currently calling for anywhere from 1 to 2 feet. I would not be surprised if we saw some of those locally higher terrain ridges see something in excess of two feet.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. Ketzel, that's amazing. I really appreciate your time here today. I thank you. And I hope you stay safe. You and the rest of the staff. Thank you. Just so everyone is aware, you have blizzard warnings out for the North Shore including Duluth and winter storm warnings everywhere else. All of those runs through 6:00 PM, Thursday.

KETZEL LEVENS: If you can avoid travel, I really, really encourage you to do so. Hunker down. Take it easy with snowfall. Enjoy it. But stay home if at all possible. If you have to go anywhere use extreme caution.

CATHY WURZER: I hope you managed to get home, by the way. Don't stay a second night at the National Weather Service office.

KETZEL LEVENS: It is looking more than likely that we might be here for another night.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, Ketzel. All right. Well, take care of yourself. Thank you so much.

KETZEL LEVENS: Thank you. Have a great day.

CATHY WURZER: You too. Ketzel Levens, National Weather Service forecaster at the Duluth office. She was a fountain of information on a brutal blizzard that's making weather news today. MPR's chief meteorologist Paul Huttner joins us right now with the latest and what to expect next out of this two part winter storm. Hey, Paul.

PAUL HUTTNER: Hey, Cathy. What a storm. I'll call this one the Meteorologist Full Employment Act here. This thing is huge. And you know what, just quickly off the top to step back, this is a really unique storm in a couple of ways. First of all, it is big. It's huge. The center of the low is just southwest of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, now.

But the precip shield, the wraparound comma that you see with these storms is producing precipitation now. From Denver, Colorado, all the way up through the Dakotas, wrapping into northeast Minnesota where they're getting blasted around two harbors now with a heavy snow burst an inch or two per hour.

And then it goes all the way down through Wisconsin through the central US down to the Gulf Coast where it's producing severe weather. That's 2,600 miles of precipitation wrap around with this storm. And that conveyor belt will pump more in here. It's also slow moving. We're seeing this linger for three to five days. It's going to stall in Wisconsin tomorrow.

CATHY WURZER: Why is this such a prolific setup? You have just piles of snow falling right now along the north shore. We're going to get snow in the Twin Cities tomorrow. I mean, what's the mechanism here.

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, it's got everything. It's got the deep circulation. Lots of upper air support. And lots of moisture. A direct pipeline to that Gulf of Mexico moisture that's just pumping up the East side of the storm, and then hitting the cold air over Minnesota and getting wrung out.

And that's going to continue. And this thing's even going to ramp up a little, and we're going to see more snow tomorrow across much of Minnesota.

CATHY WURZER: OK. So let's talk about that because of course, people here in the Twin Cities are thinking, oh, we're done with that everything's fine. Not really, the second stage is tomorrow, right?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. That's it. And phase one came through about as expected. We got 0.41 of liquid in the twin cities. That was mostly rain. And then we got the snow overnight. And this morning, I saw just about a half an inch at Twin Cities airport, two at Maple Grove, three in Saint Michael, 2 and 1/2 in Hopkins, 4 inches in Buffalo. So that's around the Twin Cities. We're in the lull now. Phase two gets going tonight when those winter storm watches and warnings kick, including parts of the Twin Cities.

So that shot of moisture will come up here. Snow will begin again around midnight, I think, in the Twin Cities, especially North and East. It will turn heavy again across much of Minnesota from the Twin Cities Mille Lacs, Duluth, I-35 between the Twin Cities and Duluth, and then into Wisconsin. It will snow most of tomorrow and actually spread West across Minnesota once again. And then occasional snow Friday. It should end by Saturday.

So how much snow additionally? We're talking about I think Southern Minnesota I-90, three to 6 inches. Twin Cities could pick up 4 to 7 inches of snow additionally with this storm mostly tomorrow and then into Friday, there could be 8 plus in the Northeast Metro. And then Northern Minnesota in a broad swath, northwest we're talking Thief River, Bemidji, another 5 to 10. Central Northeast Minnesota, Saint Cloud, Iron Range, up to Ely, 6 to maybe 14 by the time you get up to Ely.

And then of course, that North Shore that we talked about earlier in the show. Cathy, I think they're going to get an additional 10 to 20 inches around parts of the North Shore. I do think we're going to see snow totals well over 2 feet, maybe as much as 3 feet by the time this thing is done.

CATHY WURZER: We managed to get my mom out of Knife River just in time. She's down in the cities right now. And she says, I'm so worried about the snow on the roof and the trees I mean, there is concern because that is really heavy snow as we were talking earlier in the hour. I mean, it's like heart attack snow.

PAUL HUTTNER: It is. You're talking about, 5, 6, 8 to 1 snow to water ratio. So that is the heart attack the heavy stuff and Yeah it's going to be like-- you've seen those videos from California, the Sierra, up there, where they get those heavy snows.

I mean, parts of the North Shore might look like that by the time we get to Saturday.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, my gosh. So I'm going to assume, behind such a system, there's got to be some cold air behind this.

PAUL HUTTNER: There is. And I think, it'll probably be the season's coldest so far for parts of Minnesota. After this thing moves out of here, Northwest winds set up, our temperatures will drop into the weekend. I think we'll be as cold as 20 below in Northwest Minnesota by about next Tuesday morning, single digits below 0 in the Twin Cities.

And then a second shot of cold air looks likely next week. We could see minus teens in the Twin Cities with highs just barely above zero. So next week looks like a prolonged shot of subzero air. Maybe a string of subzero nights. So here we are. We're December, and this winter is coming in saying it means business this year.

CATHY WURZER: We had subzero air in the Twin Cities yet this season?

PAUL HUTTNER: I don't think so. I think four above might be the coldest that we've got to. That's kind of a lookup thing. I'd have to go back and see. But we certainly haven't had the kind of air that's coming in next week that will be here for days and produce a string perhaps of subzero nights, especially in Central and Northern Minnesota.

CATHY WURZER: So we don't have to worry about a brown Christmas. That's for sure.

PAUL HUTTNER: Nope. This snow will stick around, it looks like, right through next week and probably into the new year, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: All right, Paul Huttner. Thank you so much.

PAUL HUTTNER: My pleasure. Thanks, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Paul Huttner is MPR's chief meteorologist. By the way, I didn't get to ask him about his updraft blog. He posts fresh every day. Of course, weather information and climate cast. That's his podcast about climate science.