View from overhead

NOAA visible satellite image from Monday afternoon.

From this visible imagery you can clearly notice the forested regions of Minnesota and Wisconsin as the more grey regions. You can also see some of the lakes and streams in Minnesota.

One of the challenges we have this time of year is determining cloud cover from snow on the ground. We look for the rivers and lakes, plus we animate the imagery. You don't have to be very astute to notice the snow cover doesn't move. The clouds do move. Of course the automated surface observing equipment gives us cloud heights as well.

Click on this link to play with the NOAA Remote Sensing Center website and view the snow cover across the Nation.

I found it of interest that when this storm started last Wednesday the temperature at Fort Worth, Texas was 75 degrees. On Thursday, they measured three inches of snow. Of even greater magnitude, Oklahoma City reached a high of 55 on Wednesday and was dumped on with fourteen inches of snow on Christmas eve.

Snowfall summary from National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Note the regions of at least twenty inches.