Nice weather for sledding or shoveling snow; south and east metro had highest totals
Warmup to start the week
It was a real dumping of snow in the south and east portions of the Twin Cities metro area Friday afternoon into Friday night.
A nearly-stationary band of heavy snow was parked over those areas for several hours Friday evening, with snowfall rates of around 2 inches per hour. The snow was fluffy, with a snow-to water ratio of about 16.6 to 1, which helped those snow totals grow quickly.
Snow totals
Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport had a storm total of 11.8 inches. I saw 18 inch snowfall reports from Eagan and Rosemount. 18.9 inches in Inver Grove Heights, 19 in Lakeville and 17.7 in Jordan. One observer in Woodbury had 20 inches, and there was a report of 21 inches from the east side of St. Paul. My tally in St. Paul was 10.2 inches. I saw a report of 8.1 inches in southwest Minneapolis and 6 inches in Excelsior. Elk River, on the northwest side of the metro area, tallied just 3.5 inches of new snow.
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This is how the NWS 24-hour snow map looked at 10 a.m. Saturday:
The bigger picture looked like this:
You can hover over any data point on the linked NWS snowfall map to see the location and time of the snow measurement. You can also slide the map to see snow reports in other parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Not all the snow reports are storm totals; sometimes a report comes in before the snow has ended.
Updated Minnesota road conditions can be found here. Wisconsin road conditions can be found here.
Good cleanup weather
The storm system is moving away, leaving us with plenty of sunshine for shoveling, plowing or playing in the snow.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s High-Resolution Rapid-Refresh (HRRR) model shows the potential precipitation pattern from noon to 5 p.m. today:
You can hear updated weather information for Minnesota and western Wisconsin on the Minnesota Public Radio News network, and you can see updated weather info on the MPR News live weather blog.
Tornado fatalities Friday evening in several states to the south
A tornado outbreak moved through parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee Friday evening.
The NWS Storm Prediction Center depicts Friday evening tornado reports with red dots on the following map:
There may be dozens of fatalities. Updates can be found here.
Temperature trends
Our average Twin Cities high is 30 degrees on Dec. 11. Saturday highs will be near or slightly above 30 in the metro area, with lower 30s in southern Minnesota and upper 20s to the north. It’ll be a bit breezy Saturday afternoon.
Sunday highs reach the 30s in most areas:
Sunday wind gusts of 16-24 mph are exepected:
Forecast wind gusts are in knots, with 17 knots equal to 19.6 mph.
Back to temperatures, Twin Cities metro area highs are projected to reach the upper 30s Monday and around 40 Tuesday, followed by upper 40s Wednesday. Lower 30s are on tap for Thursday, then we’ll top out around 30 on Friday.
Programming note
You can hear my live weather updates on MPR News at 7:35 a.m., 9:35 a.m. and 4:39 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday.