13th snowiest winter on record now. Heading for top 10 later this week?
Snow on the way late Wednesday through Friday
Another day, another snowy blast.
Sunday night’s snow blitz was remarkable in a couple of aspects.
First, the system featured prolific embedded mesoscale snowfall bands within the broader snow zone. These high-intensity bands produced prolific snowfall rates of more than an inch per hour as they hovered over parts of the Twin Cities Sunday evening for several hours.
Secondly, the so-called “dendritic growth zone” was very efficient at cranking out massively large dendritic flakes. With temperatures a few degrees on either side of freezing in the lowest mile of the atmosphere, the sloppy wet-rimmed flakes stuck together into huge dendrite clusters as they drifted earthward.
Create a More Connected Minnesota
MPR News is your trusted resource for the news you need. With your support, MPR News brings accessible, courageous journalism and authentic conversation to everyone - free of paywalls and barriers. Your gift makes a difference.
This type of snowfall really stacked up and boosted snowfall totals here on the ground.
Here are some more snowfall totals from overnight, in inches:
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, 3.3
Prior Lake and Buffalo, 3.5
Falcon Heights and Burnsville, 4.5
Stillwater and Woodbury, 5
Siren, Wis., 6
National Weather Service office, Chanhassen 6.7
Victoria, 7
Barnum and Kettle River, 7
Oakdale, 7.5
Spooner, Wis., 8.5
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport recorded 34 one-hundredths (.34) of an inch of liquid with the snow. That makes the snow-to-water ratio around 10:1.
This is now the 13th snowiest winter on record in the Twin Cities. If we get another 3.6 inches, that will put us into the top 10 snowiest winters on record. That number looks likely later this week.
Next snow on the way
We come up for air Tuesday into Wednesday across Minnesota. Highs will run in the 30s this week, with lows mostly in the 20s. The pothole-producing freeze-thaw cycles continue.
A minor system will spread some snow into western Minnesota on Wednesday. The Twin Cities may get in on that snow Wednesday evening.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s NAM 3 km model shows the trend Wednesday:
A bigger, well-organized panhandle hook storm will track from the Oklahoma Panhandle toward Chicago Thursday and Friday. This system looks very likely to deliver another heavy, wet, snowy payload onto Minnesota.
The bulk of the snow looks likely to fall from Thursday afternoon through Friday morning.
It’s too early for significant confidence with the number of inches. But it looks like another likely plowable heavy wet snow is on the way Thursday into Friday.
Winter storm watches will likely go up for much of Minnesota again in the next 24 hours.
Stay tuned.