Tuesday, March 19, 2013
A quick note on the graphics: The solid shading represents snowfall that I think has a pretty good chance of happening (>65-70%). Areas outlined in a solid line are where I think there is a notable chance of the snow indicated by the text within the lined area falling, but confidence is not high enough to use solid shading.
Recent Snowfall: Note, all reports in this write up are preliminary. I do not get full reports to me until after putting this out.
Snows of around 1-4” fell across most of MN, WI, the UP and lower MI as well as far eastern IA and far northern sections of IL and IN yesterday. Lake snows took over things in the UP and western lower MI overnight, adding a few inches to those areas.
Highlights:
Lake snows will continue for the next few days, otherwise things look fairly quiet and cool. A wild card system has been introduced into the weekend for portions of the upper Midwest. 1-4 DAY FORECAST:
Most of the system snows have finished up and lake effect snows will continue to fall across the UP and western lower MI for the next 48 hours. 24 hour totals in the UP snow belts from the Porkies to Copper Harbor and then Munising to Paradise look to be in the 4-10” range from this morning to tomorrow morning and again tomorrow morning into Thursday morning. Some areas will likely see more than 10” fall every 24 hours.
24 hour totals in western lower MI will be a bit more conservative, but still in the 3-8” range in a general fashion, with some isolated heavier totals.
The lake snows will then be tapering off to flurries on Thursday.
Things will be quiet in most if the rest of the region for the rest of this week, with temps running below average. The freeze line looks to sit across the central Midwest for the next 2-3 days, with some warming seen by the very end of the week.
5-10 DAY FORECAST:
The first part of the weekend looks to be quiet and then a wild card storm has been introduced into the forecast for Sunday and Monday. I call it a wild card as it was not indicated by any model in previous runs and is not indicated by all model runs this morning. In any case, the idea calls for snows of 5-12” to fall across the southern ½ of MN, northern ½ of IA, southern ½ of WI and lower MI as well as far northern IL.
Other ideas still call for things to be fairly quiet in most areas for the weekend and first half of next week.
Temps look to remain below average for this period, which will keep the majority of the Northwoods at or below freezing for highs, with above freezing high temps to occur to the south.
11-16 DAY FORECAST:
The forecast for this period sees temps to remain largely below freezing in the Northwoods for most of the region. A bit of light snow will be possible in the Northwoods from time to time, but at this point, no major storms are seen.
The Bottom Line:
Winter will continue to hold tough across the Northwoods. Decent snow cover exists across many areas of the Northwoods and more snow looks to fall in the next week to ten days, with minimal snow loss. Areas outside of the Northwoods are pretty much done for the season in most cases.