Updraft: March 18, 2008 Archive

Snow candy coating

Posted at 7:01 AM on March 18, 2008 by Paul Huttner

It's a "quiet" winter wonderland out there this morning!

The trees are coated with a wet sticky layer of snow. Overnight snow bands moved through Minnesota and Wisconsin, producing one to 3 inches in the metro, to as much as 5 inches around Rice Lake, WI.

Latest snowfall totals

Some of the snow bands were convective in nature, producing heavy snowfall rates around an inch per hour and big fat wet flakes. This observer even saw a flash of lightning around 2am at the Huttner Weather Lab in the west metro during a brief observation.

As the last snow bands pull out of the area this morning, the melt will begin. Temps are right around freezing this morning, and even though we'll be mostly cloudy today enough solar energy will penetrate the overcast to boost temperatures to near 40 degrees this afternoon.

Enjoy the snow on the trees this morning. Most if not all of it will drip away by later today.
Then we'll melt more snow with high temperatures near 40 most of the week. This is seasonable; our average high is now 42 and our average low 25.

Spring begins Thursday with the Vernal equinox at 12:48am. Hang in there!

PH

Much appreciated deposit

Posted at 1:16 PM on March 18, 2008 by Craig Edwards (2 Comments)

Snow melted almost as fast as it fell overnight in eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. By early afternoon the three inches of heavy wet snow had seemingly vanished into thin air.

Portions of central Minnesota remain well shy of the normal precipitation for the year, but the water content of the recent snowfall tallied up to nearly a half inch in the east Metro. Lighter amounts, of around a quarter to a third of an inch were recorded in the past 24 hours from Hutchinson to Willmar.

Since January 1st there has been about an inch and a quarter of liquid precipitation in the Twin Cities. Compare that to more than 9 inches so far in 2008 in a large swath of Missouri. As heavy rains drench southern Missouri to Kentucky today, many locations are experiencing serious high water problems. Flash Flood Warnings have been issued from Springfield, Missouri to Paducah, Kentucky.

Flooding rain in southern Missouri

Flooding rains have also plagued the Dallas/Ft. Worth area today. More rain continues to soak the Big D this afternoon.
CE

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