A taste for snow

Posted at 5:12 PM on October 9, 2009 by Craig Edwards

We are typically celebrating these mid autumn days with trips to the pumpkin patch and a swig of apple cider. Well that was for Thursday and Friday. Later tonight and early Saturday we'll fast forward a little bit with a taste of early winter.

Paul Huttner has been keeping an eye on the Doppler radar, lighting up with snow flakes in eastern South Dakato. This precipitation will work its way towards central Minnesota during the darkness hours. Expect the possibility of a coating of snow particularly around Willmar and New Ulm. The light snow is forecast to reach the Twin Cities later tonight, with only a half an inch by 8am on Saturday morning.

Regional Doppler radar.

Saturday will be unseasonably chilly with a noticeable breeze. By nightfall our weather eyes focus on another, perhaps more inpressive, precipitation producing weather system for Sunday night into Monday. A couple of inches may accumulate around Alexandria and Long Prairie Sunday night.

Our friends at the climate office relayed a few observations about October snowfalls in Minnesota. Her is a little of what they had to share from their historical records.

In recent years, measurable October snow in the Twin Cities has been
scarce. The last time there was enough snow in October in the Twin
Cities to measure was .2 (two tenths) of an inch on October 20 and .4
(four tenths) of an inch on October 21, 2002.
What is more unusual is having measurable snow fall in the first half
of the month. This has happened only eight times in the last 60
years, with the most snow being 2.5 inches on October 10, 1977.

The earliest measurable snow on record for the Twin Cities is .4
inches on September 24, 1985 which fell during the afternoon and
surprised many people. (Courtesy of Pete Boulay at the State Climate Office)
CE

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