Updraft: December 28, 2009 Archive

Northwest Minnesota in on the action

Posted at 6:54 AM on December 28, 2009 by Craig Edwards

Doppler radar estimated more than a foot of snow in parts of northwest Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas with the past snow storm. The darker purple depicts estimates of more than fifteen inches. Click on image.

Surface reports included more than twenty inches of snow in the vicinity of Grand Forks.
Color image of snowfall observations.

Much needed moisture accumulated in the form of heavy wet snow in eastern Minnesota. In Minneapolis/St. Paul and Chanhassen the wet snow mixed with rain for the event totaled about 1.25 inches.

Duluth measured the most precipitation with this event, around 2.6 inches. St. Cloud measured less than an inch of moisture.
CE

Snapshot of regional snowfall totals

Posted at 1:13 PM on December 28, 2009 by Craig Edwards

It is as tough to measure snow as it is to forecast it. See why our best forecast is always a range of several inches. I've heard of as much as 17 inches of snow from Le Seur through Prior Lake to Chaska. Fourteen inches from Waconia to Delano.
CE

View from overhead

Posted at 3:11 PM on December 28, 2009 by Craig Edwards (1 Comments)

NOAA visible satellite image from Monday afternoon.

From this visible imagery you can clearly notice the forested regions of Minnesota and Wisconsin as the more grey regions. You can also see some of the lakes and streams in Minnesota.

One of the challenges we have this time of year is determining cloud cover from snow on the ground. We look for the rivers and lakes, plus we animate the imagery. You don't have to be very astute to notice the snow cover doesn't move. The clouds do move. Of course the automated surface observing equipment gives us cloud heights as well.

Click on this link to play with the NOAA Remote Sensing Center website and view the snow cover across the Nation.

I found it of interest that when this storm started last Wednesday the temperature at Fort Worth, Texas was 75 degrees. On Thursday, they measured three inches of snow. Of even greater magnitude, Oklahoma City reached a high of 55 on Wednesday and was dumped on with fourteen inches of snow on Christmas eve.

Snowfall summary from National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Note the regions of at least twenty inches.