Sunday, March 8, 2009

Possible winter storm March 10th/11th

Looks like a major winter storm may affect the upper Midwest mainly this Tuesday. Winter storm watch from Grand Forks saying that locally 20" may be possible over northern Minnesota. Winter storm watches are in effect for the northern half of Minnesota with all of them saying 8-12" possible. The GFS and WRF have both had a hard time handling this system, both have been all over the place with the track of the storm and the precip area. Regardless, looks like the storm will start as rain but quickly change to snow as a sharp arctic front pushes through the region. MPX is calling for 4" here in the metro, DLH is calling for "heavy accumulation" for the arrowhead. Blizzard watches for eastern NoDak and northwest Minnesota. The HPC has also been back and forth with their forecasts, right now their winter weather outlooks highlights central and northern MN for heaviest snow, but looking at their QPF it shows over an inch of precipitable water over the next 5 days, and with no other significant storms in that period I'm assuming that most of that water is coming from the 10th/11th system. Haven't checked the updated model runs yet. May update later but if not I will definately update tomorrow.

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