Spiraling snow showers, high winds sweep across Minnesota
Gusty winds, snow showers and well below normal temperatures
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Thursday brings a return of more clouds and even higher winds. We’ll also see snow showers spread out across much of central and northern Minnesota with temperatures well below normal.
Storm system crawls across Minnesota
Our storm system is another slow mover, just like last week’s. Yet again, we have a cutoff upper-level low. This means it’s literally separated from the main flow (jet stream) of the atmosphere. It’s only moved at a pace of 9 mph over the past 12 hours.
Expect snow showers, even bursts of snow to rotate around the low as it slowly sweeps across Minnesota Thursday.
Some of these bursts could whiten up the grass with a coating to one-half inch of snow with big flakes.
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Thursday’s snow showers will be instability based — the upper atmosphere has cooled 30 to 40 degrees while the lower atmosphere has cooled about 20 degrees. Any peak of sun and any residual moisture will create convective (like a thunderstorm but smaller scale) snow showers.
Northern Minnesota will see additional snowfall of a little more significance. Most places way up north can expect 1 to 3 inches.
Epic spring storm
This storm has been a pretty intense spring storm system with tornadoes and a blizzard all within the Upper Midwest over the last couple of days.
The National Weather Service office in La Crosse, Wis., determined two tornadoes struck southeastern Minnesota. The town of Taopi, near the Iowa border, was hit by an EF-2 tornado with up to 130 mph winds.
The tornado was on the ground for 7.3 miles at a width of 250 yards.
Another tornado hit near Spring Valley in Fillmore County. That one was determined to be an EF-1 with up to 100 mph winds and was on the ground for about 2 miles.
Blizzard conditions slammed North Dakota, with more than 2 feet of snow falling in the central part of the state.
In addition to the heavy snow, strong winds created intense blizzard conditions with wind gusts recorded above 60 mph.
Hope in sight
The climate prediction center is forecasting higher odds of above normal temperatures as we head into next weekend and the end of April.
