Severe storms to ice and snow Friday-Saturday; significant snow next week?

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00:00Well a very potent spring storm is taking aim at Minnesota. We're going to see all kinds of weather

00:04from severe thunderstorms, the first ones of the season, to blizzard conditions in western Minnesota,

00:09big drop in temperatures, temperatures go back up, and then we're talking about the

00:12potential for some heavy snow even in southern Minnesota maybe next week.

00:15Pretty incredible warmth today, mid-70s across southern Minnesota. Yeah, this is not normal.

00:32In fact, several ways it's not normal. We'll talk about potential record highs for much of

00:37central and southern Minnesota today. It looks like Brainerd, Fargo-Moorhead areas, St. Cloud,

00:42Twin Cities, Rochester, La Crosse, Eau Claire, all could break daily records, but what's almost more

00:50interesting or kind of frightening about that is the record high is 73, so back in 2012, which was

00:56by far the warmest March we've ever had. That was a year we hit 80 degrees on St. Patrick's Day,

01:00earliest ever 80 degree reading, but if we hit 75, which is entirely possible today,

01:05that's the earliest we've ever hit 75 degrees in a season. So this is the warmest it's ever been

01:12this early, and a reminder, rapid attribution study. This is a statistical analysis from

01:18Climate Central. Today's temperature is made three to four times more likely due to climate change,

01:25and of course that's all going to play into this storm system. Unusual severe weather this early

01:29in the season. We've got marginal risk through the Twin Cities, but southern Minnesota, including

01:34Rochester, Elbert, Lee, we're looking at a slight risk of severe weather, level two out of five,

01:41and that is unusual, yes, for the middle of March, so let's break down some of what we're expecting

01:46later today as far as the thunderstorm potential, which is sort of part one of the storm system.

01:51Well, one could argue that part one already happened in northeastern Minnesota. Not severe

01:54weather, but they had thunderstorms earlier this morning. That's what you're seeing to

01:59my right or left. This is all mirrored, so it's confusing, but yeah, garden variety thunderstorms,

02:04where they still have some deep snowpack, the only place really left is into the Arrowhead,

02:10but yeah, we're seeing an incredible storm system here. The pressure center continues to drop in

02:15this system, now centered over the western part of Kansas, 980 millibars. We talked about yesterday

02:21that we're going to be just outside of record territory for March low pressure, which is

02:28going to be about a few millibars, only less than what this storm system is forecast to be,

02:33but already seeing some thunderstorms erupting here in northeastern Kansas into Missouri,

02:38and that's going to be the area to watch through the day today. That's going to fill in more

02:42across Iowa, and all of that, as you can already see, is lifting to the northeast, so

02:46we are expecting some nasty weather potentially heading into the afternoon, late afternoon,

02:54evening hours in Iowa, but more the late evening hours for us here in the southern part of the

02:59state. So let's take a look at what's going on here in the models right now. This is the latest

03:04high-resolution rapid refresh model. Pretty quiet here. This is 5 p.m., and then 6 p.m.,

03:09you can start to see those thunderstorms coming in out of northwest Iowa. Here's 7 p.m. down around

03:15Worthington, thunderstorms around Marshall, and then the main line, whatever holds together,

03:20will be starting to move into southern Minnesota, Faribault, the southern metro here, and then kind

03:26of just a blob of showers and thunderstorms as we head into the overnight hours, and then look to

03:30the west, too. Freezing rain, Morris to Fergus Falls, Detroit Lakes, up through Roseau and

03:37Warroad. In fact, we could see some ice accumulation in those areas. Let's just take a look at the

03:42latest high-resolution rapid refresh model. The HRRR is what I will call it for short. It's a lot

03:49easier than saying it a whole time, but yeah, this is giving a tenth to two-tenths of an inch of ice

03:56in western and northwestern Minnesota, so that is nasty, but want to concentrate on the severe

04:00threat because, as I mentioned, we have that slight risk for the southern part of the state,

04:05and our severe parameters are not particularly impressive by summer standards, but for mid-March

04:11in Minnesota, yeah, here's the convective available potential energy, basically the juice available

04:16for thunderstorms. It's a measure of instability. This is unusual for March 14th, but as we talked

04:23about, so are the temperatures today, so is the entire setup today. We're talking about 1,500

04:29joules of energy, kilojoules per kilogram of energy available for this system,

04:36but that all fades pretty quickly here once we head towards 9, 10 p.m., as you can see,

04:40so we're going to have a very narrow window for potential severe weather, and we look at this

04:43significant tornado parameter, again, not particularly impressive, but the fact that

04:48we're even able to display anything in March is pretty incredible. It's really going to be more

04:53to our south where we have the greatest tornado threat. You can see this is Iowa, sorry, Missouri,

05:00Arkansas into Illinois. That's why we've got the moderate risk in those areas. I'll put on the

05:06wider view of the SPC outlook for today, and you can see that that moderate risk, which is a

05:12substantial risk, level three out of five here, or sorry, four out of five across southern Iowa,

05:19eastern Missouri into much of central and southern Illinois. That's going to be the area that's really

05:24the focal point for that activity because that's where all the parameters come in. We have the best

05:28shear plus instability across those areas to the south, so we're really looking at what storms can

05:35hold together into southern Minnesota. That means primarily a large hail and damaging wind threat

05:42potentially. As I mentioned, here are those storms that are already starting to pop right now in

05:47parts of Kansas and Missouri, but that area will fill in. There again, 7 p.m., 8 p.m., 9 p.m., 10,

05:5411, 12, and so yeah, we're dealing really with leftovers here, but I do want to put on some of

06:00the latest wind gusts from this particular model to see what those latest wind gusts are showing.

06:07So you can see some severe wind gusts. That's basically the orange and red areas in Iowa,

06:11and then it really sort of fizzles out for the most part into southern Minnesota. We're still,

06:15though, looking at potentially some of those leftover storms producing some wind gusts here of,

06:21well, there's a 69 mile an hour wind gust not far from the Rochester area. Again, this is just a

06:27model scenario, so don't pay attention to the specific spot, but it's showing that there is

06:32that potential that some of those storms that are left could produce some high winds. Another thing

06:37we look at, basically updraft tracks, officially updraft helicity tracks, but this shows us where

06:46the most severe storms are with those big updrafts, and you can see most of those are staying really

06:50in Iowa, Missouri, Illinois. Again, this is really nasty looking actually. This shows that there are

06:58several long track supercells potentially developing this evening from Missouri into

07:02Illinois. So again, we are looking at being on the northern periphery of that threat. Whatever

07:07storms hold together could potentially become an issue for us. The other thing we're gonna

07:13be dealing with, though, is the wintry weather on the other side of all this. Put back on the

07:20simulated reflectivity. So again, here's midnight tonight, rain, thunderstorms. We kind of get dry

07:26slotted into the morning hours tomorrow, and put on the earlier model run which goes out farther

07:31in time. So, you know, here's 6 a.m. tomorrow, not much happening here, maybe a batch of showers along

07:36the southeastern part of the state, but look how quickly we go from rain to freezing rain and sleet

07:42in western Minnesota, and then it turns to heavy snow across the western part of the state. But by

07:47the time cold air wraps in for us, you can see that most of that is heading off to the north. So

07:53there isn't going to be much left as far as snow for us. So we'll probably see snow showers in the

07:58Twin Cities, but really the heavy snow is going to stay to the west. Now this is, again, this is the

08:02HRRR, that High Resolution Rapid Refresh Models forecast scenario for snowfall. Might be a little

08:07high. This is the 10 to 1 ratio, the Kutchera, which is trying to account for the different

08:14ratios based on temperatures, is a little higher, but probably not particularly accurate because

08:20even western Minnesota, it's going to be very warm, so there's going to be a lot of compacting

08:23and melting to begin. So we look at this positive snow depth change, which is a little more realistic,

08:29and that shows still a swath, a narrow area of 6 to 8 inches of snow, and the weather service kind

08:35of lining up with that. This is the weather services forecast a little further west.

08:39The HRRR is going a little farther east. European model, a little farther east.

08:47American model, a little farther east. So the weather service might be adjusting their forecast

08:53a little farther east too, and we look at the weighted average of the models. It is kind of

08:58in between the weather service forecast and what some of those models were showing, but either way

09:02you see the Twin Cities, we really don't get much, even northeastern Minnesota. So it's gonna be that

09:06narrow area to the west that gets cold enough air while there is still some moisture around.

09:12So we start, you know, with temperatures in the 70s, of course, but then here's that front,

09:16you can see it. This is 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am. So if you're up early tomorrow, 50 degrees to start in

09:22the Twin Cities, while it's in the 20s in western Minnesota, so obviously snowing there, but again,

09:28by the time we're cold enough for snow, which isn't until probably 2 or 3pm, a lot of that

09:34moisture is off to the north and west. So we'll overlay, these are the temperatures, so 2pm when

09:40it's cold enough to snow here, and then where's the moisture? Yeah, off to the north. So that's

09:46why we're not looking at much as far as snowfall here. But again, the big threat today is the

09:50potential for severe weather, again, mostly to the south, but the southern part of the state,

09:55we could be looking at leftover storms that hold together. So anywhere in yellow, that slight risk,

10:01again, mostly south of the Twin Cities, could see some leftover strong storms that produce

10:06high wind gusts, we're talking over 60 miles an hour, maybe some large hail, one inch or larger,

10:10golf ball size, or not golf ball, sorry, ping pong size hail or bigger. And then the marginal risk

10:15for the rest of us in central Minnesota, including the Twin Cities, where we're expecting primarily

10:20just garden variety showers and thunderstorms, but again, maybe one of those could hold together

10:24into the south metro and produce some brief severe weather, but that's primarily what we're looking

10:30at there. Of course, behind this system comes some colder air temperatures will fall through

10:34Saturday already, but Sunday, just around 40 for a high, but that's actually closer to normal.

10:38Normal high Sunday is about 41, 42 degrees colder than north, but rebounding rapidly here. Monday,

10:44low 60s for highs again in the Twin Cities, much colder than north though. This is not going to

10:49last very long either. Tuesday will be fairly mild, but then we're talking about already the

10:53next storm just a few days after this one. And now it's looking increasingly likely that we

10:58could be dealing with a heavy swath of snow somewhere in the region. Right now, a majority

11:04of the models painting that heavy snow swath over southern Minnesota, including the Twin Cities. So

11:09this is a blend of the models, a weighted average, so to speak. So four, five, six inches possible

11:15Tuesday night into Wednesday out of that. But there are some models like the American model

11:19that are going even higher. Yeah. Now don't get too excited or dreading these specific numbers.

11:26This is almost certainly going to change, but just to give you an idea of the whiplash,

11:31weather whiplash we're gonna be dealing with here over the next several days, pretty incredible.

11:36So yeah, warm today, falling temperatures tomorrow. We've got that severe weather,

11:39rain turning to a little snow, sunshine Sunday, Monday, major roller coaster of temperatures,

11:45but yeah, all eyes will be focused on the Tuesday night, Wednesday system

11:49after we get past this weekend. So spring in Minnesota, even crazier than normal this year.

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