Weather Picture for December 29-January 5 from Tornado Bob

January 2, 2009 noon update:

An area of low pressure is in Montana this afternoon, producing snow in that state. This initial area of low pressure will move eastward over the next 24 hours carrying the snow into North Dakota. This low will then weaken and its associated area of snow will lose its intensity as another area of low pressure develops near the Colorado/Kansas/Nebraska border. The new low will cause a new area of snow to develop in west-central Minnesota then spread over eastern Minnesota and Wisconsin. The snow will become heavy in some areas, particularly along the North Shore of Lake Superior and in far eastern Minnesota. By late Saturday night, I expect about 2" in the western portion of the KAXE area and 7-8" near Duluth with 2-6" in Grand Rapids. If the second area of snow develops a bit earlier and the low moves a bit more slowly than I'm expecting, we the snow totals could be a bit more. If the low moves faster and the second area of snow is slower to develop, the significant snows (more than 2") would be limited to areas southeast of Grand Rapids.

Temperatures will be in the single digits today and tonight, teens on Saturday, then dropping below zero late Sunday and Sunday night.

A map of last Tuesday's snowfall can be found here:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mpx/?n=dec30_08snowfall
It shows how narrow and intense the band of snow was.

(Sunday evening post)

The snowy pattern continues this week as a series of weak low pressure systems moves across Minnesota under relatively fast west to east flow aloft. We'll have chances of snow early Monday morning (along and north of Highway 2), Tuesday (south of Highway 2), and Thursday (over the whole area). Each of these events appears capable of providing snows in the 1-4" range, but Tuesday's snow could drop up to 6" south of Brainerd. Temperatures will generally be near or slightly below average for late December. That means high temperatures in the teens and lows a little bit below zero.

Generally, there are no major storms on the horizon, but we'll have a chance of snow about every other day for about the next 10 days. After that, it looks like the overall weather pattern will become somewhat less snowy, but the temperature will probably be good for skiing.