Issued at 2:15 AM CST, Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
00z model guidance from Tuesday Night has made quite a shift to the north in regards to the heavy snow area for Thursday. Leading the way is the 00z NAM with the 00z NGM even slightly more to the north than the NAM… 21z SREF has trended north as well. The NAVY-NOGAPS and Gem-Global models are somewhat lighter in regards to precipitation amounts for Minnesota, but still show advisory and or warning criteria snowfall being met over portions of the state. The 00z GFS which has been the southern outliar for days is slowly coming around to the more northern solutions… Also of note…The 00z MM5 model also cranks out quite a bit of precip around all but Northern areas of the state on Thursday
Bottom line is this… The winter storm for Thursday and Thursday Evening could be tracking a bit more to the north. Will have to watch the next two model runs that come out Today to see if the ooz model run from Tonight was on to something, or if it was just a bad run.
The latest model guidance would point to several inches of snow as far north as Duluth for Thursday with advisory and possibly warning level snowfall totals in the city by late Thursday Night. Right now it would appear that a solid 3-6″ of snow would fall in the city from the system itself, but with E-NE winds coming off Lake Superior…This could enhance the snow with a couple more inches added onto the storm totals.
The National Weather Service in Duluth could be issuing winter storm watches, warnings, or advisories for parts of Northeast Minnesota and Northwest Wisconsin for Thursday and Thursday Evening.
Stay tuned…
Tim
Its going to be interesting to see where this storm tracks. The models have been pulling it slightly farther north every run. Until last night it seemed like the heaviest snow would be in a narrow east-west line across part of central Minnesota, but with last night\’s WRF run, the HPC\’s winter weather outlook, and the new winter storm watches all the way to Pine County, there could be a huge swath of 6+ inch accumulation, possibly from the cities to the arrowhead. I wonder how the models are going to progress the storm in this afternoon\’s run.