Dense Fog with areas of freezing drizzle tonight-Christmas morning; some rain/wet snow Wednesday night-Thursday; Storm Potential December 28-30 (Snow/Rain/Wind)

-Dense Fog Advisory for all of northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin (yellow shaded area on map) until 10 AM Wednesday. Source: https://www.weather.gov/dlh/

-Visibility one quarter mile or less in dense fog.

-Hazardous driving conditions due to low visibility.

-With ground and pavement temperatures near freezing tonight, fog may freeze to surfaces and create slippery roads and sidewalks.

Road Conditions

Minnesota – https://lb.511mn.org/

Wisconsin – https://511wi.gov/

We’ve got a messy system on the way for Wednesday night into Thursday. The greatest impacts with this system will be over northern Minnesota, mainly northwest of Duluth.

2 to 4 inches of snow is possible in far northern Minnesota including International Falls, Littlefork and Big Falls.

1 to 2 inches of snow is possible farther south including Bigfork, Orr, Cook, Ely and just north of Grand Marais.

Snow totals of an inch or less are expected farther south.

Note: There is also a chance for some rain and freezing rain Wednesday night-early Thursday morning with a light glaze of ice possible in parts of north-central into northeast Minnesota. Winter Weather Advisories may be needed for parts of the area for this system for Wednesday night and Thursday.

18z NAM-WRF model radar forecast valid from 6 AM Wednesday to 6 PM Thursday.

Green: Rain

Blue: Snow

Purple: Mix precipitation

Source: https://weathermodels.com/

Wednesday night’s system won’t be very strong, but it will have some moisture with it as lifts N-NE out of western Iowa. The low is forecast to move across east-central Minnesota Thursday morning, moving to NW of Lake Superior by Thursday evening.

Source: https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/

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Low temperature forecast for Wednesday morning, December 25. Source: https://graphical.weather.gov/

High temperature forecast for Wednesday, December 25.

Earlier Tuesday morning I posted an update on Facebook regarding a system for Saturday which at the time didn’t look very strong per model guidance, except for the GFS model which has been consistently showing a much stronger system for this weekend.

New model runs that have come out this afternoon have trended toward the stronger GFS solution, and now the European, German-Icon and Canadian models all show some sort of system impacting the upper Midwest and Great Lakes during the December 28-30 time frame.

There remains considerable uncertainty, however, on the storm track and timing, and also with the type of precipitation that falls with this potential storm.

GFS model has been showing a major winter storm impacting much of the Northland this weekend while the European model starts as snow (could be heavy amounts) then switches the snow to a wintry mix and even just rain, then back to snow.

Stay tuned!