Heavy snow, gusty winds now being forecast for Twin Cities Monday, Tuesday

The Saturday morning forecast updates still has Minnesota in line for a narrow band of prolonged snow on Monday and Tuesday, with the Twin Cities among the areas in the bullseye.

But it's also emerging that this will be joined by a "long period of ... gusty northeast winds," which the National Weather Service says will begin Sunday night and continue through Tuesday.

So far, forecasters have been saying that the high accumulations of snow will be the result of the snowfall lasting around 48 hours, rather than the snow falling at an enhanced rate.

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However in its forecast discussion Saturday morning, the NWS says there are some models suggesting there are circumstances that "would allow for high ratio snow."

"If these model signals continue that would increase confidence in the potential for high snow rates and therefore higher impacts," it says.

As ever, the situation will change a fair bit before Monday arrives, not just on the snowfall levels but also how travel conditions will be affected by the wind.

The NWS Twin Cities has at least seen enough to predict with 97% confidence that the Twin Cities will see more than 2 inches of snow over the course of the system, which is expected to be at its heaviest across a narrow band of central Minnesota.

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The long-range models are currently putting Twin Cities in the 6-11 inches of snow range over the course of Monday to Wednesday using a ratio of 10:1 (10 inches of snow to 1 inch of water).

However, models using the Kuchera ratio of snow prediction are projecting elevated totals for the metro of anything from 10-20 inches.

Here are the latest models:

American

Canadian

Euro

American (Kuchera Ratio)

Canadian (Kuchera Ratio)

Euro (Kuchera Ratio)