What's the latest on next week's major snowstorm system?
The storm from Thursday night exited Minnesota after dropping 3-10 inches of heavy, wet snow in far southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, and now attention turns to the much bigger system that will bring both severe weather and potential blizzard conditions to the heart of the U.S.
The highly-publicized storm is expected to bring impacts to Minnesota beginning Tuesday, perhaps lingering until finally pushing out of the region next Thursday/Friday.
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"We are in the smack-dab-middle of the greatest area of uncertainty," says Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard. "We're going to get a lot of moisture, it's just a matter of what form will it fall in? Probably both rain and snow."
Below are a variety of snow totals being predicted from six different models. It's pretty obvious that the storm track could keep the Twin Cities in the zone of mystery, but that will hopefully become more clear in the coming days.
The storm system is still over the Pacific Ocean, and models tend to get a better handle on things once the system reaches the U.S. coast.
"The best bet for the most likely area of snow is the Dakotas and then northern and western Minnesota. The Twin Cities, really right on the edge of this yellow blob I drew," said Sundgaard, whose map below show snow totals when all of the models are blended together to form averages.
The National Weather Service in the Twin Cities notes that a more northern storm track, which is well-represented by the European model, would favor a "longer period of rain/ice for our region." Here are snow totals from the latest Euro model:
"Likewise," the NWS Twin Cities continued, "a more southerly track [from the American model] would keep colder air nearby making for a quicker transition to snow and likely much greater snowfall amounts." Here's the American model's snowfall output:
Check back for updates and watch Sundgaard's full breakdown in the video at the top of the story.
