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National Snow Analyses
Weather SummaryA weak surface low beneath a potent midlevel trough passed across the southern Plains and southern Midwest yesterday. Up to 1 1/2 feet of snowfall occurred in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. Mainly 3 inches of snow or less fell eastward from there as the lows weakened and separated. Cold, dry surface winds across the Great Lakes produced up to 2 feet of lake-effect snowfall east of Lake Erie in western New York. Mainly 1/2 foot or less of snow fell south and east of the other Great Lakes. Another 1/2 foot of snowfall is likely off the lower Great Lakes today. In the northern Plains, similar cold, dry winds caused widespread mild blowing-snow sublimation. The coterminous U.S. snowpack covers 49 of 50 states again this morning. (There is no snow on the ground in Florida.) Most of this snowpack is cold and stable except for a couple of areas: 1) The Southeast, where a narrow band along the snowpack's edge is melting; 2) the Cascades through the lower-elevation Southern Sierra Nevada, where the model continues to hold on to a warm snowpack, which is mostly responsible for its production of slow to moderate snowmelt. The midlevel pattern which has held sway over the coterminous U.S. for the past few weeks strong West Coast ridge and a deep trough over most of the coterminous U.S. - will shift eastward and deamplify during the next few days. This will cause the cold air over the central and eastern U.S. to be pushed into eastern Canada as much warmer conditions spread into the West, Plains, and Midwest during the next few days. High temperatures will rise into the 50s in the northern and central High Plains by Saturday, with 30s and 40s expected in the northern Plains to western Great Lakes. The snowpack is rather thin in the High Plains, so these temperatures will likely clear out the snow from much of this region by Monday. In the Plains and Midwest, some water might come out of the snowpack, but it's expected that the snow will become denser as snow melts from the top and flows into the pack and refreezes. Onshore flow will develop into the Northwest coast Friday night ahead of a cold front. Around a foot of snowfall is likely in the northern Cascades on Friday and most of the Cascades and northern Rockies on Saturday. Onshore flow will continue until Tuesday when another, stronger, system will move into the northern U.S. coast. Snow Reports
Note: these data are unofficial and provisional.
Station Snowfall Reports Interpolated Snowfall Products Model Assimilation
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