Uh-Oh…Major Christmas Snow?

Good morning,

Gooseberry Falls in Winter

We are looking at and watching a major snowstorm that is aimed at Minnesota for Christmas Eve through the day after Christmas. It appears now to be packing a foot or more of snow over those three days. Much can change between now and then, but it’s not a bad idea to start thinking about it now.

Quercus, Inc. provides our snow clients with a bevy of information about future and past snow events. Here is our latest Wrap Up email following Sunday’s snow. You can find more information at Quercus, Inc.’s Snow & Ice Management Journal.

A small event is working its way through the area tonight leaving an inch or so of snow between midnight and noon tomorrow.

Have a great day!

Brad

Very interesting insight into forecasting

Good morning –

Courtesy Daffodilblue on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26351789@N07/3149197110/

I thought this article was very interesting from Paul Huttner of MPR on their Updraft blog. He discusses the perils of mid-range forecasting and how difficult it is right now to predict anything with winter weather for Minnesota.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/archive/2009/12/forecast_models_all_over_the_m.shtml

Have a great day!

Brad

Updated Winter Outlook

Good Monday morning to all! I hope you had a great weekend – or at least a great Sunday in Minnesota.

We drove to Iowa over the weekend to help my family with harvest but the wettest, coldest (by 4 degrees!) early October in recorded history didn’t allow for any combining to happen.

A couple of months ago I wrote about a couple of winter weather predictions. The National Weather Service has updated its winter outlook with a few tasty tidbits. They are still predicting a warmer winter. El Nino averages 3 degrees warmer than other years. However the precipitation is tough to predict from an El Nino with swings from 17″ in 1984-85 to 84″ in 1991-92. They have solidified their equal chances for above or below average precipitation this winter.

Our fall cleanups are also running far behind schedule this year due to the impressively wet fall. The leaves are finally falling, but yesterday and today have been the first days we have gotten out to work on cleanups and it looks like the rest of the week will be a bust as well.

Have a great week!

Brad