29. With a little luck, it looks like most of the snow will stay north of me!
This map (to the right) is from the NWS Duluth and shows which counties have warnings and watches across northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. Douglas (WI), Carlton, northern Crow Wing, northern Cass, Itasca, Koochiching, St. Louis, Lake, and Cook counties are all under a Winter Storm Warning.
Counties farther west into northwest Minnesota have only a Winter Storm Watch... meaning the confidence is lower that the storm will be severe that far west.
What and where??
Again, from NWS Duluth, this map (to the left) shows their Weather Story for today that highlights the areas that they believe will see the heaviest snow with amounts listed.
8-15" is likely over the Arrowhead. 6-9" over the Iron Range. 3-8" in the Twin Ports. 1-3" in the Brainerd Lakes area.
Most of northwest Wisconsin is expected to see mainly rain, however, as the system pulls away early Monday morning, snow could briefly fall with accumulations of 1-2".
Even though my area will probably see only rain, that could cause complications with a frozen ground and around 1 foot of snow on the ground.
Liquid amounts.
The models have nudged the system a little farther north than the runs yesterday. In turn, this shifts the precipitation bullseye north too. This map (to the right) is from the HPC and shows how much liquid the models are forecasting for the next 48 hours.
Yesterday it looked like between 1.25" and 1.5" was possible at my location, today it looks like between 0.5" and 0.75" is more probable. Besides, the models usually overdue QPF a little, so 1/2 inch of rain here seems reasonable. This morning I measured 13.7" of snow remaining on the ground, 1.7" melted yesterday and 7.9" has melted in the past five days!
Rain on top of this snow pack would facilitate rapid melting and therefore increased runoff. The ditches are full of snow and the ground is frozen solid yet. If we do see any large amount of rain there could be instances of water across some roads.