Snow candy coating
It's a "quiet" winter wonderland out there this morning!
The trees are coated with a wet sticky layer of snow. Overnight snow bands moved through Minnesota and Wisconsin, producing one to 3 inches in the metro, to as much as 5 inches around Rice Lake, WI.
Some of the snow bands were convective in nature, producing heavy snowfall rates around an inch per hour and big fat wet flakes. This observer even saw a flash of lightning around 2am at the Huttner Weather Lab in the west metro during a brief observation.
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As the last snow bands pull out of the area this morning, the melt will begin. Temps are right around freezing this morning, and even though we'll be mostly cloudy today enough solar energy will penetrate the overcast to boost temperatures to near 40 degrees this afternoon.
Enjoy the snow on the trees this morning. Most if not all of it will drip away by later today.
Then we'll melt more snow with high temperatures near 40 most of the week. This is seasonable; our average high is now 42 and our average low 25.
Spring begins Thursday with the Vernal equinox at 12:48am. Hang in there!
PH