Cold temps to last; snow jumpstarts winter recreation

It had all the feel of a January day in Minnesota, except for a deep snow pack in far northern Minnesota. Overcast skies revealed only a few  brief slivers of sunshine, as temperatures hoovered in the teens and twenties. A biting northwest breeze added a damp chill to the unseasonable air mass.

I must say, this was a very well advertised snowfall event. However, if you were thrilled about the prospects of getting clobbered with a foot of snow in the Twin Cities, you might be muttering about a forecast gone wrong.

Here's a graphic of the snow depth provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration valid at 6 a.m. today.

When snow enters the forecast, we are immediately asked, "how much?" After all, we're the experts.  Meteorologists know the risk of tossing out accumulation numbers too soon, but we can't help ourselves.

MPR News meteorologist Paul Huttner and I exchanged thoughts on the forecast over the weekend, and by Sunday evening he was concerned about the northward trend of the heavy snow band. We had the timing and the amounts pretty much nailed.  But as they say in the real estate business, "it's about the location."

Here is one of the model forecast which Paul posted in the blog on Sunday.  In hindsight, this prediction from NOAA's North American Mesoscale Forecast System model pretty much nailed it.

While working with the National Weather Service, we would frequently review our performance on major impact events.  We refer to these examinations as postmortems.

There is sufficient snow cover for sledding, snowmobiling and skiing covering a large landscape of Minnesota, northern Wisconsin and Upper Peninsula Michigan. This snow pack is expected to stay around until further notice.

Wednesday morning's expected low temperatures will be some 10 to 15 degrees below normal in many places. The average low for Nov. 12 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is 28 degrees.

Looking out into next week,  I'm not finding much in the way of a "warm up."

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Here's the National Weather Service temperature outlook for lows on Friday morning.

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Many of you have come to know I am not a huge fan of outlooks!

Here's the National Weather Service November outlook issued on Oct. 31. This monthly temperature outlook was included in the Updraft blog I posted on Nov. 3. Sometimes, in my cynicism I suggest that the data is to be used for entertainment value only.

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There is still time for a moderation, but daylight is fading and climatological temperatures are trending down.  But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.