Wintry relapse today, spring-like 40s return tomorrow

Winter weather map

It's a winter like weather map today across Minnesota and the Great Lakes. Arctic air has temporarily nosed into northern Minnesota again today where sub-zero temperatures greeted folks in the northeast this morning.

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Image: University of Illinois

To add a little winter insult, a narrow band of lake-enhanced snow greeted folks around Two Harbors and Duluth this morning.

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Bitter northeast winds feeding off a narrow open section of Lake Superior helped fuel the snow band on the northwest edge of a much bigger storm dumping heavy snow across the Great Lakes.

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Image: Weather Underground

Interestingly enough while most of Lake Superior is frozen solid, a small sliver near Duluth and the North Shore has left just enough open water to fuel this morning's lake-enhanced snow plume.

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Image: NOAA/GERL

Bigger storm rolls east

The eastern storm ramped up in Chicago overnight, dumping a quick burst producing 3" to 6" of heavy wet snow around Chicagoland. Midway Airport in Chicago picked up 6 inches while O'Hare's 3.6 inches makes it the third snowiest winter on record with a whopping 79.1 inches this winter.

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Image: Chicago NWS Facebook page

The storm is dumping heavy snow in Detroit and points east today. Winter storm warnings are flying all the way to Maine. Blizzard Warnings are flying for Buffalo and Rochester New York.

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Image: NOAA

The storm delivers a solid 6- to 12-inch snowfall band for Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo and Upstate New York into northern New England today and tomorrow.

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Image: NOAA via wxcaster.com

Minnesota roller coaster

We escape the bigger storm this time, but our temp take a ride the next few days. Today's chilly breezes give way to milder southerly flow Thursday into Friday. Another cool puff takes hold this weekend.

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Image: Weatherspark

Upside down winter

It's been interesting to watch the Arctic run unusually warm this winter, while much of the eastern United States shivered and digs out from another snow storm. Chicago (79.1 inches), Detroit (more than 84 inches) and Philly (63 inches) have all had more snow this winter than Anchorage (55.8 inches) and Fairbanks, Alaska (45.5 inches).

The warm Arctic winter has caused Arctic Sea Ice to reach record winter lows.

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Image: NOAA

Here's a good explanation as to why jet stream patterns have produced an upside down winter this year from Dr. Jason Box, Chief Scientist of the Dark Snow Project, and a researcher formerly of the Byrd Polar Center at Ohio State, now with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland -  who has spent the last week in Svalbard, a group of Islands high in the arctic, controlled by Norway.

It's easy to think winter is running cold everywhere because we feel it here in the eastern half of the United States. The unusual Polar displacement from the Arctic has shoved cold air south, while much of the Arctic has run very warm this winter.