Plowable snow Friday; NWS updates spring flood outlook

Thursday will be a good day to catch up on your errands in Minnesota.

We come up for air in between snow systems one more time. Thursday looks like a nice late winter day. We'll see more sunshine, and temperatures reach the 20s by afternoon.

Then we watch the next snowmaker ride in on Friday. And Friday is March 1. If February's record snow was the cupcake, Friday is the snowy frosting on top.

In like a lion

March opens where February left off.

Our next snowmaker rolls into western Minnesota Friday morning. Snow breaks out in western Minnesota Friday morning and pushes into the Twin Cities around mid-morning. Models show snow of varying intensity through Friday. The snow should taper off from west to east Friday evening.

Here's NOAA's NAM 3 km resolution model version of timing and snowfall coverage Friday.

After Friday's snow, all major models indicate a break in any significant snowfall for up to 6 days. We'll see.

Probably plowable

Friday's snow looks plowable across central and southern Minnesota. A good 2" to 4" is likely from west to east in a swath that includes Madison through Redwood Falls, Mankato, The Twin Cities. Lesser totals favor the far north and I-90 corridor.

Brittle weekend

One more Arctic blast follows Friday's Clipper. Temperatures moderate back into the 20s next week. The Arctic bite will be gone, but that's still about 10-degrees cooler than average for the first week in March.

Updated spring flood outlook

Hydrologists at the North Central River Forecast Center have come out with an updated spring flood outlook. As I wrote yesterday, February's record snow has changed the flood equation in favor of a higher flood risk this spring. Now it's all about the March weather unfolds.

Here's the latest update.

Stay tuned.