A minor clipper system bring some light snow Monday and then a much larger storm will bring a prolonged period of two main waves of heavy snow over a few days late Tuesday into Thursday night.
The amount of water equivalent precipitation in this upcoming storm is very impressive, likely over 1 inch of water. So, even at a 10:1 ratio we easily get 10" of snow, but likely more.
First things first however... a minor system comes through Monday bringing light snow midday into the evening hours. For southern Minnesota this means 1" or less, but for northern MN pockets will see several inches of snow.
We then get a lull most of Tuesday and temperatures will start to cool from the milder 30s into the 20s Tuesday into the midweek. The big storm comes in two main waves with a quieter period during most of the day Wednesday.
These pulses of energy, creating the bursts of snow will be following a tight temperature gradient from Colorado through Nebraska, into Minnesota mid to late week.
This is a break down of 6 hour snowfall accumulation from Monday through early Friday, you can see the heavier and lighter periods with timing:
We'll need to keep an eye on what the ratio of snow to water will be in this storm. Tuesday night looks like a 13:1 or 15:1 ratio but Wednesday night into Thursday could be higher, allowing totals to REALLY add up. Here's a look at the models broken down by different ratios to show how much different they can be:
You'll notice however, no matter how you look at it, we get A LOT of snow for central and southern Minnesota this week. It does appear as though those ratios will be between 15:1 and as high as 18:1... when you calculate that with over 1 inch of water, you get some big totals.
At this point, the real solution probably lies in between the lower and higher end possibilities so looking at probabitlies, this is the best break down at this point:
With all that said, it's still at least 3 or 4 days til show time and some things could change but the confidence is higher by the hour of a big snowfall event.
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