Early Season Cold, Record Snow

An early season cold spell across the Upper Midwest and northern Plains this past weekend and into the start of this week mixed with available moisture has set up for early season snow. Some of this snow has been quite heavy and has been record breaking. Here are some of those records:

 

Friday into Saturday, North Platte, NE broke the monthly record for October snow when 15.0" feel. The old record was 13.0"set October 29^th/30^th, 1896. Several locations in central Nebraska recorded a foot or more of the "white-stuff". In Omaha, the official snowfall was 3.5" making it the 7^th highest daily snowfall for the month of October. The snow fell just one day short of the most snowfall this early in the season for Omaha. The earliest occurred on October 9, 1970 and its total was also 3.5".

Snow is still falling today in Minnesota and Wisconsin and as of 10 AM CT, the Twin Cities reported 1.5" of snow and marks the first time since 1977 that 1.0" or greater of snowfall has been recorded this early in the month. In 1977, 2.5" fell on October 10^th. In addition, to show how rare a snow is this early in the season (through October 15^th) for even the Twin Cities, it has only happened 8 times in the last 60 years with the last being 1992 when only 0.3" of snow fell on the 15^th. The other years this happened were: 1959(0.3" 10/8, 2.0" 10/12), 1966 (0.2" 10/15), 1969 (2.0" 10/12, 0.4" 10/13) and 1977 (2.5" 10/10, 0.5" 10/11).

Today's accumulating snow will also likely rank in the top of the earliest accumulating snows for La Crosse, WI and Rochester, MN. The National Weather Service has already reported 0.3" of snow in La Crosse. That would rank it in the top 5 snow accumulations this early in the season. With the earliest accumulating snow having occurred on September 26, 1942 when 0.2" snowfall occurred. The largest snowfall early in the season was 3.9" and occurred October 10, 1964.

One good thing related to early season snowfall such as this is that the roadway temperatures remain warm enough that most of the accumulation occurs only on grassy surfaces. If you want to check out roadway temperatures across Minnesota and Wisconsin simply click on the state's name and you will be redirected to the state's Road Weather Information System (RWIS) data.

Tonight through Tuesday, the snow chances will move further east towards portions of New England. Some snow is possible across portions of northeast New York into northern Vermont/New Hampshire and into Maine Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Accumulations of 1"-3" are possible for portions of northern Vermont into Maine.

Some of this early season cold air will sink southward by late week. Morning temperatures may reach into the upper 30s as far south as the Tennessee Valley, Saturday/Sunday but the snows will stay confined north of I-80.