Preview for Christmas Week

An interesting turn of events has occurred on some of the longer range models for next week. Now, I know this is a busy time for everyone with the Christmas shopping, the traveling, and trying to spend time with friends and family. So, I wanted to give you a little preview of what we are going to be intently watching as we go into next week.

The long range models are beginning to show signs that there is a large storm brewing for the middle part of next week (if you are keeping track, that's just a day or two before Christmas). Now, this has just recently appeared and I'm not putting too much stock into it right now but it's just very interesting. The following images are for precipitation amounts (rain equivalent) for the Upper Midwest from Tuesday morning through Thursday afternoon of next week. See if you can see whats happening.

Any guesses????? Well, let me help you out. At this point, this model is producing a winter storm for much of the state of South Dakota. Add it all up and it totals 15 inches in some places. Now, don't freak out just yet. The likelihood of this event taking place just like this model says, and this far away is literally about 1 in a million. When the models begin to pick up on a large winter storm coming it is usually a bit too strong and typically does not have the location right. This is good news for those of you who do not want more snow. But the only problem is that we cant just disregard it until we get further evidence that its not going to happen. That's why we are going to be watching how this develops over the weekend and we will keep you informed of the latest so stay tuned!!

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz