Blowing Snow in the Northeast

What a difference a day makes huh? Not all that cold outside when you just look at the actual air temperature. But when you combine the 20-40mph winds this morning, wind chills (what it feels like) are well below zero in most cases. Well, because of that wind we have seen some good blowing snow from Marshall MN over to Watertown and continuing northwest to Aberdeen. Here is a picture from a SDDOT cam looking south on I-29 around Watertown real early this morning. You can see the snow blowing across the interstate making travel a little tricky.Well, we have seen blowing snow in Watertown, but we haven't seen blowing snow in a lot of other places that have snow on the ground. The reason for this is just how warm it got yesterday. Here is a map of the actual high temperatures from yesterday.
Notice that places like Sioux Falls, Mitchell, and Huron got above the freeze mark and areas like Watertown and Aberdeen did not. Well, the areas that got above freezing yesterday had some snow melt. It may not have been much but it was likely that at least the very top layer of snow had melted. Once it melts into water, it will refreeze into ice once the temperature drops below freezing. That actually creates a little "crust" on top of the snow and will actually prevent it from being blown around. So, with the winds this morning, places that have not made it above freezing the past couple of days had some blowing snow and areas that did make it above freezing had no problems at all. Except the fact that its just dreadfully cold. Well, I hope you can get used to it because it looks like we will be in a deep freeze until sometime next week.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz