How Much Snow Tomorrow?

In most cases, we tend to have a pretty good idea how much snow we are expecting. But unfortunately, there are those few times in which its kind of a crap shoot. Here is what I mean. The two graphics below really help explain what I'm talking about. The first graphic is the snowfall forecast from the National Weather Service (NWS) in Sioux Falls and the second one is from the NWS office in Aberdeen.
Even with a quick glance at these you can see that there is a BIG difference in their forecasts. Snow storms are very complex and is one of the hardest things to forecast. So what makes this particular storm so difficult. The main reason for the level of difficulty of this storm is that no model seems to be real accurate with the current location of the low pressure. That means that none of the models really have an idea of what's happening now so how can we expect them to understand what's going to happen down the road. The other major difficulty is the components of the system are not expected to come together until the storm is right overhead. This basically means that a couple of hours can make or break your forecast. So if the components come together a couple hours earlier, it will start snowing earlier, and therefore many areas could end up with more snow than originally thought. This could also happen the other way and we could get little if any snow at all. So these are just a few of the complications plaguing the forecast of the incoming snow. However, under the circumstances, I believe that my forecast might be the most accurate because it is right in the middle of the two that I showed you earlier. I guess only time will tell.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz