Blizzard #7... Or Is It #8?

It's getting hard to keep track of all the blizzards that have affected our area this winter and early spring... and now we have another one on the way! This time the South gets slammed with snow - and it seems like Sioux Falls finally gets a big one after missing out on big snowstorms the entire winter season.

We're watching this storm pretty closely, and have been for a while. As Cody mentioned in the last post there is a little region (circled in his post) where winds "collide" and help to aid the storm in developing. That's not the only thing - we're seeing something called "conditional symmetric instability" and we won't get into it that much aside from letting you know that it looks like with that setup around us we should see some pretty heavy bands of snow out there come Saturday night.

Here's what we're expecting, with that in mind - with our timeline for a changeover first. Keep in mind that in Sioux Falls and much of the eastern half of our viewing area we might not see *anything* (rain OR snow) until later on Saturday:

It looks like toward the Sioux Falls area and immediate vicinity it'll take until about mid to late afternoon/early evening in order to change from rain to snow. After that? We get some heavy bands of snow. Note the "Saturday Night" time period in the timeline - that type of condition will likely meet Sioux Falls. If not? Well, we'll be a lot closer to the 5" mark than the 9" one.

At this point, we just have to wait and see - and specifically see if something big changes in this forecast. For now - expect those totals by Sunday morning. Saturday night might be a good night to rent a movie & fire up the fireplace.

Be safe out there, and make sure you send us your snow pictures to weather@kdlt.com!

~KDLT Meteorologist Aaron Shaffer