Latest forecast models are still looking plowly snow Friday night to Saturday

We track the expected model running for Snow Friday Night until early Saturday.

Winter storm watches Cover most of central and southern Minnesota Friday night to Saturday. (See the card above.)

Thursday’s forecast is suggesting a faster, slightly weaker system than they did Wednesday. But the latest 18z model is still running significantly to have snow for large parts of central Minnesota, including the Greater Twin Cities area.

Here are some forecasts in baseball. We don’t always trust the 18z races as much as the primary 12z or 00Z races, but trends are interesting. They are not ready to give up a significant bond of heavy snow over the central Minnesota in Twin Cities.

Check out National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 18z High resolution quick update Model Snowfall Output:

The previous 12z races of Noaa’s global prognosis system model and the European models reduced the snow plains in the primary bond to between approx. 2 and 6 inches.

So it seems that the best interval for snowfall in the heaviest snow zone is probably between approx. 3 and 7 inches including the Greater Twin Cities area.

But this system will have a very high snow-to-water ratio of probably about 20 to 1. This means a good environment for larger fluffy stellar dendrites for form, which can be stacked more efficiently to produce higher snowfall plots here on Earth.

The latest NOAA Digital Snowfall Output for Central Minnesota suggests a ribbon of between 4 and 7 inches over our region with less to the north and south:

Could this system still be a bust from the latest snowfall projections? Yes, it is still possible if the storm track continues south and faster.

Watch out to see what the expected models are doing overnight and Friday before the snow flies to real Friday night.