(Spirit Lake)– Not one, but two potential winter storms will likely impact travel on both sides of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. The first will start to impact the region tomorrow (Tues.) into Wednesday. Jennifer Hacker, a forecaster with the National Weather Service office in Sioux Falls says that will likely impact those traveling in advance of the holiday…
“That’s kind of what we’ve been highlighting throughout the weekend is the potential to impact that pre-holiday travel period. We have a winter storm watch out beginning noon on Tuesday for your area and that will last all the way through noon on Wednesday. The bulk of the snow will probably diminish and move out of the area by early Wednesday morning but with those lingering winds we could see some additional blowing and drifting snow into the daytime hours.”
Hacker says amounts are still somewhat up in the air, but she says there’s a potential for heavy snowfall, especially overnight Tuesday into early Wednesday…
“We’re still kind of ironing that out but the system is strengthening and moving a little bit farther north than what we were seeing over the weekend, so right now we’re projecting somewhere in the 4 to 8 inch range for the Spirit Lake area, potentially some higher amounts especially up in southwest Minnesota toward Windom and eastern parts of the Buffalo Ridge where they could see some amounts higher than 9 inches.”
In addition, the wind could gust as high as 45 mph at times Tuesday night into Wednesday creating extremely poor visibility in considerable blowing snow.
Hacker says a second winter storm could impact post-Thanksgiving travelers. She says that system could start impacting the region during the day Thanksgiving Day and could continue all the way through the upcoming weekend…
“Thanksgiving day itself, right now anything that we get on Thanksgiving Day itself should be pretty light, light snow, maybe just a dusting of accumulation. It doesn’t look like anything too significant there. But the post-holiday travel period that Friday through Sunday there’s going to be another system coming through that weekend. Temperatures may be a little bit warmer with that system so we could see more of a wintry mix of precipitation type here in northwest Iowa, and there’s a lot more uncertainty where that one’s going to track at this point in time.”
Hacker says those with travel plans on either side of the Thanksgiving holiday should pay very close attention to the later forecasts and be prepared to make some adjustments to your plans.
