Very low visibility from heavy snow and blowing February 20th

Our 2nd Major Winter storm of the season left quite a bit of new snowfall across the area, with some impressive amounts as high 15 inches! All this new snowfall is thanks to a strong area of low pressure that moved from Nebraska to Iowa, The local area was on the cold side of the low which in most systems is where some of the heaviest snowfall totals can fall. Snow was very slow to start, but once it started it really came down and lasted for a very long time. This storm had it’s own interesting characteristics, This storms preip band was very slowly moving and it’s effects were actually isolated to the southern areas at first. At the same time I had just clouds and Strong winds, my brother in River Falls was saying they had heavy snow with 8 of new snow. Light Snow finally started falling around 2pm here, and just before sunset, a very heavy band moved up strait from Southern Minnesota, and it hit with force. It went from good visibility and wind, to heavy snow and significant blowing snow like in the picture above in the matter of 30 minutes. The same viable isolated in weather conditions was also noted at first between me and Siren I had 5″ of snow with heavy snow and blowing snow while 40 miles North in Siren there was nothing yet falling.

Photo of the snow accumulation on the downwind side of our house

This system was quite impressive for February standards, many regional weather record for the highest February snowfall were broken. Including my 3-year record for the highest amount single snowstorm event in February. To note in how strong this storm was, my average snow for the month of Feb is 6.80″ and I got 11.0″ in this storm, which almost double the monthly average in one storm!

I would also like to mentioned that this storm also broke my 3 year recorded for the highest season snowfall accumulation which is now up too 67.90″ In spite of my 3 year record, I have to say on a personal level, This is the most snow I’ve even seen in one winter here. the snow piles around my yard from plowing are nearly as high as the second story roof on our tin shed.
Very large snow drift.

This storm brought winds strong enough to bring some noteworthy drifts, which were 2-3 feet high, in many of the drift problem spots of the Dec blizzard of this year. Much of the reason for the very high snow drifts in this storm compared to that one was the previous high snow piles around made it easy for snow to accumulate, also winds were actually a bit stronger in this system compared to that one. My highest gust was 36MPH out of the ENE, which was recorded early in the storm system. Winds went down into the 20-30MPH range when the heaviest snow started.