Downtown Rochester January 23rd from Elton Hills neighborhood

To end the weekend and start the work week we had to deal with another weather making system that brought slippery roads and freezing drizzle on Sunday, and minor to moderate snowfall accumulations on Monday. Sunday, a low pressure and frontal system slowly pushed through area from west to east. Warm moist air ahead of this low over a cold snowpack and temperatures in the upper 20s caused freezing drizzle to develop and last through the day. By the afternoon roads and sidewalks were slick and travel impacts started to develop and become an issue. Here in Rochester we had a coating of ice, nothing too significant. Overnight the cold front behind the low pushed in cooler air, at the same time the system started to get its act together, wrap up and started producing an area of precipitation in Iowa, which soon moved northeast and hit the local area in the form of a quick moderate to heavy snow. By 9AM there was already a good coating across most areas, more wrap around moisture continued to bring snow through the morning and afternoon and made for slow going travel. By the time the system was departing, in my yard we had a total of 2.75″ of snow with a water content of 0.32″ combined with the freezing drizzle.

Elton Hills park January 23rd

With all the minor snowfalls adding over the past couple weeks we have built ourselves quite a nice snowpack, I would estimate we have between 5 and 8 inches of snow on the ground here in Rochester. This is the highest amount of snow we had on the ground at one time so far this season, and its starting to look much more like Southern Minnesota should look in the middle to end of January!

Snowfall Totals

The highest report was 3″ reported out of Mantorville, Zumbrota and Spring Vally, everyone seems to have at least gotten 2″ in this system, the least was at the 2″ mark which was reported at several areas.