Front yard on December 3rd 2011

Everyone is either talking about, or shoveling the snow from the 1st significant snowfall of the season. Most places got a pretty good blanketing of snow, around 4 inches, but one report I found from Spring Valley totaled 7 inches. Here at my station in West Downtown Rochester, I got 4.25″with a water content of 0.41″ Which is the first time I’ve gotten over 0.20″ of precipitation I’ve seen since September 27th, in what was one of the top 10 driest falls on record for Rochester.

Heavy snow falling in Downtown Rochester during the evening of December 3rd.

The storm that delivered our snowfall came from the Southwest area of the U.S, it developed over Oklahoma, and continued to develop through Kansas and Iowa before reaching Southeastern Minnesota, and it didn’t stop there, it continued Northeast through Western Wisconsin to the U.P of Michigan.

Photo of my garden in Clayton,WI

 My dad sent me this photo showing a recognizable scene above. My hometown area of Western Wisconsin reported around 6 inches. The snow seemed to have trouble making it to the ground early around here in Southeastern Minnesota, but eventually it started to snow, and when it did, heavy snow quickly started. By evening most places already has enough snow to cover the ground. Travel was a bit tricky during the time of heavy snowfall, but I was glad to see the local news has not mentioned any accidents really related to weather. and actually I noticed people who were driving knew to just keep it slow.

Snowy street scene in my nieghborhood.

Depending on who you ask, many said the snow really has a delicate look to it. The temperature when most of the snow was falling was between 30 and 33 degrees at my location, and there was no wind to speak of. so it really made a beautiful scene across the city as snow piled up on even the skinniest things.

 
Here is a photo to prove how little the wind was during this system. The snow piled on top of my backyard wind gauge becuase the lack of wind stopped any movement of the gauge enough to knock the snow off!

 Winter decor pot on back deck, December 4th 2011

This Winter decor pot I designed on college finally got snow, which the last thing it needed to have that Christmasy feel.

Reported snowfall totals December 3rd 2011

This snowfall event was not a drought buster by a long shot, but it certainly helped out quite a bit, even though it came in the form of snow. There really was no generalized area that had the highest snow, just random spots that had heavier snowfall then others. The highest area wide report was 7.0″ coming in from Spring Valley and the least amount came from Elgin. in the Rochester Metro, Byron had the jackpot with a total of 4.90″ while the Airport had the least with 3.40″