Forecasters with the National Weather Service in Grand Forks are calling this week’s blizzard the “most impactful” storm of the season.
Meteorologist Tommy Grafenauer says confidence is high that at least a foot of snow will fall in the heaviest impacted areas, with potential for more. The Red River Valley and eastern North Dakota will be impacted the most, with freezing rain, snow and wind creating widespread snow drifts, road closures and difficult to impossible travel. He says precipitation and snowfall should begin early Tuesday morning, persist through that day and Wednesday, and end by early Thursday morning. An April storm of this magnitude may remind many North Dakotans of Blizzard Hannah, which happened just before the 1997 flood. Grafenauer says there are some key differences to note.
"Blizzard Hannah was more of an ice storm, with blizzard conditions afterwards. Blizzard Hannah started with an inch or two of ice that fell, and then seven inches of snow on top of that ice. Somewhere in there, there was also three or so inches of sleet that fell. Because of the freezing rain and sleet, Blizzard Hannah brought massive power outages - $30 million in damage to the power infrastructure. This system is definitely not like Blizzard Hannah with the ice potential; with that said, it does have the opportunity to be more of a longer duration-type blizzard. But Blizzard Hannah was a decently long blizzard as well."
Grafenauer says the latest spring flood outlook did factor in potential precipitation, and any changes to the outlook will likely include some of the lower level predictions to bump up.
