Spring storm dumps heavy snow for some, missed others

KMSP - What a difference a few miles make in the month of March.  While the north metro was basking in a cool but dry early spring day, the south metro was getting walloped with back breaking amounts of heavy wet snow.  This band of snow (called a deformation zone) began developing midday Wednesday from the metro westward…

Deformation zones are known to produce some of the heaviest snowfall rates in the world.  It is a fancy word for a thin band of snow that develops and just sits in one area and dumps copious amounts of snow in one spot while leaving others untouched.  Think of it like a waterfall of snow.  If you are around a waterfall, you stay dry unless you are directly under it and then you are just getting a faucet.  These deformation zones work in a similar way. 

Now, look again at the circled area in the picture above.  Now look at that circled area 5 hours later…

Notice, it hasn’t budged.  Meanwhile, snowfall rates of 1-2” an hour were falling.  Now look at it again at 9pm…

The band finally dissipated as the larger band of movable snow develops in southern Minnesota.  This small band obviously lead to some crazy snowfall totals.  A distance of 18 miles is all that separated areas that didn’t see a flake, and areas that got a foot…

The great part about spring snow is that the ground isn’t frozen and temperatures will rise into the 40s through the weekend, so this will be long gone by Easter Sunday.