Almost the entire lower 48 is being affected by a massive winter storm today. This a storm which yesterday prompted blizzard warnings for Albuquerque, NM, and Flagstaff, AZ, where 11.6" of snow fell. Up to 3.5 feet came down on the Sierra Nevada Range, but even in Nevada, where it is normally much drier, 18" fell at Carson City, and 12" fell near Reno. This morning, the storm reached a strength of 980 mb near Grand Junction, CO, despite its unfavorable position to the west of the tallest mountains.
Currently blizzard warnings (red) are active for a large portion of the Midwest including all of Iowa and most of Wisconsin.
Winter storm warnings extend out much further (notice New England as well), and winter weather advisories extend even farther still. The fact is, almost every advisory on this map is related to this one storm - from the storm warnings on the Great Lakes (purple), to the tornado watch for the lower Mississippi Valley (yellow), to the wind chill advisories in the Northern Plains (light blue), to the very widespread wind advisories (brown/tan) going all the way over to Georgia. Because of the cold backwash, frost and freeze advisories are active for all the suburbs of San Francisco, and all of the San Joaquin Valley is under a freeze warning including Bakersfield. Temperatures have already dropped to -33F in Cut Bank, MT this morning. Great Falls hit -26F at 7AM local time, but even at this hour (3PM), it is only -11F.Another incredible storm in the north Atlantic yesterday was the strongest so far this season at 942mb.
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