Snowstorm to Continue Sweep From Rockies to Upper Midwest

By Courtney Spamer, Meteorologist

December 15,2015; 9:41PM,EST

 

 

A snowstorm that blanketed a large part of the West to start the week will bring a winterlike scene across the Plains and Upper Midwest into the middle of the week.
In many areas east of the Rockies, including the city of Denver, the snow began on Monday night and will last into Tuesday night.
The storm will track from eastern Colorado to Minnesota spanning into Wednesday.

Enough snow will fall to make travel along portions of interstates 25, 70, 80, 90 and 94 difficult. However, motorists will encounter snow and slippery conditions as the storm progresses.
Steadier snow will reach the Upper Midwest later Tuesday night.
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With all the cold air present, snow will fall across a larger area than the storm from this past weekend.
The heaviest-hit areas of the entire storm are likely to be from northeast Colorado into west-central Minnesota through Wednesday night.

Snowfall in much of this area will range between 6 and 12 inches with locally higher amounts.
On the back side of the storm, gusty winds will follow the steadiest snow. Winds could gust as high as 40 mph across South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa on Wednesday.

As winds gradually subside, chilly air and below-normal temperatures will persist across the Rockies and the northern Plains.
Heavy snow fell across parts of Utah, Arizona, Wyoming and Montana during Monday and Monday night.
The storm delivered the biggest snowfall of the season so far to Salt Lake City with amounts dwarfing the inch or so that fell during late November.
The storm unloaded between 4 and 18 inches of snow on Utah's Salt Lake Valley through Monday night. The 6.6 inches of snow that fell at Salt Lake City airport on Monday set a record for Dec. 14. The old record for the date was 5.8 inches of snow in 1922. As much as 28 inches of snow fell on the eastern benches.
Only 15.4 inches of snow fell on Salt Lake City during the entire winter season of 2014-15.
Flagstaff, Arizona, received 6.6 inches of snow from the storm on Monday.
In 24 hours, the storm dropped 23 inches of snow on Wolf Creek Pass, Colorado.
As of 2:00 p.m. MST, Monday, the storm had deposited between 4 and 8 inches of snow on the Denver metro area with more in the outlying locations.