Early season snowstorm pastes Minneapolis

* Dry streak ends: Full Forecast | SkinsCast | WSJ spins climate *

Snowfall totals from November 13-14 storm in southeast Minnesota. Source: National Weather Service

The biggest pre-Thanksgiving snowstorm in nearly 20 years buried the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) with 6-10 inches of snow over the weekend (most of the snow fell Saturday).

The storm followed unseasonably warm weather in the upper Midwest. Just two and three days prior to the storm, Minneapolis hit 68 and 69 degrees (on November 9 and 10). As the storm dumped snow on Minneapolis, cutting through Wisconsin, it pushed some of that warm air to the East Coast (highs in D.C. were 68 and 65 this weekend).

With temperatures just marginally cold enough for snow in many parts of southeast Minnesota, the snow was heavy and wet, causing more than 14,000 power outages around Minneapolis. According to KARE, the NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities, more than 10,000 residents remained without power as of this morning.

Snowfall rates were impressive, with 2" or more an hour falling at times, sometimes accompanied by thunder and lightning. The National Weather Service has a great page recapping the storm.

Accounts of this storm remind me a little of the 1987 Veterans Day snowstorm in D.C. that I wrote about last week. Of course, unlike our 1987 storm, this one was well-predicted as evident from the forecasts on the blog of Paul Douglas, a meteorologist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.