The last day of winter is going out with a blizzard.
Forecasters say a storm system will drop up to a foot of snow across a long stretch of Iowa today, from the southwest to north-central Iowa, with winds gusting up to 65 miles an hour.
National Weather Service meteorologist Rod Donavon says some areas are seeing rain showers this morning, but that will change over to snow across the state’s northwestern half.
“That trend will continue throughout the day today, as we do have a band of heavy snow that we are expecting to develop basically from near Mason City, it’s going to be pretty close to the Fort Dodge area, out by Algona, off to the southwest towards Denison.”
The blizzard warning covers 34 counties through tonight and Donavon says white-out conditions are possible which could make driving very dangerous.
“We are looking at a snow band anywhere from six-to-ten, even eight-to-12 inches through that region,” Donavon says. “In addition, we are expecting extremely strong winds to develop today. We’re expecting wind gusts of 55 to 65 miles per hour. Anywhere within that heavy snow band, travel is going to become impossible at some point today, with multiple roads becoming closed through that region.”
More foul weather could be headed our way, though Donavon says it’s continuing to evolve.
“We’re still monitoring this one storm system coming through around Friday/Friday night that may bring another round,” he says. “Right now, we have rain in the forecast, but we could see some gusty winds with that, maybe a brief transition to snow on the backside of that, but otherwise, we’re going to get back a little bit more normal, with highs within that snow band lingering in the 40s.”
By the weekend, forecasters say high temps may be back in the 50s.
( Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City, contributed to this story.)