By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
We are under a winter storm warning as all the stages of precipitation converge on the area.
Meteorologist Ray Christensen with the National Weather Service office in Pleasant Hill says showers and even thunderstorms rolled through eastern Kansas this morning as the rain spread through northeast Kansas, Northwest Missouri, into Nebraska and Iowa.
Rain will turn into freezing rain as the temperatures drop, especially in the late afternoon and early evening hours.
“We’re looking at maybe up to a tenth of an inch, a glaze of icing, maybe a little bit more in some areas,” Christensen tells St. Joseph Post. “It will definitely cause some issues with the roads.”
A winter storm warning has been issued by the National Weather Service for the area from six o’clock this evening until six o’clock tomorrow evening with a wide variety of precipitation expected.
Christensen says rain today will turn into freezing rain, then sleet before snow moves in later tonight.
“Probably between about the 9pm and midnight timeframe, especially from St. Joe northward, that’s when it will start changing over to snow up there and we’re looking at a good, at least six inches of snow up in that area,” Christensen says.
Predicted amounts of snowfall varied a great deal earlier and seemed to indicate there wouldn’t be that much accumulation. Christensen says the forecast for snowfall changed early this morning with more now predicted than previously.
NWS forecasts between five and seven inches of snow by the time the storm moves out of the area tomorrow evening.