It won’t be long before snow begins to appear in our forecast and when it does, there is new criteria for how the National Weather Service issues winter storm warnings.There are three factors the weather service issues winter storm warnings for: snow, ice and sleet. It takes a forecast of one half inch of sleet or one quarter inch of ice for a warning to be issued.
Dennis Cavanaugh is the Warning Coordination Meteorologist with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock. He says it’s only the criteria for the forecasted snowfall amounts that have changed when it comes to issuing winter storm warnings.
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In southern Missouri, the threshold in five inches per winter storm event.
Cavanaugh says the change was brought about to bring more consistency between forecast offices.
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The weather service is going through a winter weather hazard simplification where they are eliminating some warnings such as “heavy snow warning” and now including them in winter storm warnings.
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While it doesn’t take much snow in the Ozarks to cause travel impacts, hence the four or five inch threshold for a winter storm warning, there are some locations in the United States with the new criteria that require a foot of snow for a warning, and in the hills of northern Utah, it takes 18 inches of snow.
You can view a full map of the U.S. requirements with this story on ktlo.com.
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