Winter Storm — Rusk, Wisconsin

2022-02-22 · Rusk, Wisconsin

Event narrative

Light snow began Tuesday morning, February 22nd. However, the bulk of the heavier snowfall, and higher snowfall rates, occurred during the afternoon hours. By the time the light snow tapered off, locally 6 to 8 inches fell across the county. Possibly locally higher snowfall amounts near the Rusk, and Sawyer county border.

Wider weather episode

A storm system began to strengthen late Monday night across the central plains in advance of a powerful southern jet stream that intensified over the center part of the country on Tuesday. The center of this storm moved from northern Missouri northeast across the Midweek and eastern Great Lakes region by late Tuesday night.

A large area of light to moderate precipitation developed across southern and central Minnesota early Tuesday morning and moved northeast while heavier precipitation started to develop across south central, and into east central Minnesota, and adjacent west-central Wisconsin Tuesday morning. This secondary area of higher reflectivity was in response to the deepening southern jet and associated upper level forcing. This led to moderate to occasional heavy snowfall across parts of west central Wisconsin. A band of 4 to 10 inches of snow fell from the southeastern Twin Cities metro area, northeast across west central Wisconsin from Red Wing, to Rice Lake and Ladysmith.

Some of the higher snowfall totals include:

9.5 inches near Baldwin.

8.0 inches near Boyceville.

7.7 inches south of River Falls.

7.5 inches near Wheeler.

7.5 inches in Roberts.

7.1 inches in River Falls.

7.0 inches in Chetek.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1007591. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.