DAYTON — The big story heading into this weekend is watching for snow to be arriving; however, the cold impacts how much snow we can make out of the moisture. Hey, it’s Storm Center 7 Meteorologist Ryan Marando.
Something we watch very closely, which is linked to the temperatures, is the snow-to-liquid ratio. This ratio indicates how many inches of snow we can expect to receive from one inch of water equivalent.
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An average liquid-to-snow ratio is one inch of water to 10 inches of snow. This usually occurs when temperatures are near freezing as the snow is falling. What’s interesting is what happens when temperatures go up and down.
Warmer temperatures can mean a “wetter” snow, meaning only one inch of water can make five inches of snow. When temperatures are much colder, in the teens, that snow becomes very powdery. One inch of water can become 20 inches of snow with temperatures in the teens!
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Our next big system that moves through this weekend will have very cold air in place. This means the snow will likely be very powdery, and we will be near that one inch of liquid water, creating a 15 to 20-inch ratio. With that said, that is not how much accumulating snow we will get, but it will impact our forecast totals as we get closer to the time.
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