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Blowing snow creating blizzard conditions in eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota

By Scott Bachmeier •

5-minute GOES-19 Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” images, without plots of METAR surface reports, from 1501-1801 UTC on 17 January; Interstate highways are plotted in cyan [click to play MP4 animation]

Strong northerly winds created blowing snow and blizzard conditions across parts of eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota — particularly within the Red River Valley — on 17 January 2026. 5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” images (above) showed the development of Horizontal Convective Rolls (HCRs) where winds were channeled down the Red River Valley (topography) — with gusts in excess of 30 knots, reducing the surface visibility to less than 1 mile due to blowing snow at several METAR sites.

GOES-19 Blowing Snow RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) provided a more distinct view of the HCRs.

5-minute GOES-19 Blowing Snow RGB images, from 1501-1901 UTC on 17 January [click to play animated GIF]

===== 18 January Update =====

5-minute GOES-19 Blowing Snow RGB images, from 1731-2146 UTC on 18 January [click to play animated GIF]

Even stronger winds in the wake of a cold frontal passage (with gusts in excess of 40 knots) produced a second day of blowing snow and blizzard conditions across eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota on 18 January — and HCRs were once again very prevalent in GOES-19 Blowing Snow RGB images (above), across a larger area than the previous day. The surface visibility was reduced to near zero at some METAR sites.

Categories: Geo2Grid, GOES-19, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Winter weather