Winter Storm Bankston Brings Snow, Rain and Damaging Winds into Plains, Midwest

After the historic tornado outbreak across eight US states, a new storm system, namely, winter storm Bankston is strengthening as it tracks east. As per the NWS forecast, Bankston be a significant, potentially damaging wind event from parts of the Plains and Midwest, into this week. The storm will also bring heavy snowfall across the Rockies and Northern Plains.

NWS has issued high winds warnings from parts of the Southwest to the Rockies, Plains, upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes. Wind gusts of 55 to 70 mph is expected and might cause power outage issue in the impacted regions. Cities such as Omaha, Denver, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Chicago might be impacted by high winds.  Wind-prone regions of Colorado to Denver could also witness gusts up to 100 mph.  Along with the high winds warnings, NWS has also issued extremely critical fire risk for parts of the Plains on Wednesday afternoon due to low humidity and high winds.

Winter Storm Bankston has already spread heavy snow in elevated regions of California in the beginning of this week. It was meandering down the coast, bringing heavy rainfall in the Monterey Bay area on Sunday and downpouring the central California coast. Areas in San Francisco received more than 2 inches of rainfall. The low elevated regions in Southern California picked up total rainfall of 1 to 2 inches.