ST. LOUIS — It figures to be a frigid and at least somewhat snowy week in the St. Louis area, with forecasts calling for “prolonged bitter cold” that will drop temperatures near or below zero, and accumulating snowfall likely to occur on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
Snow becomes “likely, mainly after 3 p.m.,” Tuesday and continuing into early Wednesday, the NWS said.
About 2 to 5 inches of snow are expected in the St. Louis area — down from the agency’s earlier predictions, as “the heaviest axis of snow continues to shift a little bit farther south in our forecast,” said Matt Beitscher, a local NWS meteorologist who spoke at a Monday news conference.
Temperatures are expected to remain well below freezing until the weekend, with daily highs in the teens or low 20s, and daily lows often set in the single digits, including a predicted minus-1 on Wednesday night.
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Officials from various agencies requested that people adjust their driving based on the winter conditions or simply stay home, if possible — especially on Tuesday.
“All those folks, if they can avoid travel Tuesday and Wednesday morning, that would be appreciated, because there’s gonna be a lot going on,” said Bob Becker, the maintenance engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation’s St. Louis District, speaking at the same news conference.
“This is going to take some time to clear off as much snow as predicted to come down. And with those extreme temperatures, all our chemicals are gonna work slower. ... We’re going to run 24-7 taking care of things as we need to, but it’s going to take a while.”
Officials at the city, county and state levels all said that road crews had already pretreated certain roads.
In St. Louis, city officials requested that people avoid parking on snow routes and warned that vehicles parked more than 12 inches from the curb along those designated routes would be towed.
Additionally, “residential streets will not be plowed, per the city’s plowing policy,” according to an email from a spokesman for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones.
Risks from the storm are not uniform across the state and region, with areas like the Ozarks facing the highest likelihood of heavy snowfall — meaning 5 inches or more — from Tuesday into Wednesday, the NWS said.
“The Ozarks and the southern part of the Interstate 44 corridor are still going to see the greatest impacts from this winter storm, where, in localized areas, some folks could see up to a foot of snow,” said Beitscher, with the NWS.
While the St. Louis metro area faces a winter storm watch, a jumbled swirl of other watches, warnings and advisories apply to surrounding vicinities, based on a NWS forecast map. That includes a winter weather advisory in northern parts of the state, a cold weather advisory across much of Illinois and a winter storm warning to the south.
