Grab your galoshes: Snow expected this weekend

Mid-Missouri residents should still expect winter weather this weekend.

“The threat’s definitely not gone,” Doug Tilly, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in St. Louis, said late Thursday.

The Columbia area could receive 3 to 5 inches of snow beginning Saturday night and extending into Sunday, Tilly said, with slightly more in some areas.

The National Weather Service, which began alerting the public to the possibility of weekend snow on Tuesday, doesn’t expect snowfall amounts to reach the criteria for a winter storm watch. But a winter weather advisory might be issued for the Columbia area by early Friday morning, Tilly said.

A winter storm watch was posted Thursday afternoon for much of southwest Missouri, with 4 to 6 inches of snow forecast this weekend in the Springfield area.

“We’re trying to get the word out about this storm because people in southwest Missouri still don’t have electricity,” Tilly said.

Meteorologists at the National Weather Service hope the advance warning will give county emergency managers time to find and open more heated shelters in areas hit hard by last weekend’s ice storm.