Blizzard and Tornado Threat Saturday and Saturday Night

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The first major tornado threat of 2019 plus a blizzard are forecast for Saturday.

 [3:40pm: No update to the information below]
[9:25pm: No update to the snow forecast locations but amounts may be somewhat heavier than forecast. This raises the specter of power failures Saturday into at least Sunday due to the wet snow.]

 Let's begin with the tornado threat.
The yellow areas are where you should plan to monitor the weather Saturday and the hatched area is where strong tornadoes and violent thunderstorm winds may occur. The storms will move very, very quickly -- perhaps 70 mph -- which means there will be less warning than usual. There is some possibility the forecast threat area will have to be extended westward in the Ozarks.

Blizzard.
Winter weather forecasting is difficult, but because this could be a life-threatening storm so I am providing forecasts farther out than usual.
The map is a preliminary forecast of snowfall amounts and locations to 6pm Saturday. Additional snow will fall across Iowa Saturday night. The heavy snow could fall anywhere between the orange lines. Winds will gust to at least 40 mph in the blizzard area.

Note: the swath of snow from northeast Colorado through western Nebraska is from an earlier storm.

It would be dangerous to travel in the blizzard. 

 Snapshot at 4pm Saturday
Please keep in mind the locations are approximate.
I will update the forecast tomorrow.

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