Here’s a few pics. from Yellowstone National Park, where they reported 12″ of new snow Thursday (and it was still coming down). Crews were busy trying to clear the main roads.

It’s almost Halloween, so this fella says, “cari-BOO”.

These are all pictures that were posted on the Yellowstone National Park facebook page.

Very cold air (for October) moved in after the snow. Buffalo WY had a high and low temperature of 17°/4° on Thursday. At 10 pm Thursday evening, Gillette WY had a temperature of 2° with a wind chill factor of -12°. Caspar was down to 10°. It was also windy in the mountains with gusts of 61 mph at Arlington and 58 mph at Elk Mt. Rapid City SD had a gust to 51 mph.

In Utah, 9″ of new snow fell at Hewinta and 7.7″ at Alta. Snowfall in Montana included 12.8″ at Livingston, 12″ at Roundup, 11″ at Cooke City, 9″ at Melville, 7″ at Ashland, 5.5″ at Red Lodge and 3″ at Billings.

The blue color on the map above is where there was snow on the ground on Thursday. That represented 9.9% of the Lower 48 states. Snow covered most all of Montana and parts of 10 other states plus Alaska.

This is a webcam grab from the camera at Utqiaġvik, AK – formerly called Barrow. They have snow on the ground and it’s been cool. Northway AK had a low temperature of -3F Thursday morning. They had 3″ of snow on the ground. Bettles had a 4-inch snowcover.

Here’s North American snow and ice cover. Ice cover has hit minimum for the year and ice cover is now very slowly increasing. Most of Alaska and the Yukon has a snow cover and look at the snow cover in Siberia (eastern Russia). Now, most long-range forecasts have a warmer-than-average winter over much of the Great Lakes. While the current El Nino would support that, I say “hold your horses” or maybe “hold your reindeer”. There are mixed signals about that.

Check out this article. One of the meteorologists I like to read is Dr. Judah Cohen. He has been doing research on cold vs. warm winters in the Eastern U.S. in particular and he’s found a bit of a correlation between late October snowfall in Siberia and the weather pattern in winter across N. America. I’ll have more on the winter forecast later…but…there are mixed signals for a warm or cold winter in Michigan.

ALSO: Check out the snow on Mt. Shasta in California. 33 feet of snow?! Pictures of snow in Dearborn River Mt. Knee-deep snow and the northern lights. Slow-motion snow in Truckee CA. Snow on the mountains in Washington state. Snow in New Zealand (where it’s supposed to be spring). Half a foot of new snow in Utah. 4″ snow in N. Dakota. Snow in Alberta, Canada.