Snow is falling earlier than expected in Kansas. Here’s why and what’s new:

Snow has already started falling in Kansas, earlier than forecasters expected, but the heaviest snow is still forecast to start later this evening, Wichita-based National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Baerg said during a Friday morning webinar.

He showed a photo of snow accumulation in the grass off of highways in Russell, where he said it started snowing about an hour earlier and “about six hours ahead of time.”

“We were expecting a lot of dry, low level air in the atmosphere,” Baerg said. “So it may have been snowing 10, 15,000 feet a lot, but, in this case, the snow was heavy enough that it’s actually eaten away at that dry air. It’s started to accumulate across central Kansas. So models are struggling to basically catch up with that snow that is ongoing and accumulating already.”

He said the snow was also accumulating at the NWS office at the Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport. He said the current snowfall rate is low, about a quarter-inch to a half-inch per hour.

The forecast is still about 6-10 inches of snow in the Wichita area. The largest snowfall in the NWS Wichita’s coverage range is expected to be in southeast Kansas, where there is a higher chance of 10-plus inches of snowfall, he said.

The snow will continue to move south and southeast, he said.

He said roads will start deteriorating sooner because of the earlier-than-expected snow.

The forecast still calls for the heaviest snow in the Wichita area to start around 5-8 p.m. Friday, then stop Saturday morning and then have a second round of snow that will start Saturday night and end between 4 and 8 a.m. on Sunday.

The forecast of morning wind chills through Monday being in the negatives remains the same. Wind chills will range from negatives in the single digits to in the 20s.

This story was originally published January 23, 2026 at 11:58 AM.