we need to fight this storm, which has been pretty unpredictable with the snow band hovering over the south, getting ready to move back north. cnn meteorologist derek van dam joins us live from the weather center. a wall of snow. literally. that s what you re looking at here, a wall of snow. 5 1/2 feet of snow, that would be up to about my eyes. can you imagine trying to trudge through that? just impossible, right? this is classic lake-effect snow band as it moves into buffalo. this is friday midday. just incredible. the band is so narrow, only about 10 miles wide. depending on where it s located, that s the area that gets the heaviest snow. what you re looking at is a midday shot as it drifted over the downtown region. it moved south to arias known as
dam joins us now. derek, what s the latest on this storm? yeah, allison, here s a look at the tornado that struck on. dover, kansas. that was late friday evening. the national weather service website on scene and classified this is ef tornado. that is significant is multiple vortexes within that tornado so a wide swath of damage associated with that storm. today was a slightly quieter day but nonetheless we still had six tornado reports including one that was just west of the chicago downtown region. 18 reports of wind and 35 reports of hail damage. so expansive storm system, and when we talk about where we are in terms of the year to date how many tornados we normally get, we re about 120% of average. we ve had over 580 tornados since the beginning of the year.