It's very wintry outside this morning, with around 10 cm of snow on the ground, and counting.

Environment Canada's Brad Vrolijk tells us it's part of a large winter storm impacting us, as well as parts of the US and Ontario.

"Through the night, we've had some fairly heavy bands of snow develop and push westward across the Red River valley," he says. "And a lot of them actually ended up just sitting in place near Portage, and areas just east, between Portage and Winnipeg. We have seen quite a bit of snow overnight -- looks like generally around 10 to 15 cm has fallen in that area, but there could be some pockets that are a bit higher than that."

Vrolijk says it'll persist for most of the day, with the heaviest snow this morning, then dropping off.

"As it does so, though, we're going to northwesterly winds continue to strengthen," he says. "And blowing snow's going to become much more of an issue through the day. We've already seen near-whiteout conditions develop in the Dakotas. We're starting to get reports of some poor visibilities, with blowing snow, over the southwestern corner of the province. We're expecting some very poor visibilites to develop later this morning."

Vrolijk expects it'll taper off by tonight.

"The winds will start to ease overnight," he says, "And for Sunday, we may see some flurries, but they won't accumulate too much. Sunday night into Monday, we could see some pretty cold weather again, with overnight lows and windchills approaching potentially extreme cold warning criteria. For those tired of this weather, next week is looking good. By mid-week you might see above seasonal temperatures move in, and stick around for a while."