Will a Blizzard Affect the Iowa Caucuses? Here’s a Live Look at the Weather.

The campaigns feared snow could keep their voters home.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigning in Iowa on Jan. 26. Congressional Quarterly/Zuma

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Finally, the 2016 presidential contest starts today, and each candidate hopes to motivate as many voters as possible to caucus in one of Iowa’s 1,774 precincts. It can be a challenge to get a large turnout in good weather, but forecasters are expecting potentially heavy snowfall across the state. Winter storm warnings are in effect in many counties, and Iowans in the northwest are under a blizzard warning until 4 a.m. Wednesday. Forecasters predict that heavy snows won’t start accumulating until 9 p.m. local time, and caucuses begin at 7 p.m. So there’s no telling if the weather or these predictions will influence turnout. If you’re concerned about snow in the Hawkeye State tonight, here’s how you can monitor the conditions.

Below is a live looping weather map from the National Weather Service. The weather has been clear for most of the day but, in the mid-afternoon, some precipitation began to move into the state from the southwest.

Here’s a live shot from the Iowa State University’s Memorial Union, located in Ames, which is almost the geographical center of the state (have fun controlling the camera):

This is another live shot from the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City, about an hour and 45 minutes due east of Des Moines:

From the northeast part of the state, this is the view from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa (click the play button):

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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