A winter storm watch exists from the Oklahoma Panhandle to central Wisconsin. On a map, the watch looks like a brush painted a stripe across the central United States but skipped over Freeborn and Faribault counties.

Mower, Dodge, Olmsted, Fillmore, Wabasha and Winona counties are in the watch. In Iowa, Worth, Winnebago, Kossuth, Mitchell, Emmet and other counties in a line southwest toward Omaha are in the watch.

But Freeborn and Faribault are not.

The two counties are serviced by the Chanhassen bureau of the National Weather Service, while places east are under LaCrosse, Wis., and places south are under Johnston, Iowa.

The Chanhassen bureau reports that their meteorologists don’t expect the storm that will roll in overnight to be as severe as the other two bureaus predict.

The Johnston bureau forecasts 4 to 7 inches of snow across much of northwest and north central Iowa. The Chanhassen bureau predicts 2 to 4 inches of snow will fall in Albert Lea.

The National Weather Service’s criteria for what constitutes a winter storm varies from place to place. What is a winter storm in Oklahoma City, obviously, is much different than in, for instance, Green Bay, Wis.