Brief funnel clouds? Scattered thunderstorms into Tuesday evening

Our morning showers gave way to a windy Tuesday afternoon. Partial sunshine is heating temperatures into the low 70s across parts of southern Minnesota including the Twin Cities area.

The atmosphere is unstable enough that scattered rain and thunder cells are developing and will move northeast into Tuesday evening.

There’s just enough rotation in the lower atmosphere that a few cells could produce brief small funnel clouds Tuesday afternoon and evening. We used to call these generally harmless features cold air funnels. They are weak and rarely touch down, but have on occasion.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s NAM 3 km model below shows the likely bands of rain cells marching northeast between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tuesday.

Morning rainfall

Rain cells overnight into Tuesday morning produced another soaking rain for much of southern Minnesota. Here are some select rainfall totals:

• Worthington, 1.72 inches

• Albert Lea, 1.45 inches

• Montevideo/Granite Falls, 1.13 inches

• Owatonna, 0.98 of an inch

• St. Peter, 0.65 of an inch

• Rochester, 0.57 of an inch

• Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, 0.35 of an inch

Classic spring this week

Most of the rest of this week looks dry, but a few scattered showers may pop up. Temperatures will mainly be in the 60s for the rest of this week.