Warming trend
We're climbing slowly out of the deep freeze as we head into this weekend.
From -11 Wednesday morning, we'll climb into the mid 30's by Sunday afternoon. Most areas will be about 45 degrees warmer by Sunday than we were on Wednesday morning.
It will be interesting to see how warm parts of Minnesota are able to get this weekend. We're now getting more than twice as much solar energy at this latitude as we did back in late December. That extra solar energy will warm the ground much more than it could have a month or two ago.
Also, surface winds will be light from the west and southwest. We will be getting advection (horizontal transport of air) from areas which have little or no snow on the ground such as western Minnesota and South Dakota. The result, we may "thread the needle" and bring in a plume of much warmer air. I expect temperatures in South Dakota will push 50 degrees, and I think western Minnesota will be in the 40's Sunday afternoon.
The next system will bring a rain snow mix to southern Minnesota and all snow north of the metro on Monday.
Enjoy the warm up!
PH
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