September Chill

It's starting to feel a lot like September, or even October out there.

Many Minnesotans are asking, "Where did summer go?" The answer...it went to Oklahoma.

A family of Canadian cold fronts is forcing colder air down our throats in Minnesota these days. Temperatures are running anywhere from 5 to 10 degrees below average, and that trend will continue through the weekend.

Temperatures in the 30s and 40s are pooling north of the border, and Minnesota will be tapping that cooler air for the next few days.

Rogers tornado 4 years ago today:

You may recall the unusual and tragic Rogers tornado occurred 4 years ago today. The tornado was unusual in several aspects including that it struck at nearly 10pm at night. It also was considered a late season tornado in Minnesota. A 10 year old girl was killed by the twister when the home she was in collapsed on top of her.

I was in Rogers shortly after 10pm the night the tornado struck reporting for WCCO-TV. As I arrived at the Rogers exit on I-94 it was clear something was very, very wrong. The usually bright freeway frontage road was completely dark. The brightly lit car dealerships were black. As I pulled into town, huge high tension power lines lay perilously across the parking lot at the Rogers High School.

It was tough to see in the blackness, but it was clear that a major damaging wind event had struck.

The local NWS office caught a lot of flack for the lack of a tornado warning in Rogers. To be fair, the radar images from that night were very unusual for tornadoes. There was no classic hook echo as the storm approached from the west, and it would have been difficult to near impossible to provide an early warning for that unusually rapid tornadic storm.

Brighter note:

Ending on a brighter note, look for increasing sunshine as we head through the day in Minnesota.

PH