Weather winning streak continues into the weekend
Rain chance returns late Sunday
It’s nice to have a winning streak in sports or weather. Our comfortable, sun-splashed weather will continue today and into the weekend.
Temperature trends
Most of Minnesota and western Wisconsin will see highs in the 70s Friday afternoon, with a few 60s up along the North Shore of Lake Superior. Most of the Twin Cities metro area will top out in the upper 70s, which is a few degrees shy of our average high for this date of 80 degrees.
Highs in the 70s will be common on Saturday:
And 70s are also on tap for Sunday:
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Twin Cities metro area highs are projected to reach the lower-70s Monday, followed by mid-70s next Tuesday and Wednesday.
Rain chances hold off until late on Sunday
Here’s the latest thinking on rain chances:
Parts of western Minnesota could see scattered showers and a thunderstorm Sunday morning. The chance of scattered showers and a thunderstorm expands to include eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin by late Sunday afternoon.
All of Minnesota and western Wisconsin will have a chance of scattered showers/thunderstorms Sunday evening and overnight into Monday.
Off and on showers are likely in Minnesota and western Wisconsin on Monday, and there could be a few embedded thunderstorms.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Forecast System model shows the potential precipitation pattern Saturday evening through Monday night:
As always, updated weather information can be heard on the Minnesota Public Radio Network, and you’ll also see updated weather info on the MPR News live weather blog.
Saving on the air-conditioning bills
This current slightly cool stretch will help us save on our summer air-conditioning bills.
We use cooling degree days to measure the need for air-conditioning. The average of the daily high temp and the low temp are compared to 65 degrees to determine cooling degree days. Thursday’s high of 75 and low of 60 give us an average of 68 degrees (rounded up) for Thursday. That’s 3 degrees warmer than 65 degrees, so three cooling degree days were tallied on Thursday.
We’ve had 665 cooling degree days in the Twin Cities since June 1, which is 73 more than average over that time span:
By this point last summer, the Twin Cities had tallied 797 cooling degree days. We had many more hot days last summer than this summer.
Programming note
You can hear my live weather updates on Minnesota Public Radio at 7:49 a.m. Thursdays and Fridays, and at 7:35 a.m., 9:35 a.m. and 4:35 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday.