Prompts winter weather advisories as cold air moves in Friday night

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Meteorologists are glued to the forecast models this week.

Our blissful early October weather changes dramatically late this week. There is still a great deal of model spread. It is still too early to make credible predictions about potential (heavy) snow chances. But the odds of a significant early season snowfall is growing with each model run from eastern North Dakota through the Red River Valley, and maybe into northwest Minnesota. 

Our mild dry weather early this week is good tonic for the soul. Southerly breezes pick up Tuesday and Wednesday. Gust could hit 30 mph on both days. But southerly breezes blow in milder air. Highs push 70-degrees in much of southern and western Minnesota Tuesday and Wednesday. 

The bottom drops out Friday and Saturday as the season’s strongest cold front so far sweeps in.

Many of us will be obsessing over each new model forecast run this week. The early trends show some significant differences between model solutions as to where significant to heavy snow could fall on Friday and Saturday. 

I’m still not posting specific model forecast totals yet. It’s still too early and the differences are too great for any reasonable forecast credibility. There’s already plenty of click bait postings of what I consider to be highly unlikely snowfall scenarios at this point. 

Here’s what we can credibly say at this point.

Here’s a brief breakdown of the major forecast model solutions.

Weather and Climate News

Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News

Paul Huttner

Author

Beautiful now. A late-week storm is likely.

Paul Huttner/MPR News

Temperature forecast for Minneapolis this week

October weather bliss to bluster?

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