Bright and cool Monday, much milder temps the rest of this week
February stats are in; how cold was it?
Monday is the beginning of meteorological spring!
NOAA has this explanation of meteorological seasons vs. astronomical seasons:
Meteorologists and climatologists break the seasons down into groupings of three months based on the annual temperature cycle as well as our calendar. We generally think of winter as the coldest time of the year and summer as the warmest time of the year, with spring and fall being the transition seasons, and that is what the meteorological seasons are based on. Meteorological spring includes March, April, and May; meteorological summer includes June, July, and August; meteorological fall includes September, October, and November; and meteorological winter includes December, January, and February.
If you’re curious about astronomical spring, it begins on March 20 this year. Some of us celebrate the start of spring twice, on March 1 and March 20!
Temperature trends
Our average Twin Cities high temperature is 34 degrees on March 1. Our Monday high temp will be about 10 degrees shy of that mark. Monday highs will be in the teens in roughly the northern third of Minnesota, with 20s in central and southern Minnesota plus western Wisconsin. We’ll have plenty of sunshine today.
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Upper-level winds are northwesterly, but they become more westerly Tuesday and temperatures will rebound nicely in the afternoon.
Most areas will have Tuesday highs in the 40s:
It’ll be breezy Tuesday, with gusts of 20 to 30 mph in most areas:
Plotted wind gusts are in knots, with 20 knots equal to 23 mph.
Back to temps, Twin Cities metro area highs are projected to reach the mid-40s Wednesday and Thursday, followed by upper 40s on Friday. Highs in the 40s are also expected next weekend.
Above-normal temps could very well linger into the second week of March. The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center shows a strong chance of above-normal temps in Minnesota and western Wisconsin from March 8-14:
The outlook is for that entire seven-day period, and a stray cool day cannot be ruled out.
February recap
The final stats are in for February. How cold was it? Our average Twin Cities temp for February (the average of all the daily high temps and low temps) was 9.1 degrees below normal:
Snowfall at Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport was 5.9 inches in February — that’s 1.9 inches below our average February snow total in the Twin Cities.
Let’s take a closer look at our Twin Cities February stats. The following chart shows the daily highs in column two and the daily lows in column three. I’ve highlighted the departure from normal (column five) for each day:
We had 16 days in February that were colder than normal. Nine of those cold days were 20 or more degrees below normal. Many of our warmer than normal days in February were less than 10 degrees below normal.
Our February heating bills will be a bit high, but we did have higher than normal temps in December and January.
Programming note
You can hear my live weather updates on MPR News at 7:35 a.m., 9:35 a.m. and 4:39 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday.