Best weather weeks of the year ahead for Minnesota?
September and early October can bring some of the year's best weather to Minnesota.
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Ask a Minnesotan, “What’s your favorite weather?”
You’ll get a variety of answers. But my informal and completely unscientific poll of Minnesotans over a 30-plus year weather career tells me a lot about Minnesotans’ favorite weather. The Venn diagram intersection of all Minnesotan weather preferences looks something like this:
Sunny mild days
Highs in the 70s
Pleasantly cool nights with lows in the 50s
Comfortable dew points in the 40s and 50s
Fresh breezes
First half of meteorological autumn
September and the first half of October marks the first half of meteorological autumn. These six or seven weeks of the year often bring the best weather of the year to Minnesota.
The average highs and lows in the Twin Cities on Sept. 21 around the middle of that period are 70 and 51 degrees.
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You can see how the average high and low temperature in the Twin Cities gently falls off during September in the green zone on the graph below.
So even though our meteorological summer is over for Minnesota, we still typically see several days with highs in the upper 70 and 80s ahead in September and the first part of October. But we’re on the gradual downslope and past consistent summer heat and humidity.
Comfy dew points
The next six weeks of the year often bring comfortably low humidity to Minnesota. Dew points in the 50s and 40s are common this time of year. That’s nearly ideal for human comfort for most people.
Thursday’s air mass features dew points in the 50s across Minnesota. This comfortable air mass will linger most of this week.
Fall color peak ahead
The next 6 weeks also see the progression of fall colors in Minnesota. Typical peak fall color occurs in late September up north to mid-October in the south. Right now we’re just seeing the first splashes of color around Minnesota in this week’s fall color report.
We’ll likely get some cool rainy days in the next six weeks. But overall get ready to enjoy some of the best weather of the year in Minnesota between now and mid-October.
