A nice Sunday; full lunar eclipse Sunday evening

Friday and Saturday were beautiful, with plenty of sunshine and comfortable temps. Our Sunday will be fairly nice too. A few spots in Minnesota and western Wisconsin could see a brief shower late Sunday afternoon or early Sunday evening.

You can hear updated weather information for Minnesota and western Wisconsin on the Minnesota Public Radio News network, and you can see updated weather info on the MPR News live weather blog.

Lunar eclipse Sunday evening

There will be a total lunar eclipse this Sunday evening. That means that the full moon will pass through the earth’s shadow.

Times on the eclipse image above are in Universal time; subtract 5 hours to get Central Daylight Time. For example: 03:29 a.m. Monday Universal time is 10:29 p.m. Sunday Central Daylight Time.

According to NASA, this is why the moon will look coppery-red during the total eclipse phase:

The Moon moves into the inner part of Earth’s shadow, or the umbra. Some of the sunlight passing through Earth’s atmosphere reaches the Moon’s surface, lighting it dimly. Colors with shorter wavelengths ― the blues and violets ― scatter more easily than colors with longer wavelengths, like red and orange. Because these longer wavelengths make it through Earth’s atmosphere, and the shorter wavelengths have scattered away, the Moon appears orangish or reddish during a lunar eclipse. The more dust or clouds in Earth’s atmosphere during the eclipse, the redder the Moon appears.

According to timeanddate.com the timing of the lunar eclipse looks like this in Minneapolis:

9:27 p.m. partial eclipse begins.

10:29 p.m. total eclipse begins (moon is coppery red)

11:53 p.m. total eclipse ends.

12:55 a.m. partial eclipse ends.

Times will be slightly different in other parts of Minnesota and western Wisconsin. The linked location also has an excellent animation of how the eclipse will progress.

NASA also has several excellent eclipse animations. You can select Central Daylight Time or just subtract 5 hours from each image at the NASA site that uses Universal Time.

If you miss tonight’s lunar eclipse, when is the next one?

According to timeanddate.com, the next total lunar eclipse visible in the Twin Cities is Nov. 7 into Nov. 8. After that date, the next total lunar eclipse visible here is in March of 2025.

Temperature trends

Sunday highs in the 70s are expected across roughly the southern half of Minnesota and in most of western Wisconsin. Northern Minnesota will have a lot of 60s.

Monday highs will range from 50s in far northern Minnesota to 70s in the south:

Monday afternoon wind gusts will be in the 20 to 25 mph range in many areas:

Forecast gusts are in knots, with 18 knots equal to 20.7 mph.

Back to temperatures, Twin Cities metro area highs are projected to reach the upper 60s Tuesday, followed by lower 70s Wednesday, then upper 70s Thursday and upper 60s on Friday.

Rain chances?

Scattered showers are possible Tuesday afternoon and evening in the metro area, then the daylight hours of Wednesday look dry. We could see some strong to severe thunderstorms Thursday afternoon and evening.

Flooding update

Flood warnings (shaded green) continue in portions of northeastern Minnesota and a small part of north-central Minnesota:

Snowmelt plus generous rains the past couple of weeks are causing very high river and stream levels in some areas and lake levels are also high in many locations.  According to the NWS, the Pigeon River near Grand Portage has exceeded its record water level:

This video was recently posted by MPR’s Andrew Krueger:

The Cascade River (about midway between Lutsen and Grand Marais, Minn.) is still very high, this video is from Saturday:

The Rainy River Basin is seeing very high water levels:

Updates on the flooding in portions of northeastern and north-central Minnesota can be found at the NWS Duluth site.

Flood warnings continue along the Red River in northwestern Minnesota and in several additional locations:

Updates on the flooding in portions of northwestern Minnesota can be found by clicking on any location on the NWS Grand Forks site.

Several small areas in the remainder of Minnesota have flood warnings:

Updates on the flooding warnings can be found by clicking on any location on the NWS Twin Cities site.

Hydrographs of river levels

NOAA’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service site shows river gauges across our region. You can click on any gauge at that site to get recent and current river levels plus the forecast levels over the next few days.

Here’s the hydrograph for the Minnesota River at Montevideo, Minnesota, which is now at moderate flood stage and is expected to reach major flood stage on Monday:

The Mississippi River at St. Paul is forecast to be close to minor flood stage on Saturday:

River level forecasts are updated several times each day.

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.