A chilly Friday; warmer through the weekend

Rainfall remains elusive in the forecast

fri highs 6pm
Forecast high temperatures Friday
National Weather Service

A chilly Friday with highs mainly in the 40s to around 50 for some in southern Minnesota. We’ll have some lingering clouds but winds will be lighter from the northwest at 5-10 mph. After a cold early morning Saturday, temperatures rebound through the weekend.

Brief but potent chill

Do you want the good news or the bad news? The good news is that this chill is relatively brief. The bad news is that it’s, well, pretty chilly, but seasonably so. We’ll see highs mainly in the 40s to near 50 Friday with a bit more sunshine. It will also be a lot less windy, so that’s some consolation.

fri winds
Forecast wind speed and direction early Friday afternoon
National Weather Service

While we know this cool air came from somewhere cold of course, it’s fun to see the precise trajectories. We can use models to trace the approximate ‘path’ of our airmass over the past 48 hours. No surprise, the current air came from far north in the arctic regions of Alaska and Canada’s Northwest Territories.

cold trajectory
Modeled trajectory of our chilly air mass from Tuesday through Thursday
National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration

The weekend will be bright with lots of sun and temperatures warming already to near 60+ for southern Minnesota. It will first be a rather cold Friday night with light winds and clear skies. Lows will be in the 20s and low to mid-30s across the state.

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sat low 6pm
Forecast low temperatures Friday night into early Saturday
National Weather Service

Unfortunately, however, there’s little to no rain in the forecast.

A brief surge of warmth again next week

The warming trend will continue into early next week with a brief shot of some pretty warm air again. High temperatures look to be back well into the 70s across southern Minnesota Tuesday.

tue highs 6pm
Forecast high temperatures Tuesday
National Weather Service

It’s the time of year where anytime we have a warm day, we all ask ourselves “is this the last one?” Tuesday may just be, if history has anything to say about it.

The data for current climatology uses 1991-2020 averages and sets the date of the last 70 or warmer day at Oct. 23 for the Twin Cities. This is several days later than it used to be of course. If we look at the probability of hitting 70 or warmer by each date through November 7 we see a big drop past about Oct. 12 (which is Wednesday). So, this may just be the last one of 2022, or maybe there’ll be one more?

70 probs
Probability of 70 degrees or warmer by date through early November for the Twin Cities (using 1991-2020 data)
Sven Sundgaard, National Weather Service data