Weekend weather: Above-normal temps, low wind, dry
Drought conditions linger
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I’m still seeing some lingering fall color on my travels around the Twin Cities. Some trees have dropped most of their leaves. Others are clinging onto fall colors or are just starting to change.
There are plenty of leaves on the ground, of course.
Winds this weekend won’t be anywhere near as strong as the winds that we saw last weekend, so leaf-raking will be less of an adventure.
Weekend temps and winds
Our average Twin Cities high temperature is 51 degrees on Oct. 29. We’re expecting metro area highs in the mid-60s this Saturday. We’ll share 60s with much of Minnesota and western Wisconsin:
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There will be some 50s in far northern Minnesota.
Saturday will be breezy, but winds won’t be as strong as they were last weekend. Saturday afternoon wind gusts will be mainly in the range of 15 to 22 mph:
Forecast gusts are in knots, with 17 knots equal to 19.6 mph. Wind gusts will be a bit higher in far southwestern Minnesota.
Sunday highs will reach 60 degrees or warmer in the southern half of Minnesota, with 50s to the north:
Sunday afternoon wind gusts will be less than 12 mph in most areas:
Drought continues
The latest U.S. Drought Monitor report shows extreme drought conditions (shaded red) from western Ramsey County and northwestern Dakota County through much of Hennepin County and the southwest metro, as well as Sibley County and portions of Lyon County and Redwood County in southwestern Minnesota:
Severe drought covers the remainder of the Twin Cities metro area and much of southwestern Minnesota.
The official Twin Cities precipitation total (rainfall plus the water content of the minor snowfall on Oct. 14) is just 24 one-hundredths (.24) of an inch this October.
That’s 2.09 inches below normal for this point in October. Precipitation at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is 4.87 inches below normal since Sept. 1 and 9.84 inches below normal since Jan. 1.
Dry weekend
This weekend still looks dry. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s North American Mesoscale (NAM) forecast model isn’t showing any weekend rain or snow in Minnesota or western Wisconsin:
We have updated weather information for Minnesota and western Wisconsin on the Minnesota Public Radio News network, and on the MPR News live weather blog.
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. Saturday and Sunday.
