Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

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Monday will bring flurries and clouds north with increasing clouds south. Snow and rain develop Tuesday with significant snowfall for much of northern and west central Minnesota into Wednesday. It’ll then be colder before warming up into the weekend.

First warmth of the season finally arrived Sunday for some

Many places in southern and southeast Minnesota finally saw their first 50 and some their first 60 degree readings.

In the Twin Cities, this came more than three weeks later than normal and the latest in 22 years. Duluth, International Falls and Marshall are still waiting for their first 50.

Winter storm watch Tuesday and Wednesday west and north

Yet another powerful spring storm is going to bring a variety of weather Tuesday into Wednesday. Snow showers will develop and fill in across central and northern Minnesota Tuesday morning with rain showers developing in southern Minnesota late Tuesday morning into midday.

Southern Minnesota will see mainly rain while northern Minnesota, especially northwest stands to see significant snowfall.

Northwest Minnesota in particular could see over a foot of snow in many areas along with potential blizzard conditions.

At this point, winter storm watches are posted for much of northern and west central Minnesota.

In between the heavy snow and mainly rain areas, an icy coating is possible in central and northeast Minnesota late Tuesday into Tuesday night.

In addition to precipitation, we’ll see high wind gusts develop late Tuesday into Wednesday. Many areas will see over 50 mph gusts and potentially even over 60 mph along the North Shore.

I had many people reach out with screen shots of their iPhone forecasts Monday morning. “Is it really going to be in the 80s next week?!” people were asking.

Is it possible? Sure, but not likely at this point and no responsible forecaster would throw out a high that warm more than week out at this point in the season, especially considering our cold pattern. It’s a good reminder to be wary always of your phone app forecasts. Most of the time it’s computer model data solely. If you’re lucky they ‘average’ models together to be a bit more reasonable but a human usually isn’t putting together the forecast for your zip code. If you want a reliable forecast that a professional has made, look up your local meteorologist or National Weather Service forecast.

Clearly the iPhone app weather seemed to be heavily influenced by the American (NOAA’s Global Forecast System) model alone next week. That model has  been notoriously inaccurate lately, especially past  several days out. If you look above, last evening’s run had a high of 87 next Wednesday (April 12) and then just 6 hours later the same model had a high of 75. Both sound lovely, but the European model has a high of 55 and the Canadian model has a high of 62. That’s a wide range of possibilities and that’s to be expected 9 days out at a time of year when the weather is at its most volatile. With all that said, the trend is upward and this upcoming weekend and next week do look much warmer. I would fully anticipate our first 60s in the Twin Cities and yes, even a first 70 is very possible before the end of next week. But, it’s early April and forecasting specifics past 5 days is treacherous.

Weather and Climate News

Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News

Sven Sundgaard

Author

Monday will bring flurries and clouds north with increasing clouds south. Snow and rain develop Tuesday with significant snowfall for much of northern and west central Minnesota into Wednesday. It’ll then be colder before warming up into the weekend.


Cloudy Monday; rain, heavy snow set to fall Tuesday into Wednesday

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