5 inches of rainfall and counting at some locations
Widespread rainfall continues into Tuesday.
Minnesota’s rainfall switch has flipped to the “on” position.
Our slowly moving low-pressure system continues to spin up numerous showers and thunderstorms dumping moderate to locally heavy rain Monday.
Several locations in eastern Minnesota are now at or fast approaching 5 inches of rainfall since the rain began to fall in earnest Saturday evening. St. Michael in the far northwest Twin Cities suburbs, has recorded nearly 6 inches of rainfall since Saturday.
Here are some select rainfall totals between Saturday and early Monday afternoon, in inches:
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St. Michael, 5.91
Duluth, (6 mi NE) 5.72
Duluth airport, 4.75
Cambridge, 4.71
Victoria, 4.25
Here is a list of 24-hour rainfall totals for Minnesota.
Another inch locally?
The low-pressure system will spin over eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin into Tuesday before gradually shifting east. Scattered rain cells will continue to drop additional rainfall in many areas.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s FV3 model shows the system swirling overhead with scattered rains between 1 p.m. Monday and 1 a.m. Tuesday.
An additional one-half to 1 inch of rainfall is quite possible under the heavier rainfall zones as we move into Tuesday.
This prolific rain will be included in this week’s drought monitor update. The cutoff for rainfall is early Tuesday. The next report comes out Thursday morning.
This one storm won’t end the drought in Minnesota since we’re behind by up to 10 inches of rainfall in many areas., but it will likely ease drought in some areas by a category or so.
Stay tuned.