Cooler Tuesday, record highs likely Wednesday
Sunshine and mild air warmed the Twin Cities to a record high temperature of 50 degrees on Monday. Broken midlevel clouds toward evening treated some of us to a colorful sunset. What a great free show.
A low-pressure system spinning over the Great Lakes will continue counterclockwise flow over Minnesota on Tuesday and bring in a cooler northwesterly breeze.
Expect clouds to cover the sky most of Tuesday, with peaks of sun possible in the afternoon. A few sprinkles are possible in eastern Minnesota and Wisconsin.
High temperatures Tuesday afternoon should be mainly from the mid-30s to low 40s. The Twin Cities will have a high in the low 40s with a breeze making it feel cooler, but still quite mild for January. The average high for the day is 24 degrees.
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Record highs Wednesday
Wednesday is likely to be memorable with record high temperatures likely. Mild Pacific air and sunshine on bare ground should warm our temperatures well into the feels-like-April range.
The current forecast high of 56 for the Twin Cities is crazy warm for this time of winter and would clobber the standing record for the day of 46 degrees.
As shown below, the all-time record high temperature for the Twin Cities in any day in January was 58 in January 1944. Depending on how sunny the sky remains, we could come close to that mark.
Continued mild well into February
Temperatures will cool a bit after Wednesday but will remain unseasonably mild. Highs will be mainly in the 30s across the north and 40s south through the weekend and probably much of next week.
The temperature outlook for Feb. 6-12 continues to call for the likelihood of warmer-than-normal temperatures heading toward the middle of February. It does, however, look as though the warmest of the mild air might be beginning to shift eastward late in the period.
No storms coming
The main storm will continue to pass to our south. A storm about to bring rain and wind to the West Coast and snow in mountains will slide southeast over the weekend.
The north side of this storm might spread some rain into our general area on Saturday. But no winter weather is in sight.