Prompts winter weather advisories as cold air moves in Friday night

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How about some great air quality news for a change? The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency canceled the air quality alert for northern Minnesota early on Wednesday. Smoke has moved out of our area.

Air quality over Minnesota is in the good to moderate range on this Wednesday afternoon:

And there’s good news in those massive Canadian wildfire zones this week. Widespread heavy rainfall is happening in many of the worst wildfire zones in Canada. 

Forecast models suggest anywhere from 2 to 5 inches of rain could fall in some of the fire zones. That won’t extinguish all fires, but it may suppress fire activity and greatly reduce the amount of smoke upstream of Minnesota.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency elaborates on the probability of considerably less if any smoke in Minnesota for at least the next week:

If the trend of significant rainfall in Canada continues, we may enjoy more trademark Minnesota blue skies and cleaner air for the next few weeks. We could be getting the last few weeks of our summer back.

It’s beautiful out there on this classic summer Wednesday. Temperatures in the 70s and low 80s and dew points in the comfy 50s are about as good as it gets in a Minnesota summer.

But steamy tropical air will seep back into Minnesota starting Thursday. Dew points will climb back into the sauna-like 70s into the upcoming weekend. 

That deep tropical moisture will be fuel for a stalled warm front to spawn heavy and slowly moving storms from Thursday  into this weekend. The heaviest rains look likely to fall Friday and Saturday nights.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts model shows waves of strong thunderstorms with torrential downpours lingering in Minnesota between Friday night and Monday night.

Overall rainfall totals could reach 2 to more than 5 inches locally in some areas.

It won’t rain all weekend but expect some heavy storms around from time to time.

Weather and Climate News

Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News

Paul Huttner

Author

The air quality outlook for Minnesota looks much more promising for at least the next week. A stalled warm front may spark storms with heavy rainfall this weekend.

Excellent air quality news; heavy rain signal setting up this weekend?

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

MPCA

A recently rare blue sky above the Weather Lab Tuesday evening

ECMWF via Pivotal Weather

European (ECMWF) model precipitation output

Excellent air quality news; heavy rain signal setting up this weekend?

Go Deeper.

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