Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News

Warmest weekend in nearly 3 months on the way

Pattern shifts cooler later next week

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Forecast highs Saturday and Sunday
National Weather Service

Enjoy a very mild weekend with temperatures that will average about 20 degrees above normal. The mild weather persists into midweek before a pattern shift.

Warmest weekend in nearly 3 months followed by a pattern change 

If you liked Thursday, you’ll like Friday, too. We’ll see similar temperatures — mostly in the 40s in southern Minnesota with 50s again southwest and 30s north. Look for more sunshine, too. Northwestern Minnesota has some dense fog to burn off first Friday morning.

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Forecast highs Friday
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, via Pivotal Weather

The weekend will be the warmest since just before Thanksgiving. Highs will be in the upper 40s to near 50 degrees and with more sunshine than clouds both days.

The last weekend that was warmer was Nov. 22-23 when it was 54 and 56 degrees for highs that Saturday and Sunday, respectively. 

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Forecast highs Saturday and Sunday
National Weather Service

The mild weather persists into the start of next week. Monday could be even warmer with low 50s in the Twin Cities and a chance at 60 degrees in southwestern Minnesota.

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Forecast highs Monday
NOAA, via Pivotal Weather

The pattern inevitably shifts mid to late next week. We’re looking at cooler temperatures, mostly in the 30s for highs (which is still above normal) and also a potentially more active pattern with a pair of storm systems to watch. 

The forecast models have quite a large range of possibilities between storm tracks and rain or snow. The first system will be Tuesday and Wednesday, another system will arrive as early as Friday or later into next weekend (Feb. 21-22).

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Forecast System model puts the storm track farther north, giving southern Minnesota more rain than snow Tuesday into Wednesday:

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Forecast precipitation next Tuesday, Feb. 17, through Friday, Feb. 20
NOAA, via Pivotal Weather

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts model tracks farther south and colder, giving us more snow Tuesday and Wednesday with two more systems by Feb. 23.

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Forecast precipitation Tuesday, Feb. 17 through Sunday, Feb. 22
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, via Pivotal Weather

We still have a lot of monitoring of forecast models to do before any degree of forecast certainty can be established. Either way, much of Minnesota looks to get at least a fresh coating of snow in the second half of next week. It’s still February after all!