Awaiting weekend showers, cooler weather

Minnesota will see a slight cooling trend starting Thursday. Friday is expected to be largely dry and pleasant. Saturday may bring the next best chance of widespread rain across Minnesota.

Clouds but little rain

If you’ve liked Monday or Tuesday, you’re probably enjoying Wednesday: clouds south, storms farther south, hot weather and not much rain.

There have been a few storms but nothing widespread. Most of it has tracked over Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, the derecho bull’s-eye.

More of these powerful thunderstorm complexes are moving through the broader region but have largely skipped over Minnesota. Unfortunately, the clouds that those storms bring Wednesday night will likely prevent great viewing of the Perseid meteor shower.

Starting Thursday, we’ll slowly dip into a minor cooling trend. Instead of racing to the lower 90s across the Twin Cities urban heat island, and the middle-to-upper 80s elsewhere, we’ll be about 5 degrees cooler across the board.

Parts of that cooldown come from the early clouds but we could also have some morning showers and thunderstorms, south of a line from Marshall in southwestern Minnesota to the Twin Cities.

On Friday, I’m expecting largely dry weather and a pleasant August forecast as fronts move through.

Saturday is still the best chance of widespread rain across Minnesota in the next several days. The afternoon data is not as aggressive with the rain coverage, but there could be some downpours and highs may only be in the 70s for much of the state.

We should have some isolated downpours after the weekend and temps remain more level, which should be better news for farmers and gardeners worn down by erratic shifts in the weather pattern.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center sees temperature probabilities leaning above normal through August. We could dry out again in the first parts of September.