Stunning weekend before early week rains

Minnesotans woke up to a little chill this weekend. While it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary (we are actually a couple of days delayed in our first upper 50s for the southern end of the state), for a few, it could have been a quick moment of sweater weather. We have abundant sunshine across the North Star State Saturday, with almost exclusively dry conditions. If you’re looking at the regional network of radars and going ‘huh?’ on Saturday, fear not! This is not rain, but roost rings. These rings are the telltale sign of birds migrating, in this case flying south a little ahead of schedule.

For Saturday, highs around the Cities will be right around 80 degrees. Most others will be in the middle 70s, but some may not climb out of the 60s in the Arrowhead or where your cabin might be. Sunday’s main difference is the influx of high clouds coming in from north-to-south out of Ontario. Almost all of state remains totally dry this weekend.

But not all MPR listeners will (stay dry)! By late Sunday night, a mesoscale convective system that’s long been showing up on future radar plows south, just glancing off of the Sioux Falls, SD metro area. A few folks on the southwest side of the Minnesota River Valley could have some brief storms Sunday night and into early Monday morning. The rest of us are likely to remain dry until the first parts of Tuesday morning. That means more time for soils to dry out.

And above, you can see the rain moving in for Tuesday. The newest data available as we type this Updraft is, sadly, a little drier. The QPF (quantitative precip forecast) is a little lax on rain totals but we’ll just have to take the rain when we can get it. There’s still a chance of a cutoff low forming over us or the northern end of Lake Superior for Wednesday.

The State Fair forecast is also trending down on temperatures for the tail end of the huge event. That’s a new sign that we’ll have to monitor to see if it’s a one-off or something really looking more likely.