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00:00Well, a messy spring storm system is bringing wintry and summer weather.
00:04We've got ice accumulation in northeastern Minnesota, could be central Minnesota's turn
00:08tomorrow and then rain turns to snow.
00:10But before all that, a potential severe weather threat and record-breaking summer-like temperatures
00:16for southern Minnesota.
00:27We'll start with our crazy warm front we have across the state today, creating quite the
00:32contrast of summer versus winter this Friday.
00:37Temperatures in northern Minnesota are in the 30s, well in southern Minnesota already
00:41in the 60s and 70s.
00:42Look at some of these readings in southwestern Minnesota, already in the mid-to-upper 70s.
00:46They're headed for the 80s.
00:47A little further north, these temperatures were as of late morning, we're already up
00:51to 64 at MSP, but this was showing 60 at this point, just about the noon hour.
00:58But then, yeah, you march north here, look at these temperatures along the North Shore,
01:01barely at or above freezing.
01:03And that's why we're seeing ice accumulation here across parts of northeastern Minnesota
01:08already today.
01:09We'll put on the high-resolution rapid refresh model and show you what it has going on here
01:17already for this early afternoon.
01:19Rain turning to ice, sleet, and snow, with the potential of significant ice accumulations
01:26in parts of northeastern Minnesota, in fact.
01:30Silver Bay to Ely, maybe even Duluth, on this particular model, up to a tenth to maybe two-tenths
01:36of an inch of ice accumulation.
01:38The Weather Service forecasting that bullseye to be a little further north than northeast,
01:44but all the models have ice somewhere in that northeastern part of the state.
01:47This is the European model, actually a half inch of ice maybe around the Silver Bay area.
01:54So northern parts of the state, rain, snow, sleet, ice today.
01:59And they are going to get some snowfall here overnight into early Saturday across parts
02:04of the area here.
02:06But really it's going to be confined deep into the Arrowhead and along the international
02:09border a few inches of snow.
02:12The other thing going on with all the warmth is we do have the risk of some severe weather
02:16here actually today across Minnesota, southeastern Minnesota.
02:20Marginal risk, level one out of five, but there could be one or two strong storms.
02:24The main threat is probably going to be some large hail potentially.
02:28So if we look at some of the severe parameters, it's not going to look particularly impressive
02:32right now.
02:33Most of the energy is in southern Minnesota where it's warmer and then beyond.
02:37One of the things to look at ahead of time here is some of the hail parameters, which
02:42right now again are pretty low, but this will be developing as we head into the latter part
02:46of the day.
02:47So we're really going to be looking for more elevated storms.
02:50Here's that marginal risk.
02:51You can see the tornado risk non-existent, mainly a hail risk here.
02:57That's what's in the lower left.
02:59Or some high wind gusts potentially, mostly in Nebraska and northwestern Iowa with those
03:04storms that develop.
03:05Not all the models agree that we're going to see much in the way of thunderstorms here
03:09this evening because it is going to be in the evening hours.
03:11It makes it a little bit less conducive certainly for severe weather, but this time of year
03:17also for thunderstorms itself because the best heating of the day of course is going
03:21to be in the afternoon.
03:22But here's 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m.
03:25Again we're seeing that mix of precip in northeastern Minnesota and then not till 10 p.m.
03:31You can see one little cell down around Pipestone on the high resolution rapid refresh model,
03:37but then that does form a line of some thunderstorms.
03:39So this is more aggressive than the earlier model runs, but potentially some showers or
03:44thunderstorms.
03:45This would be midnight 1 a.m. in the Twin Cities in southeastern Minnesota and that
03:47kind of lines up with that marginal risk that they have drawn there.
03:52So they're basically accounting for that area of showers and thunderstorms that develops,
03:57though most of it garden variety could have one or two rogue cells here.
04:03We'll put on some of the winds here to see if it has any of that, but I don't see that
04:08here.
04:09And in fact by that time frame that we actually have showers and thunderstorms developing,
04:14there's not going to be a whole lot of energy.
04:16So this is the peak here, 4 p.m.
04:19You can really tell where the warm front is, where there's no energy or instability in
04:23the atmosphere.
04:24It's as far north as those 50 degree dew points get and 70 degree temperatures.
04:28So 4 p.m., decent amount of CAPE, convective available potential energy, but it dwindles
04:33pretty quickly here, 7, 8, 9, 10.
04:37And remember, when we looked at the model, it doesn't even have those thunderstorms developing
04:42until 11 p.m. or midnight.
04:43So it's really going to be a timing issue with any severe weather threat today.
04:47But then we turn to the weather potentially for tomorrow, which is much more interesting
04:54as far as a variety of wintry weather types.
04:57So not much going on late in the night and early morning for southern Minnesota, but
05:02we are going to start to see rain develop here.
05:04This is mid-morning in southwestern Minnesota and fill in more.
05:07This is 3 p.m., pretty widespread areas of scattered showers, maybe even some thunderstorms
05:14tomorrow.
05:15And then this is 6 p.m.
05:17Notice the transition north here around Fairmont, Detroit Lakes, Brainerd, you start to see
05:23a mix of sleet.
05:25That's the orangish-pink color.
05:27The pink-purple color is freezing rain and blue snow, and then the green to the south
05:32is all rain.
05:33But then that area expands, maybe even into the north metro.
05:36This is St. Cloud, Cambridge, Rush City on the edge of sleet and rain.
05:43And then that transition will continue through the evening.
05:45But notice, this is 10 p.m. tomorrow, at least in this particular model, we are still rain
05:49in the Twin Cities.
05:50St. Cloud is getting sleet, and you see this very heavy, dark blue area of snow.
05:55That's that heavy, wet snow that sets up across central Minnesota, and the high-resolution
06:00rapid refresh model, this model we're looking at right now, doesn't have us transitioning
06:04to sleet even in the metro until maybe 2 a.m. early Sunday.
06:09And by the time it's cold enough for snow, this is Sunday morning, 7 a.m., a lot of the
06:16moisture is starting to fall apart here to the north-south, but that's just one particular
06:20model.
06:21So when we're looking at the snowfall totals, keep in mind here, it's also producing some
06:23pretty crazy snowfall totals because of the intense nature of the precipitation in this
06:30particular model.
06:31So will we get a foot of snow in Pine County?
06:35Probably not, because when we look at the, and we've talked about this before, especially
06:39with March snow, when we look at the positive snow depth change, which accounts for melting
06:44and compacting, you get about half that amount.
06:47But still, that could be a half foot of snow from Pine County, Carlton County, up to Duluth,
06:52and then the northwestern Wisconsin counties.
06:56Now the NAMM model is a little bit further south with all of this, produces snow maybe
07:02into even the northern suburbs here, but it is the farthest south of the models with that
07:07snow that sets up tomorrow evening, that's Saturday evening into Saturday night.
07:11But again, some pretty impressive totals for central Minnesota, maybe a half foot.
07:17Conversion of the NAMM, the 12 kilometer resolution, is a little further north.
07:22European model is across central Minnesota and then up the North Shore.
07:26That's the most likely axis here, is going to be basically Alexandria through Brainerd,
07:32Duluth, the North Shore, I've seen that area of heavy snow.
07:35And then south of it, totals will drop off pretty quickly, but we could still get some
07:38slushy accumulation, especially Sunday morning in the Twin Cities, but it's going to be harder
07:42to do.
07:43This time of year to get snow to accumulate during the daylight hours, very difficult
07:46because of the solar insulation.
07:49Even though it's cloudy, sunlight is reaching surfaces and warming them up, even though
07:54we don't necessarily see it.
07:56And the American model, which we talked about the last few days, which was going kind of
07:58crazy here, has now moved further north too, and lining up with all the other models.
08:03Though it is having more snowfall come in on the back end of things here Sunday compared
08:08to the other models.
08:10European model doesn't buy that, it's further south and east with that essentially third
08:14round of moisture.
08:16Same thing with the Canadian model, but you can see that they're all hinting at that Sunday
08:19snowfall, more southeastern Minnesota though into southwest Wisconsin than the Twin Cities,
08:25but it's just the American model is a little further north with that area.
08:29That's why you have kind of two secondary purple lines here basically that you can see.
08:35Weather service gives us a bit of a coding here, half inch to an inch, probably on grassy
08:40surfaces and then you can see that heavier axis of snow, Brainerd to Duluth, but they're
08:45going lower on totals, banking on compacting and melting of that snow.
08:51When we look at the blend of the models, the model average sort of lines up similar to
08:56that, but you get that, again, this is a weighted average of the models and you have that general
09:00axis of Wheaton out through Alexandria, Brainerd to Duluth, where we could be looking at two
09:05to six inches of snow in that area.
09:08And then again, totals drop off pretty quickly, but I would bank on the possibility of a slushy
09:13half inch to an inch in the Twin Cities, but maybe a little more here in some of the northeastern
09:18suburbs.
09:19If we look at, zoom in here on the Twin Cities a bit more, you can see that there is, you
09:23know, even as close as maybe Rogers and Maple Grove could get a few inches or two inches
09:28of snow anyway, compared to what the official reporting would be in MSP, of course, which
09:35is in the South Metro.
09:38So that's what it's looking like for snowfall and precipitation types.
09:42The other thing we're watching for, though, is do we get in on ice in the Twin Cities?
09:46Most of it is in central Minnesota, developing tomorrow evening as we transition.
09:51The average of the models does bring in a little bit, but not as much as, I'm going
09:55to show you the NAM, which is just crazy on freezing rain.
09:59It has, even in the Twin Cities, you know, much of Hennepin County, a tenth to a half
10:04inch of ice, but that does not really line up with what you see in the other models,
10:09which keep it more across central and northern Minnesota.
10:13The American model does a little bit, but the HRRR model that we were looking at earlier
10:22keeps it confined to central Minnesota also, which makes more sense.
10:26And what I want to show you here is that the NAM model does have a cold bias on temperature.
10:31So we're going to look at tomorrow evening when many of the models have rain transitioning
10:36to freezing rain, and you can see central Minnesota is just at or below freezing, but
10:41the Twin Cities, 32, 33 degrees, we're getting close, but if you look at the average of the
10:46models, it's much warmer, 41 degrees compared to the NAM's 33 degrees, European model, 39
10:53degrees.
10:54So you can see that the NAM is producing more ice because it has colder temperatures, which
10:57makes sense.
10:59They all agree on us having liquid falling in the Twin Cities at 7 p.m. tomorrow, but
11:04because the NAM has that cold bias, it has those temperatures or has that ice accumulation
11:09much more substantial.
11:12The other thing I want to look at now as we move ahead to next week, so that's this weekend
11:17storm, is the potential for more snowfall next week.
11:23So we get through this round of snow, which this is the European model we're looking at.
11:27Again, that's central Minnesota, northeastern Minnesota swath, but then we're looking at
11:30another system, and because we will have cold air lying around here next week after this
11:35storm, another system that could bring more snow to the region here.
11:39We'll zoom in a little bit here.
11:41So this is Tuesday night into Wednesday, essentially.
11:44European model has it more north-central Minnesota, but other models are further south.
11:50Well, the American model now is back further north too.
11:53Let's take a look at the Canadian.
11:57These morning and midday runs now are starting to come in more at an area of north-central Minnesota.
12:03That's some agreement we haven't seen much of the last couple days.
12:06When we look at the ensembles, which are the perturbations or multiple runs of the same
12:15model with different conditions, we'll start to see a little bit different situation.
12:20I've got to go back a little ways here on the European.
12:23Okay, there we go.
12:25South-central Minnesota there.
12:26The American model ensembles, more of the north-shore central Minnesota, but does give
12:30us a little bit.
12:31And the Canadian model, generally central and northern Minnesota too.
12:36And when we look at the weighted average of the models, you can see what's going on here.
12:42Generally that north-central, central Minnesota swath of snow.
12:45So this is midweek Tuesday, late Tuesday into Wednesday and Wednesday night, another round
12:50of snow with the Twin Cities maybe on the southern edge of that one too.
12:54So kind of a pattern here.
12:56You can see this is weekend snowfall.
13:00And then as we head into the middle of next week.
13:02So in total, by Thursday morning, this is what the average of the models looks like
13:08for snow across central and northeastern Minnesota.
13:11Now, of course, some of that will be melting, but pretty incredible here as we transition
13:16into April.
13:17Almost forget about it.
13:18So into the 70s today for the Twin Cities, but then notice the temperatures next week,
13:23Saturday, Sunday into next week, 40s mostly, but by next week, the average high is up to
13:27about 50.
13:28And we get back to normal by the end of the week, but pretty chilly Saturday through Thursday.
13:33Those temperatures again are a bit below normal.
13:37And as far as those temperatures go today, we're warming up through the 60s and here's
13:433pm.
13:44I'm going to go back one model run here, 4pm, mid 80s, Mankato, mid 70s, Twin Cities
13:54and Duluth, about 32 degrees.
13:57So pretty incredible setup with this warm front today.
13:59Again, we do have that slight risk of, or marginal risk, excuse me, not even a slight
14:03risk, a marginal risk, level one out of five of some storms this evening, but again, mainly
14:07late in the evening and overnight by the time a lot of the energy has subsided.
14:12So there's that possibility.
14:13And then of course, rain, snow, ice here over the weekend for much of the state.
14:18And yeah, another round of snow possible next week.