Icicle Weather
January thaw sunset on Lake Minnetonka Sunday. Air temperature 34 degrees. Sunset time is now after 5:00pm.
It's icicle week in Minnesota.
There's plenty of snow on the roof. Our daytime highs are just above freezing to initiate melting. Our nights well below freezing to ice the drips in their tracks.
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Here's a little video I shot Sunday at the shores of Lake Minnetonka. Excuse the ramblings of a weatherman on the tape.
Here are some random thoughts as we dive into the second half of winter.
-Our January thaw continues today with the 3rd consecutive day of above freezing temperatures in the metro. Several northern Minnesota locations are now approaching nearly a week of above freezing daytime temperatures.
-The coldest air continues to hug the deeply snow covered areas in the eastern Dakotas and Nebraska. Notice the teens and 20s in the eastern Dakotas compared to the 40s and 50s at the same latitude in the western areas on the Midwest surface map.
Today's GOES visible satellite image below clearly shows the deep snow pack in Iowa, Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas and Nebraska next to snow free areas to the west.
-A messy and potentially major storm appears more likely for the upcoming weekend. A big slow moving upper low similar in duration to the Christmas storm looks like it will stall over the Upper Midwest this weekend.
This system has the potential to produce 1" to 2" precipitation amounts. It appears the storm may pull enough warm air in initially to produce rain or ice, then trend more toward snow later Sunday into Monday. With temperatures hovering around freezing, this storm could produce a mixed bag of precip types around the area.
Model precip output through Monday suggest 2" liquid totals possible.
Notice how the models trend toward accumulating snow Sunday night into Monday for the Twin Cities.
It will be a real mess around here if we get an inch of rain on top of deep snow cover. A significant ice storm is also possible somewhere in the region.
Enjoy the thaw, but beware the weekend.
PH