February opens with snow

Twin Cities NWS Weather Story highlights snow areas Monday.

January left the Twin Cities a little light in the snowfall department with a mere 3.1" of snowfall for the month. It looks like February intends to best that number in the metro, possibly this week.

A weak storm system is spreading snow across southern Minnesota today. The southerly track will lay the deepest snow down in southwest Minnesota. It looks like Pipestone, Worthington and Redwood Falls have the best chance for shoveling and plowing 2" to 4" by Tuesday morning.

In the Twin Cities snow will gradually increase today. Radars indicate snow increasing aloft, and as the atmosphere saturates snow will reach the ground in some areas this morning, spreading east as the day progresses.

The metro will be on the northern edge of this system. It looks like we will see about an inch in much of the metro, with some areas seeing as much as 2" by Tuesday morning.

There are signs of another (disorganized?) weather system marching our way toward the end of the week. It will bring a chance of more snow later Friday into Saturday.

January: Where's the snow?

January is on average our snowiest month of the year. The Twin Cities averages 13.5" of snow for the month. This year, we squeaked out a paltry 3.1" at MSP. Oklahoma City, Louisville, and Washington D.C. had more snow than Minneapolis.

For the season the Twin Cities has recorded 26.8". That's 7.3" below average season to date.

January temperatures were almost exactly average for the month in the Twin Cities. My math has us coming up with an average monthly temperature of 13 degrees. That's 0.1 degrees below average for the month, so when you add up all the extreme temperatures that we experienced in January, we were basically right on average.

Combined with December coming in just 1.4 degrees cooler than average, we're running about .75 degrees below average so far for meteorological winter.

February: Brighter days boost temperatures

Rapidly increasing daylight and solar energy really begin to have an effect on temperatures in February.

The metro's average high goes from 25 today, to 33 by month's end. Our average lows climb from 6 to 17 degrees. Overall we gain about 10 degrees during the month.

Our average snowfall for February is 8.2" in the metro.

We rapidly gain daylight in February. Over the next 4 weeks we will gain 1 hour and 13 minutes of additional daylight! Our sunset is at 6pm in the Twin Cities by March 1st.

The sun's angle in the noon sky will be high enough to melt snow much more efficiently by mid-month on warmer days.

PH