Arctic weekend, Boston blizzard

Welcome to another arctic weekend in Minnesota.

February is taking a solid lead as the coldest month of this meteorological winter. The upper air pattern shows no signs of relenting, as northwest flow aloft drives a series of arctic high pressure bubbles south.

That means continued cold bias for Minnesota for the foreseeable future. A light dusting of snow arrives Sunday.

Wind chills this weekend bottom out in the dangerous zone Saturday morning. Chills of minus 42 around International Falls? Respectable and dangerous.

It could be worse. Boston is ground zero for another massive snow event this weekend. This time it comes with high winds that drive blizzard conditions.

 Another foot of snow. Wind gusts over 50 miles per hour. Near whiteout conditions on the coast. Power outages. A life-threatening blizzard? Minnesotans know the drill all too well. Just not this winter.

The big picture? Another arctic high pressure cell dives south into Minnesota this weekend. Another deepening nor'easter slams Boston and Cape Cod with heavy snow and high winds.

The next week looks like weather status quo. More cold. Below average snowfall.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center agrees with the overall longer term trends. Cold in the east and Minnesota. Milder in the west. It's a movie we've seen many times before in the past two years.

California Dreamin'.

NASA: More Megadroughts ahead

One of the emerging patterns of climate change is that extremes become more extreme. Drought prone areas will likely see longer and more severe drought in the future. Longer term droughts lasting over a decade are called Megadroughts. AP's Seth Borenstein has more on why NASA is predicting more of these potentially landscape changing Megadroughts in future climates.

"Unprecedented drought conditions" — the worst in more than 1,000 years — are likely to come to the Southwest and Central Plains after 2050 and stick around because of global warming, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances on Thursday.

"Nearly every year is going to be dry toward the end of the 21st century compared to what we think of as normal conditions now," said study lead author Benjamin Cook, a NASA atmospheric scientist. "We're going to have to think about a much drier future in western North America."

There's more than an 80 percent chance that much of the central and western United States will have a 35-year-or-longer "megadrought" later this century, said study co-author Toby Ault of Cornell University, adding that "water in the Southwest is going to become more precious than it already is."

Megadroughts last for decades instead of just a few years. The 1930s Dust Bowl went on for more than 35 years, Ault said.