Bumpy storms early Saturday, then beautiful weekend
Mid-July and it's fairly hot and a little stormy. Somebody alert the media.
90 degrees high temp at MSP Airport Friday (3:48 pm)
2nd 90 degree day of 2015
Our weekend forecast starts on a hot and slightly stormy note, then transitions into what could be one of the best weekends of the summer in Minnesota. Timing is everything in life, and most of the storms this weekend roll through during the overnight and early morning hours Saturday. A few of the storms will reach severe limits in western Minnesota, but they should lose a little oomph as they approach the Twin Cities metro area after midnight Saturday morning.
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A severe thunderstorm watch is up until 2 am for a chunk of south central Minnesota just west of the Twin Cities metro counties. A bowing line of T-Storms moving through western Minnesota has a history of golf ball to baseball sized hail, 70 mph winds and isolated tornadoes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's high resolution rapid refresh radar shows the line of storms crossing Minnesota overnight. A few storm clusters may bubble up in the metro in advance of the main wave after midnight, as depicted in this 1 a.m. Saturday future radar shot.
Bottom Line: I expect a line of severe storms in western Minnesota to evolve into a Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) with damaging wind and large hail potential for western Minnesota tonight. The storms will likely weaken to (just?) below severe limits as they reach the metro after midnight into early Saturday. Still gusty winds, downpours and some hail are likely in the metro between 1 and 7 a.m. Saturday.
Fresh Front: Summer's best weather ahead?
The cool front triggering the storms eases through Minnesota and the Twin Cities Saturday.
It's still hot behind the front Saturday, but you'll notice a distinctly more comfortable westerly breeze as Saturday progresses as dew points drop from the 70s into the low 60s and eventually 50s.
In fact, the inbound air mass brings what could be one of the best stretches of weather this summer from late Saturday into next Wednesday. Here's the Weatherspark meteogram with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' version of events.
Heat wave expands eastward
Ahead of the front, the Midwest heat wave expands to the east. A few days with temperatures of 90 degrees or more and and heat-index values of over 100 degrees paint a growing zone of red heat advisories on the map through the weekend. Heat advisories cover parts of at least 17 states this weekend.
The expanding zone of heat index values over 100 degrees includes Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico this weekend.
Here's the sweaty picture from the St. Louis office of the National Weather Service.
Summer 2015: Hot 2nd half?
We're just past the halfway point of meteorological summer (Jun-Aug) now. The overall weather pattern still seems to favor a hotter second half of summer. The long-range Global Forecast System is probably too aggressive with triple digit numbers, but more days above 90 degrees do look probable as we head from late July into early August.
Stay tuned.