Tallying up Sunday storms

Hot, bright, loud and wet.

Sunday's swath of severe thunderstorms left a trail of wind damage, heavy rainfall and nearly continuous lightning from near Fargo through the Brainerd lakes area all the way down I-94 into the metro. Thankfully the storms lost some of their severe (wind) punch as they moved into the metro, but the best lightning show in a long time produced vivid, nearly continuous lightning for hours.

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Twin Cities NWS

Some wind gusts:

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  • 69 mph in Sauk Centre at 8:53 p.m.

  • 58 mph in Clearwater at 9:45 p.m

The storms produced wind damage with trees down and boats blown over near the Brainerd Lakes area.

Rainfall totals

Rainfall totals between 1.5" and 2" were common with last night's storms. The highest totals I saw in the metro was 3.2" in Maple Plain. Here's a more complete listing of rainfall totals.

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Twin Cities NWS

Light show

Perhaps the most intense part of last night's storm was the nearly continuous lighting display. The flash rate for cloud to ground strikes exceeded one per second as the storms rolled through the metro.

Even NOAA's Hurricane Hunters got in on the action last night.

As the skies lit up around the metro, so did Twitter.

Before all the action, Sunday's heat index hit 100 degrees at MSP. The sweaty dew point of 76 degrees was the highest I've seen so far this year.

Summer rolls on

Summer rolls on this week as temps push the 90 degree mark again today across southern Minnesota. Some thunderstorms will pop up this afternoon before the system finally pushes east.

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A weak cool front slides south Tuesday evening. That will shave a few degrees off temps and drop dew points into a more comfortable range this week.

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NOAA

Temps bounce through he 80s this week. Both the GFS and Euro (below) hint at another free sauna by next Friday or Saturday as temps push into the 90s with dew points back into the 70s.

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Weatherspark

We hit the mid-point of meteorological summer this week!