Arctic sunshine today, Friday snow ahead

Welcome day No. 2 of subzero temps across Minnesota.

Your thermometer continues to get reacquainted with negative numbers this week. Temperatures dip below zero at night. Daytime highs stagger into the single digits above zero. Temps finally recover into the teens by Friday.

1213-temps
NOAA GFS temps via tropicaltidbits.com

Cold, but sunny

One benefit of arctic air is the fact that skies tend to be sunnier when it's cold in winter in Minnesota. Continental polar and arctic air masses have very low moisture content. That means generally sunny skies. Nights are bright and moonlit, and fresh snow cover increases illumination.

Create a More Connected Minnesota

MPR News is your trusted resource for the news you need. With your support, MPR News brings accessible, courageous journalism and authentic conversation to everyone - free of paywalls and barriers. Your gift makes a difference.

air-mass-source-regions
NOAA

We've now moved past the cloudiest part of the year in Minnesota. November features just 39 percent of possible sunshine on average. Sunshine increases on average to 42 percent in December, and 53 percent in January in the Twin Cities.

possible-sunshine
NOAA via Minnesota Climate Working Group

Our sunniest month of the year? July with a whopping 72 percent of possible sunny hours.

A guy can dream.

Snow system Friday

Sunny frigid high pressure sprawls out and dominates through Thursday. Watch the next low get organized in the Rockies ready to head east by Friday.

1213-allfcsts_loop_ndfd
NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Forecast System model favors a low-pressure track south of Des Moines, Iowa, and Chicago. That usually lays the heaviest snow bands out across southern Minnesota, northern Iowa and the southern half of Wisconsin. Expect snow to spread across the region Friday into Saturday.

1213-giffy
NOAA via tropical tidbits.com

Again, we need to take model generated snowfall totals with a grain, maybe a shaker, of salt 72 hours in advance. Use this product more as a general guide to where snow may fall Friday and Saturday, specific snowfall totals to be tweaked based on final storm track and intensity. Ski Madison?

1213-snow
NOAA GFS snowfall output via tropical tidbits.com

Bitter but brief cold snap

This weekend's bitter arctic blast looks cold, but brief. Warm air filters back into North America next week.

1213-50022
Climate Reanalyzer

Temps bottom out close to -20 in the Twin Cities suburbs Sunday morning. The progressive nature of the upper air pattern suggests a rapid return to less barbaric conditions with highs cracking 30 again next week.

Temps looks seasonable as we move toward a very white Christmas.

1213-15
Custom Weather

Stay tuned.

Bill Gates thinks funding climate change innovation is important

On MPR's Climate Cast we often talk about the market momentum toward a renewable energy revolution.

We didn't leave the stone age because we ran out of stones, we found better ways to do things through better technology. Once upon a time, people used to burn coal in their homes for heat. That produced some deadly consequences. Then we evolved into large centralized power plants. That causes other problems. Now we're on the verge of a growing clean energy revolution.

Here's more on Bill Gates effort to move into a cleaner energy future from Quartz.

Bill Gates is leading a more than $1 billion fund focused on fighting climate change by investing in clean energy innovation.

 The Microsoft co-founder and his all-star line-up of fellow investors plan to announce tomorrow the Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, which will begin making investments next year. The BEV fund, which has a 20-year duration, aims to invest in the commercialization of new technologies that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in areas including electricity generation and storage, transportation, industrial processes, agriculture, and energy-system efficiency.

“Anything that leads to cheap, clean, reliable energy we’re open-minded to,” says Gates, who is serving as chairman of BEV and anticipates being actively involved.

Gates says that he’s been surprised that technology innovation isn’t discussed more as a solution to climate change, since clean-energy advances could limit any economic trade-offs from switching off carbon-emitting fossil fuels. “All of that takes place just as a normal market mechanism as you replace energy sources with other ways to do it,” he says.