Spotty T-Showers now, excessive weekend heat wave ahead
Hit or miss
Our short term forecast is a little like a weather lottery. I'm hoping to be one of the lucky ones that gets under one of our spotty coverage T-showers. We'll be begging for a cooling rain shower by this weekend.
Our warm and mostly dry weather pattern continues this week. Some spotty hit or mostly miss T-showers light up the radar tonight and again Thursday. But overall coverage looks low, between 10 and 20 percent of us will see a significant rain shower to break what is quickly evolving into a flash drought.
NOAA's NAM 3 km resolution model captures the essence of spotty evening T-shower coverage fading overnight.
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.
Weekend hot front
There's no sugar coating this one folks. It's going to get barbarically hot this weekend. The models have cranked up the amplitude of our weekend high pressure heat dome over the central U.S. this weekend.
NOAA is finally coming into line with the Canadian models on the magnitude of the weekend heat. High temperatures between 95 and 100 look likely in the Twin Cities and much of southern Minnesota.
The bigger map looks blood red this weekend. Watch the Canada's GEM model heat pump pulse 3 straight days of barbaric 95 to 100 degree heat Saturday through Monday.
Ugh.
Free sauna
This will be a far different and more dangerous brand of heat than what we felt last weekend. Last weekend featured 3 days of 90 degrees in the Twin Cities with dew points in the comfortable 40s. That was Arizona style weather. A dry heat.
This weekend will feature highs in the 90s to near 100, with a tropical moisture surge straight from the Gulf of Mexico. You'll be able to cut the air with a knife. Watch the pulses of 70s dew points this weekend. Real relief pushes in from the west, but not until into next week.
The longer range models suggest cooler weather as we move deeper into mid June.
If the weekend heat arrives as schedule we may add 3 to 4 more days of 90+ in the Twin Cities. That would put us at 6-7 days of 90 degree heat by early next week. The annual average at MSP Airport is 11 days. My hunch is we're going to end up well above that number this summer.
Stay tuned.