Turning off the fasten your seatbelt sign

After the sun went down yesterday Mother Nature put in a few extra hours of overtime, delivering gusty winds of over forty miles an hour to portions of the Great Lakes. Today the wind will gust to thirty miles an hour at times creating wind chill readings in the teens this morning. Clearing skies and diminishing winds will allow for the coldest night of the autumn season over much of the state. The Metro area will final see minimum temperatures fall below freezing.

Exhuberant meteorologists shared comments on Facebook about the intensity of this expansive and record breaking low pressure system. Two centers of circulation merged over Minnesota on Tuesday to spawn a single storm center; Cyclone Minnie formed near Little Falls. The lowest barometric pressure was measured at Big Fork and validated by the State Climate Office. This one is in the record books in a number of ways, from barometric pressure to snowfall and rainfall totals.

Yesterday, Duluth set a record with 4.3 inches of snow for the date. Check out the other records from Duluth.

Check out the details of this storm courtesy of the staff at NWS Duluth.

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A record daily rainfall was set at Fargo on Tuesday with nearly 1.25 inches of precipitation. Many tributaries in the Red River Valley are rising beyond bankfall. Flood Warnings have been posted along the Red River. Here's a link to monitor the predicted river levels.

Nearly seven and half inches of rain has fallen since September first at Fargo/Moorhead. This excessive total is more than three and a half inches above normal. Do we dare say that the soil, going into the winter season,is saturated?Hydrologists will be all over this for potential flooding in the spring of 2011.

I'm pleased to share with you that the forecasters from Grand Forks NWS and the hydrologists from the North Central River Forecast Center received the Department of Commerce Silver Medal in a ceremony in Silver Springs, Maryland last week. The prediction of the crest on the Red River of the North at Fargo for March of 2009 was within inches of the measured, historical level.

Looking for the silver lining in all this? Check out the eight to fourteen day temperature outlook from the Climate Prediction Center heading into November. Precipitation for this same period is expected to be below the seasonal normal.