Record setting heat gives way to more normal conditions
As the old professor would often remind us, weather is seldom normal.
Some regions of Minnesota experienced record snowfall earlier in May and two weeks later, Mother Nature delivers the heat.
Here's how the Minnesota State Climate Office detailed Tuesday's heat burst.
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>A taste of summer air surged into Minnesota on May 14th, sending the mercury soaring into the 80's and 90's across a good part of the state. A few locations even cracking 100 degrees. Notable exceptions were locations near ice covered lakes in northern Minnesota and near Lake Superior. At 2pm May 14th, the air temperature was 102 degrees at St. James and 44 degrees at Grand Marais.
The National Weather Service Cooperative Observer at Amboy also had a preliminary reading of 102 degrees.
Extremely dry air was in place as well, with desert-like relative humidity readings in the single digits at St. James. At 2pm while it was 102 degrees at St. James, the dew point temperature was only 28 degrees, creating a relative humidity of seven percent.
An amazing spread in maximum temperatures so far in May for Rochester: On May 3rd, Rochester set a record for the lowest maximum temperature of 33. Less than two weeks later they reach a record high of 97 on May 14th.
The National Weather Service in Chanhassen put together a nice meteorological explanation of the record heat on Tuesday
An area of showers had spread into western Minnesota from eastern South Dakota this morning.
Screen capture from 639 a.m. CDT
Source:Weather Underground
NOAA's IR satellite image validated the colder cloud tops of the showers as they moved into southwest Minnesota.
Satellite image at 630 a.m. CDT
Source:NOAA/NWS
These showers are expected to diminish as they travel east this morning.
There remains quite the disparity in moisture this spring from northwest to southeast in Minnesota. Check out this map from the Minnesota from the State Climate Office on precipitation since April 1, 2013.
Showers and thundershowers are in the forecast from Thursday night through Monday. With any luck, the farmers will receive welcome moisture and your outdoor event dodges the rain. That's probably too much to expect.
Rain on the weekend. We'll deal with it one day at a time.
Potential rainfall from 7 a.m. CDT Saturday to 7 a.m. CDT Monday.
Craig Edwards