Foggy start to a mild Monday; possible snowstorm for Thursday
Unless grey is your favorite color, you're probably yearning for a bit of sunshine.
Our Monday will start out cloudy across most of Minnesota, with some areas of early morning fog and freezing fog.
Southwestern and south-central Minnesota will probably see some sunshine on Monday, and it looks like we could see some peeks of sun Monday afternoon in central Minnesota and the Twin Cities metro area.
The metro area will probably see quite a bit of sunshine on Tuesday.
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It'll feel strange to use our sunglasses again!
Temperature trends
Monday will be the warmest day of this week, with highs in the 40s in southwestern Minnesota and mostly 30s elsewhere:
A few spots in the southwestern part of the Twin Cities metro area could touch 40 degrees; 30s will be common in central and southern Minnesota on Tuesday:
Twin Cities metro area highs are expected to be around 30 on Wednesday, then they drop to the 20s for Thursday and Friday.
Colder air moves in next weekend, with highs in the teens. It still looks like our Twin Cities high temp on Christmas Day will be in the single digits above zero.
Monday snow chance
Periods of snow are expected over about the northern third of Minnesota Monday and Monday evening.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's North American Mesoscale forecast model shows the potential snow pattern through Monday evening:
The color chart to the right of the loop refers to the strength of the signal that returns to the radar, not to the amount of snow.
It looks like some spots in northern Minnesota could see a couple of inches of snow by Monday evening.
Thursday snowstorm?
Some snow is expected over central and northern Minnesota Wednesday and Wednesday night.
That's not the main event.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Forecast System model shows a low pressure system spreading significant snow over much of Minnesota on Thursday, with the snow continuing Thursday night and into Friday:
The color chart to the right of the loop refers to the precipitation rate (mm per hour), and not to the amount of snow.
Several inches of snow could fall over much of Minnesota Thursday through Friday, but it's a bit early to lock in a specific snow total:
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has 14.5 millimeters of water content in the snow that falls on Minneapolis Thursday through Friday:
That's equal to over half of an inch of water:
A 10 to 1 snow to water ratio would give us over 5 inches of snow in Minneapolis Thursday through Friday.
The GFS model gives us 88 hundredths of an inch of water in the snow that falls at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Thursday through Friday:
A 10 to 1 snow to water ratio would give us over 8 inches of snow Thursday through Friday.
That's not a forecast for our Twin Cities snow total later this week, it's just an example of what two forecast models are showing. The low-pressure system hasn't even formed yet, and sometimes these systems are weaker than early model forecasts, or they take a different track.
At this point, I'd say that Minnesotans will want to pay attention to forecast updates as we go through the next few days.
Updated weather information can be heard on the Minnesota Public Radio Network, and you can read about storm updates in the MPR News live weather blog.