Friday snow for some; another arctic weekend

The final snow tally at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Thursday was 1.3 inches.

That brings our Twin Cities snowfall total to 6.5 inches this snow season, which is 14.2 inches below average for this point in our season:

Friday snow chance

The Twin Cities metro area will be clipped by some light snow Friday afternoon. Minor accumulations of one half inch or so are possible in parts of the metro area.

Some locations in southwestern Minnesota could see from 3 to 5 inches of snow this Friday, and there is a winter weather advisory until 4 p.m. Friday for far southwestern Minnesota, including Worthington.

Mankato could see 2 to 4 inches of snow, with an inch or two in Rochester and much of southeastern Minnesota by Friday evening.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's North American Mesoscale forecast model shows the potential snow pattern Friday and Friday 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.

Cold this weekend and New Year's Day

Arctic chill will be with us right through New Year's Day.

Our Friday highs will be a few degrees above zero in southern Minnesota, and slightly below zero in the north.

Lows late Friday night and early Saturday will be in the 20s below zero north, with teens below in the south:

Highs Saturday stay below zero statewide:

Similar highs are on tap for Sunday.

On New Year's Day, some spots in central and southern Minnesota top out around zero:

On a positive note, NOAA's Global Forecast System model shows highs in the teens next Tuesday and Friday in the Twin Cities metro area, with 20s possible on Jan. 6 and Jan. 7.

Dangerous wind chills this weekend

Parts of Minnesota will have dangerous wind chills this weekend. A wind chill warning is in effect from 6 p.m. today to 9 a.m. on New Year’s Day in much of northern Minnesota, where wind chills of -25 to -50 are expected. Frostbite can happen in 10 minutes or less with those wind chills.

There's a wind chill warning for west-central and central Minnesota from 11 p.m. Friday to noon Saturday for wind chills of -35 to -45.

The Twin Cities metro area could see weekend morning wind chills in the -25 to -35 range.

Here are the potential wind chill readings this weekend:

Your warmest coat, hat, gloves and mittens will come in handy the next several days.

Climate tweet

Thursday's Presidential global warming tweet deserves a mention.

Dino Grandoni of the Washington Post has a great discussion of the tweet, and the difference between short term weather conditions and climate change:

 But a single cold streak does not prove climate change is fake. Man-made global warming, as the name suggests, refers to the steady rise of average temperature of Earth’s climate system because of the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Indeed, at the moment much of the rest of world is warmer than normal even if a portion of the United States is chilly.

Even in this time of climate change, we will have some cold days.

Globally, 2017 will be one of the warmest years on record:

In today's WeatherTalk blog, Mark Seeley of the University of Minnesota indicates that most months were warmer than normal this year in Minnesota:

Despite a near equal distribution of days with above normal and below normal temperatures, the month of December will end up colder than normal across the state, only the third month this year (along with May and August) with a mean monthly temperature that was cooler than normal.

Programming note

You can hear my live weather updates on Minnesota Public Radio at 7:49 a.m. Thursdays and Fridays, and at 7:35 a.m., 9:35 a.m. and 4:35 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday.