Milder weekend, snowy rumors next week?
Sustained cold air is hard to come by this December in Minnesota. We opened the month with four days of balmy breezes and highs from 47 to 57 degrees. That blew out many temperature records across the Upper Midwest.
Colder air finally poured south by Dec. 5, but so far this month temperatures are still running 4.6 degrees warmer than average at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
We dig out of the (minor) deep freeze over the next 48 hours. High temperatures in the 30s are on tap for the Twin Cities and southern Minnesota this weekend.
Snow chances developing next week?
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The weather maps look interesting next week. Forecast models are wrestling with a developing low-pressure system. The American, Canadian, and European models hint at potentially significant snow for Minnesota, possibly the Twin Cities toward the middle of next week. It's still far too early to take any of Thursday's solutions as weather gospel. Here's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Forecast System for next Wednesday and Thursday.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts model brings significant snow into the Twin Cities next Thursday. The Euro's 15.7 mm of precipitation translates into .62 inch of liquid. That would translate into a cool half foot of snow at a 10:1 ratio.
Again, it's too early to know if the models are dreaming up a snow-lovers fantasy, or if they are onto something here for next week. But I'll be watching.
AGU: Climate and extreme weather dots connecting
Two major stories that grabbed my eye from the AGU conference in New Orleans this week. The first teases out an attributable increase in Hurricane Harvey's rainfall of 15 percent to 38 percent.
The second pins down 3 extreme events from 2016 that simply would not have occurred without climate change.
The dots between climate change and extreme weather are filling in. Fast.