Seasonable Friday; cold weekend; then a frigid week
Much of southern Minnesota picked up a fresh coating of snow Thursday to assure that area of a white Christmas. Pipestone and Owatonna both reported 5 inches of snowfall.
Friday travel
Friday will be a fine day for highway travel around the Upper Midwest. Some light snow, mainly flurries, for northern Minnesota should not be a major problem.
High temperatures this afternoon will range from the low teens in northwestern Minnesota to the low and mid 20s in the south. The Twin Cities should reach about 23 on a day when the average high is 25. Winds will be rather light.
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For travelers around the country, the main problems Friday and Saturday will be in the Northeast.
One forecast model for 12 p.m. Saturday predicts snow and mixed precipitation in the Northeast, rain and snow in the Ohio Valley area, and rain with thunderstorms in the South at that time:
A surge of colder weather
Chillier air will arrive for us for the weekend. High temperatures on Saturday are likely to be in the teens just about statewide beneath partly cloudy skies. The Twin Cities should have a high around 16.
Sunday will be chilly, as well.
Lengthy arctic outbreak next week
The seriously cold air will arrive on Monday, Christmas Day. The newsworthy aspect of this outbreak will be the very cold high temperatures statewide and the length of the outbreak as it should last into January.
Low temperatures, however, are not likely to approach record readings. One major feature of climate change is that wintertime low temperatures in the Northern Plains-Upper Midwest area rarely get as cold as they did as recently as the 1980s and 1990s. Record-setting cold has become quite rare.
Frigid Christmas Day
Monday will be a very cold day for Christmas. Look for high temperatures of just 5 below to 10 below in the north and 5 to 10 above in the south. The Twin Cities should have a high around 3 above.
The rest of the week
Frigid weather will continue with temperatures far below normal through next week. Some minor respite is possible on Thursday. Then even colder air will charge in from Canada on Friday and bring us the coldest part of the outbreak through at least New Year's Day.
January outlook
The Climate Prediction Center issued its temperature and precipitation outlooks for January Thursday.
The area in and around the Great Lakes is likely to be colder than normal for the month:
Snowfall across Minnesota and Wisconsin has about even chances ("EC" on the forecast map) of being either more or less than normal:
