St. Cloud, MN Weather Forecast

Most Storms Missed St. Cloud Yesterday

The expected cold front pushed through central Minnesota during the late morning and midday yesterday (see 15Z and 18Z, 10 AM and 1 PM CDT, US surface maps on the 24-hour NWS WPC loop). The showers and thunderstorms were spotty in the St. Cloud area both pre-dawn early Monday (see UCAR Twin Cities radar loop from 1-6 AM Monday and when new storms developed during the midday and afternoon (see College of DuPage north central US radar loop). So, the St. Cloud Airport got only 0.12 inch of rain early Monday and only a few drops during a late morning shower.

Drier Air Moved in During the Afternoon

Behind the cold front, the northwest winds picked up, gusting as high as 36 MPH in St. Cloud (see NWS: last 72 hours of St. Cloud observations). Those winds brought in much drier air, dropping the dew points from the Florida-like lower 70's to the upper 50's, but also allowed highs into the lower 90's (see 20Z-22Z, 3-5 PM CDT, NWS Aviation Weather Center METAR maps). That was St. Cloud's 7th 90-degree high in the past 9 days (see 14-day graph of St. Cloud temperatures from MesoWest) and 8th of the warm season so far, which equals or tops the total of the past two entire summers (average for a warm season is 11.4 days).

Central Minnesota has been under some low clouds overnight (see College of DuPage North America clean infrared satellite loop) associated with a second cold front, but we've been missing the showers in northeastern Minnesota (see College of DuPage north central US radar loop). Dew points have crept back into the lower 60's, but cooler and drier air will surge in as today goes on.

Much Cooler and Drier Mid-Week

So, the promised relief (highs in the upper 70's to near 80 today and tomorrow, in the middle 80's on Thursday and Friday; lows in the 50's) has arrived, returning good sleeping weather.

The two main issues for the middle of this week are:

1. Can the next patch of dense smoke from Canadian Wildfires get here? 

You can see the haze from the thick smoke plume from the Yukon and Nunavut well into Alberta, both with the red air quality on the EPA fire and smoke map and the visible (blue) College of DuPage North America satellite loop (set the number of frames high enough so you can see yesterday's daytime pictures). Note that this smoke plume is headed southward behind the second cold front approaching the US-Canadian border (see yesterday's 4 PM CDT NWS WPC North America zoom-in map). Also, see the EPA Airnow Interactive Air Quality map when you set it to the loop tab.

2. Will conditions favor more wildfires?

The drier and windy conditions today are likely to cause very high to extreme fire danger in parts of northern Minnesota. There is also the potential that the current wildfires spread fairly easily (also see the EPA fire and smoke map to see the nearby Ontario fires). This will continue to be a problem on any warm and breezy day (likely again by the end of the week).

Heat Likely to Return by the Weekend

By the weekend, the high pressure area over the Intermountain Region (large clockwise rotation on the College of DuPage North America mid-level water vapor loop) will edge towards Colorado and Wyoming. That will push the hotter air through Montana, the Dakotas, and into Minnesota (see red areas on the NWS Heat Risk Outlook return over the weekend). That will give us a good chance to see more 90-degree highs, as long as any overnight showers and thunderstorms move quickly enough to give us a lot of daytime sun. The dew points are likely to come back up a bit, but will be mostly in the upper 50's to lower 60's, so the heat indices could be only slightly higher than the actual temperature. Given the hotter temperatures and breezy conditions, fire danger could again climb towards the extreme levels.

Unfortunately, I don't see a shower or thunderstorm chance better than 1 in 5 during the entire week (see NWS WPC quantitative precipitation forecast).