June 2019 Saint Cloud Weather Summary

Wet and Often Cool Conditions Continued into June

June 2019 Saint Cloud Weather Summary

Summer got off to a slow start in St. Cloud this June. Coming off a late end to the snow season and a wet May, June produced a lot of rain. The St. Cloud total was only 4.62 inches, 0.45 inch above average. However, the St. Cloud Airport barely missed much heavier rain not far to the north (Long Prairie, Little Falls, Mora all with 6-8 inches of rain) and from Montevideo through Granite and Redwood Falls to St. James (red areas on the NWS June rainfall map). Southeastern Minnesota was pummelled with the Rochester Airport picking up nearly 6 inches on June 28 alone from a series of thunderstorms. While the St. Cloud area only received a direct hit on June 27, with 1.47 inch of rain, the area was brushed by many nearby storms. The result was 12 days with at least measurable rainfall.

There was also a wide outbreak of straight-line damaging winds from west central across southern Minnesota on June 4, including a line of heavy thunderstorms that pushed through St. Cloud during the middle to late morning. Also, there was severe weather including heavy rain and a tornado just south of the Minnesota River Valley on June 20.

The leftover and nearby clouds from many thunderstorms suppressed temperatures for a good chunk of the month. The average June temperature in St. Cloud was 66.1 degrees, within 0.5 degree of average. This was the result of milder than average low temperatures (54.7 degrees, 1.1 degrees above average) and near average high temperatures (77.4 degrees, 0.1 degrees below average). While St. Cloud had a warm and humid spell, including its first 90-degree high of the season on June 7, the middle of the month was marked by persistent cool air or clouds. The high in St. Cloud only reached 80 degrees on one day between June 9 and June 25. The average number of June and July nights cooler than 80 degrees is 18.3 days, but St. Cloud had 19 days in June alone. Only heat towards the end of the month pushed the 80-degree+ days to 11. The main reason the month wasn't any cooler was that low temperatures were mainly 50 or milder. 15 June days were cooler than average, but only 2 days were more than 5 degrees cooler than average.

This coolness, coming on the heels of a late end to the snow season, resulted in crop progress being extremely slow (see USDA Minnesota Crop Progress Report for June 24).Growing degree days were running about a third below average through the end of May (plot St. Cloud from the Midwest Regional Climate Center's U2U growing degree day tool). This means that the growing season will have to extend well into October to allow most seed crops to mature properly. 80 percent of first frosts in St. Cloud occur before October 4, so we will have to get into some of the latest frost dates to ensure crop success.

    June 2019 Statistics