Updraft: January 28, 2008 Archive

Upside down weather

Posted at 6:59 AM on January 28, 2008 by Paul Huttner

I love it when the weather does things it's not supposed to.

Overnight temperatures usually fall to the daily minimum just after sunrise. But sometimes at night advection, or the horizontal transport of air thought the atmosphere, overcomes the normal diurnal variations in temperature. When that happens, temperatures can rise at night, or fall during the day after a strong cold frontal passage.

Overnight temps at Twin Cities airport rose 9 degrees in just 3 hours as a warm front pushed through between 3am and 6am this morning!

Twin Cities temperature trend

The warmest air will pass overhead during the morning and midday today. We should see many reading in the lower 40's. Canby hit 48 Sunday with little or no snow cover, but with 4 to 5 inches still on the ground in the metro, our temps should stop shy of today's record of 47 degrees.

We'll get the falling daytime temperature part of the equation Tuesday after the next in our series of arctic fronts this winter barrels through early Tuesday morning.

Enjoy the warmth today; winter comes back in a big way in the next 24 hours with 1" to 2" of snow and a return to wind chill babble. We will bottom out around -10 Wednesday morning in the metro, and -30 up north before temps will moderate again late in the week.

It's a real winter this year!

PH

Your hat, wear it, hold on to it!

Posted at 2:03 PM on January 28, 2008 by Craig Edwards

We’ve come a long way in five days. Much of the state of Minnesota experienced a thaw on Sunday and Monday. Readings around lunch time on Monday were in the 30s and 40s; a far cry from the minus 10 to minus 35 degree temperatures on the morning of the 24th.

While the mercury stretched some 60 degrees in the past week, so has the imagination of a few Minnesotans. I spied two hardy northlanders wearing shorts today. I sincerely hope they get the news about the arctic air coming on Tuesday.

Be prepared for a smack of wind driven arctic air in the next 24 hours. Wind chill readings during Tuesday afternoon will be well below zero. Stow the shorts, find a scarf and remind yourself that winter rules in Minnesota in January.

Minneapolis hourly graphical forecast
CE