Minnesota: Drier than Arizona today

Posted at 8:31 AM on November 10, 2009 by Paul Huttner (1 Comments)

Welcome to the Scandinavian Desert.

Our air mass over Minnesota today is drier than in the deserts of Arizona. This happens occasionally, most often during the winter months when air masses from the Arctic Circle invade from the north.

It's interesting to note that dew points are in the 20s and teens today over parts of Minnesota. The dew point in the Twin Cities was 26 degrees at 7am today while in Phoenix, Arizona it was 35. That means there was more moisture in the air mass over Phoenix than in the Twin Cities this morning.

The desert dry air leads to big daily temperature swings. Dry air heats and cools much more readily than moist air. The result can be big "diurnal variations." That's the difference between the morning low and afternoon high temperature each day.

The Twin Cities average temperatures for today are 43 and 28. That's an average dirunal variation of just 15 degrees. With 31 in the Twin Cities this morning and a dry air mass with full sunshine, we'll likely hit close to 60 today. So that's a temperature swing of nearly 30 degrees, or twice the average diurnal variation thanks to the dry air mass overhead.

Get used to the mild dry weather. It appears it will hold through most of this week before our shower chances increase a bit by Friday. It appears a wet storm will pass to our south early next week, and we will resume our stretch of dry tranquil November weather.

Today could be day 5 in a row at or above 60 in the metro. We'll have another shot at 60 tomorrow. We're running a full 8 degrees above average so far in November.

Enjoy!

PH

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Comments (1)

Maybe (?) not so common in early November, but in December, January and February the average dew point is 33 in Phoenix, while the average high in the Twin Cities only tops that at the tail end of February. So it should be almost all the time in winter that Phoenix is more humid than the Twin Cities.

Posted by Jim Kaplan | November 11, 2009 10:36 PM

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