Severe weather possible across Minnesota Thursday afternoon

NINA MOINI: Our top story this afternoon-- thunderstorms are expected to roll across Central and Eastern Minnesota into Wisconsin this afternoon. It's possible they'll bring large hail, strong winds, and tornadoes, especially as they travel east. Whatever happens with this cloudy, windy, potentially severe weather that's forecasted today, it's pushing out the unseasonable heat we've been feeling for the last week.

Joining me now with the details you'll need to plan ahead is MPR News meteorologist Mandy Thalhuber. Thank you for being here, Mandy.

MANDY THALHUBER: Oh, thank you, Nina. Very welcome. Always happy to bring whatever information I can to the public.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. Keeping everybody up to speed here. So you're telling us parts of Southwestern, Central Minnesota-- they've already seen some rain from a first round of storms today. What are you expecting for the second round that's coming later?

MANDY THALHUBER: Yeah. This morning, they had a decent line of showers and thunderstorms push through Eastern South Dakota into Southwestern Minnesota. And most impressing was a 73 mile-per-hour wind gust that happened at Lake Benton in Pipestone County earlier this morning. Yeah, so they did have a little bit of severe weather this morning. But, yes, welcome rainfall for that area.

But round two is what we're focusing our attention on. And round two comes between now and about 1 o'clock. We're going to start to see some showers and thunderstorms developing for Western and Central Minnesota.

The Storm Prediction Center, Nina, has the East Metro into North Pine County and most of Wisconsin in an enhanced risk. That's a level 3 out of 5. Now, a slight risk, which is a level 2 out of 5, that includes most of Central Minnesota all the way to the Duluth area. Now, the Storm Prediction Center issues these risks to let us know what we can look for in these storms.

NINA MOINI: Sure.

MANDY THALHUBER: And what we have is the potential today for some large hail, damaging winds, and the threat of tornadoes as well.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. So we're going to, obviously, be keeping an eye on this. You'll be keeping an eye on this for everybody, like you do all the time. But what's on the other side of these storms?

MANDY THALHUBER: Yeah. So what we're going to look for with these storms rolling through the metro area between 1 and 3 o'clock, that's when it's going to hit the metro area, clearing out of here by 4 o'clock, Nina-- on the back side of this is we're looking forward to some cooler temperatures.

We've had record conditions across the state. May 11, we hit 90 degrees. We've been 8 degrees above average for the start of May. But, yes, cooler temperatures for Friday.

We're looking at the upper 50s to low 60s. We're going to have some cloud cover, occasional showers tomorrow. Saturday, even cooler-- 40s for Northern Minnesota, some mid to upper 50s for central and Southern Minnesota, and the possibility, Nina, of some patchy frost Friday night for Northwestern Minnesota, and then Saturday night for Northeastern Minnesota, and then just a slight warmup on Sunday in the low 60s.

But what else we want to talk about-- on the back side of the system, Nina, is we have a wind advisory that is out right now frm 2 o'clock until 9 o'clock for Southwestern Minnesota.

NINA MOINI: OK.

MANDY THALHUBER: So behind this system, we're looking at sustained winds 25 to 35 with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. This includes the Red River Valley area, south of Wilmer to Mankato, including Owatonna and Albert Lea. So that's what we have on the back side of the system.

NINA MOINI: All right, Mandy. I always appreciate hearing from our meteorologists here, obviously, because you're telling people, here's what's possible. We need to be prepared. We're never trying to frighten people. It's just about keeping people up to speed.

So such an amazing service that you provide. And we really thank you for that. And we know that it has been so hot and dry. How are we doing across the state in terms of drought?

MANDY THALHUBER: Yeah. So the drought monitor just was rereleased this morning. It has been dry for the past two weeks. The last time we saw any precipitation was May 1. So we, obviously, expected to see some worsening conditions.

And so the drought conditions, we saw an increase in what we call abnormally dry conditions. It went from 75% of the state to almost 83% So we're really hoping that, along with these thunderstorms, we could get some well-needed rainfall.

And we're hoping that that comes instead of the hail, and the wind, and the tornadoes is the rain we need most of all. But just everybody makes sure between 1 and 3 o'clock, we'll start to see these storms fire. So just make sure you have a way to be alerted to any severe weather that does pop up.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. Thank you, Mandy.

MANDY THALHUBER: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Mandy Thalhuber is a meteorologist at MPR News. We'll have, of course, the latest updates on the weather throughout the day on the radio and at mprnews.org.