Wash, rinse, repeat: Next low rides in Wednesday
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Every day I talk to Minnesotans about our weather. The level of our collective weather angst has reached a new all time high this year. It's no wonder we feel beaten and battered.
Polar vortex. Spring severe siege. June monsoon.
20.58 inches precipitation so far in 2014 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport
2nd wettest year on record to date
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Many of you are as weather worn as the overworked sump pump in your hopefully still dry basement. Monday evening's Interstate 90 onslaught left another trail of severe reports in it's bumpy wake flow. At least the tornadoes stayed in Iowa.
We came up for air for a while Tuesday, but the next low pressure wave is already riding a stuck jet stream overhead right into Minnesota.
The atmosphere is still ripe enough for some scattered storms overnight into early Wednesday, but without a clear trigger mechanism I expect less coverage than what we saw Monday night.
The highest chance for storms overnight should favor southern Minnesota along the still developing warm front. The Twin Cities could see some more bump-in-the-night-storms after midnight into early Wednesday morning.
Look for the aerial coverage on rain and thunderstorms to increase again across Minnesota later Wednesday into Wednesday night and Thursday.
Want to know a dirty little secret of the weather biz? For all the over-hyped Doppler-this and in house corporate weather model that, the vast majority of raw weather data still (thankfully) comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It's what colleges and others are doing with advancing the processing and display of that data that's really cool and valuable to the end user.
Iowa State's BUFKIT Meteogram Generator is one of those, and grabs hold of NOAA's North American Mesoscale Forecast System and Global Forecast System rainfall outputs for the next few days.
You get the idea. Another burst of rain or two still lies ahead this week. At this point, it seems lucky to be getting off with another inch or two.
Rainfall in perspective
Talk about Weather Whiplash for southwest Minnesota. It's literally gone from drought to flood in a matter of days around Pipestone and Luverne.
It's hard to imagine half a year's worth of rain in a few days. But that's exactly what fell in southwest Minnesota in the past week. Average annual precipitation for southwest Minnesota ranges from about 25 to 28 inches.
Some areas around Rock and Nobles Counties have seen 11 to 13 inches in the past week, literally half a year's worth of rainfall.
Big chunks of the rest of Minnesota have endured 5 to 10 inch rainfall totals. That's about two months rain in a week. Small wonder your favorite lake or river is near an all time record high.
The rain in southwest Minnesota was obviously overkill, but for once it was well placed. That should wipe out any drought signatures when this week's updated drought info is released Thursday.
Drier light at the end of a soggy tunnel?
The medium range trends suggest we may dry out next week. The forecast models are still battling it out over the precise timing, but both the Global Forecast System and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts suggest less rainfall in the next 1-2 weeks.
The GFS turns off the faucet with much lighter rainfall in the longer range.
As we say in the weather biz, stay tuned.