A soggy start to Sunday, then drier, breezy and cooler

Early Sunday morning

Rain remains rather widespread across eastern Minnesota early this Sunday morning but will move off fairly quickly to the northeast. Because most of the rain is now light, the National Weather Service has cancelled the flash flood watches that had been in effect for parts of southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Flood warnings, however, continue for many of the rivers in southern Minnesota, Wisconsin and especially Iowa. Chief meteorologist Paul Huttner recently posted an Updraft blog discussing flash flooding.

Thunderstorm activity diminished overnight. All of the early-morning lightning is well to our south.

These showers are out ahead of a slow-moving north-south cold front and are being fed by an impressive plume of tropical moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and Texas all the way to Minnesota. This plume shows up nicely on the water vapor satellite images.

Today

Rain should move out of most of the state except the Arrowhead by around noon.

The wind will switch around to the west and pick up speed this afternoon. Temperatures will begin to fall slowly through the 60s during the afternoon as cooler air arrives from the Dakotas, and we might be using the word "brisk" to describe conditions later in the day.

A sign of fall, and eventually of winter, is that we begin to get precipitation on the colder back side of passing low pressure systems. Scattered showers will develop in the northwesterly flow aloft over North Dakota and then spread southeastward across northern and then central Minnesota this afternoon.

While the afternoon-evening rain will be most widespread in the northern third of the state, some scattered light showers could reach southward as far as St. Cloud or even the Twin Cities area by late afternoon.

The sun will set at 7:04 p.m. in the Twin Cities today, exactly twelve hours after it rose. So our periods of daylight and dark are identical. Tomorrow we will start getting more dark than daylight. Sigh.

Charlotte

The temperature in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the kickoff of the Vikings-Panthers game at noon Central Time today should be about 80 degrees with a muggy dew point of around 67.

Monday

Monday is likely to be a mostly cloudy, cool and breezy day with a few lingering showers in northeastern Minnesota. Expect highs from the low 50s to the mid 60s.

Tuesday through Friday

Tuesday through Friday will be a stretch of lovely, dry weather with a gradual warming trend.

Next weekend?

Next weekend is far away, meteorologically, but models are indicating that pleasant fall weather should hang on for Saturday and maybe Sunday.