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Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News
Ron Trenda

Mild temps this week; looking for snow chances

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Our weekend sunshine was great!

Sunny days are especially nice in December, which is typically our second-cloudiest month of the year in the Twin Cities metro area.

Temps were much warmer than normal across Minnesota this weekend, and our snow cover continues to shrink.

Snow lovers will have to be patient.

Temperature trends

The Twin Cities metro area had highs in the 40s this weekend.

Our average high is only 27 degrees this time of year.

Monday highs will be in the 20s over far northern Minnesota, with mostly 30s elsewhere:

rt1217h4

Parts of southwestern Minnesota could creep into the lower 40s.

Temps rebound on Tuesday.

Twin Cities highs are projected to reach the lower 40s Tuesday and around 40 on Wednesday, followed by highs in the middle 30s Thursday and Friday.

The warmer-than-normal temps could continue into Christmas week; the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center shows a tendency for warmer than normal temps over Minnesota and Wisconsin during the Dec. 22 through Dec. 26 time period:

rt1216out
National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center

Snow chances

There still aren’t any big snowstorms in sight for the coming week.

Parts of Minnesota could see a mix of rain showers and snow showers Wednesday and Wednesday evening, with  some light snow showers lingering in the southeast on Thursday morning.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Forecast System model shows the potential precipitation pattern Wednesday through Thursday morning:

rt1216rad2
NOAA GFS precipitation rate (mm/hour) Wednesday through Thursday morning, via tropicaltidbits

The color chart to the right of the loop refers to the precipitation rate (mm per hour), not to the total amount of rain or snow.

As always, updated weather information can be heard on the Minnesota Public Radio Network, and you will also see updated weather info on the MPR News live weather blog.

Season snowfall

Our Twin Cities season snowfall total sits at 7.3 inches right now.

That's about 9 inches lower than our typical season snowfall through Dec. 16.

Does that mean that we'll have less snow than normal during our 2018-2019 snow season? Not necessarily.

Through Dec. 16 of 2017, our Twin Cities season snowfall total stood at 5 inches, and we still ended up with 78.3 inches of snow for the 2017-2018 snow season.

We saw an impressive 26.1 inches of snow at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport during April of 2018!