Air quality improves; cool, breezy Friday; beautiful weekend
Skies should continue to clear heading into Saturday
Air quality has drastically improved for most of Minnesota. We’ll continue to see improvement but elevated smoke lingers aloft. Friday will be cool with temps warming this weekend along with sunshine and dry weather.
Improved air quality
What a difference a matter of hours has made on air quality. Most of Minnesota is back into the “good” category again. We want the air quality index below 50. At one point it was up to 170 in the Twin Cities, a level considered unhealthy for all.
Lingering poor air quality in southeastern Minnesota should also improve through the day Friday.
Not only will we continue to see the smoke leave our surface level air, we should also see it clear aloft making for blue skies again Saturday. It’s possible we see smoke return aloft on Sunday, especially north.
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Nice weekend; warming trend into next week
It will be cool and breezy Friday with a mix of clouds and sunshine. High temperatures will be in just the upper 50s to low 60s for portions of southern Minnesota. Those readings are at least 10 degrees cooler than normal.
Northwestern Minnesota will see more sun with highs in the upper 60s. A northwest breeze at 10-15 mph will make it feel even cooler.
Look for another pretty chilly night Friday night with lows dropping into the 40s south and 30s across northern Minnesota. Patchy frost will be possible in some spots in northeastern Minnesota.
Saturday will bring lots of sun with blue skies and warmer temperatures. Most of us should manage highs in the low 70s.
Sunday will be even warmer with more sunshine, though elevated smoke aloft could return in northern Minnesota.
Highs will be near 80 by Monday and remain around there or warmer into next week.
We should be mostly dry until late next week as well.
Rivers still rising but will drop next week
River levels are still going up slightly but should drop in the next few days. The Minnesota River at Jordan will level out at its crest Friday night and drop below flood stage by early Wednesday.
In St. Paul, the Mississippi River will go up about another foot to peak Sunday at moderate flood stage and then flood back below flood stage Tuesday night.
