Minnesota's wild weather year: Top 10 weather, climate stories of 2023
Twelve months of weather in Minnesota is usually quite interesting, but 2023 delivered on some extremes.
Let’s take a look at my top 10 list. These aren’t in order of significance, just chronological.
1) Third snowiest winter on record
We received 90.3 inches of snow in the Twin Cities, the third most ever behind No. 1 1983-84 (98.6 inches) and No. 2 1981-82 (95 inches).
One could make the argument that part of this extreme started in 2022 since we had just more than one-third of that snow in 2022 when November brought 13 inches of snow and December brought 19.8 inches.
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January, February and March were all above normal. January was the snowiest with 22.3 inches. Most of that came from the Jan. 3-5 storm that brought 15 inches of snow!
It could have been a snowier month had we not been warmer than normal by 4 degrees since we had a little more than one-half inch (.55) of mostly plain rain on Jan. 16.
We had two such midwinter rainfall events: Another occurred on Feb. 14-15 when we had a ridiculous 84 one-hundredths (0.84) of an inch of rain. Midwinter rainfall events, something that used to be rare, are definitely increasing as our climate warms in Minnesota.
2) Freak early April heat wave
April 11 through April 15 brought four consecutive days in the 80s with a maximum temp of 88 degrees on April 12.
Many have probably forgotten this and also didn’t think of it as a big deal at the time because we’re so thirsty for warm weather after a long winter, we sort of shrug our shoulders at summer temps that early in the season.
While hitting 80 degrees in April certainly happens — usually every other year on average — having four in a row that early never happened until 2023.
That heat, coming that early also set the stage for our next event …
3) Major spring flooding
Another element that made the April heat wave so bizarre was that March was chilly. March saw temperatures more than 4 degrees colder than normal. Our warmest temp the whole month was only 45 degrees.
The delayed and slow thaw combined with our third snowiest winter meant that when temperatures warmed up rapidly and the spring rains came, we saw some of the worst flooding in at least two decades for many areas and even since 1965 for parts of the Mississippi River.
4) Drought and 5th hottest summer
The first few extreme notes of 2023 would be enough but we went from flooding to a prolonged drought that began in May and continued into most of the summer and early September.
At one point the Twin Cities and Rochester were as much as 6 to 11 inches behind precipitation, which is 20 to 40 percent of our annual total.
The summer was also marked by heat, especially June, which was the third hottest behind 1933 and 2021, just two years ago. The heat and drought helped us to rack up 33 days of temps in the 90s, tied for the fifth most in a season.
The grand finale was a record-tying heat wave over Labor Day weekend.
5) Minnesota’s billion-dollar hail disaster
It may not come as a surprise that Minnesota had a lackluster severe weather season as a result of the drought but that doesn’t mean we didn’t get some severe weather. Aug. 11 brought a cluster of severe thunderstorms that produced large on a late Friday afternoon.
Hail as large as baseballs struck the heart of the Twin Cities between 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Winds as high as 76 mph were clocked near Mora in east-central Minnesota.
Because the storms hit the heart of the Twin Cities, the damage reached $1.5 billion as a preliminary assessment, damaging rooftops and cars. It was the only billion-dollar weather disaster in Minnesota and one of just 25 across the whole United States.
6) Record smoke
One of the most memorable (but not in a pleasant way) events of 2023 will be the record smoke we saw. As hot and dry weather developed early in the spring for northwestern Canada, fires flared and kept going all summer long.
According to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, we shattered the previous number of air quality alerts set in 2021 with dozens of alerts issued. In a normal year, we see just two or three air quality alerts.
June 14 was the worst day for air quality when Minnesota had the worst air quality in the country. While fires can be caused by weather or people, the conditions that are making fire seasons more severe and longer are undoubtedly linked to climate change.
7) Record hot September
September was the hottest ever recorded in the Twin Cities and for most of the state.
It was almost a forgone conclusion with record heat over the Labor Day weekend. It was the hottest Labor Day recorded in the Twin Cities with a high of 98. Places like Brainerd hit 102 degrees and even Duluth hit an astonishing 97 degrees.
We saw four consecutive days in the 90s in the Twin Cities over the holiday weekend, the most in 45 years and the second most ever for September. The month remained very warm, pushing that average monthly temperature to levels not recorded before. Most of the month saw a continuation of the summer drought as well.
8) Fall deluge
Keeping with a year of extremes, we suddenly saw a deluge of rainfall late September into October. It started in northeastern Minnesota when Duluth had its wettest September on record with a whopping 10.36 inches of total rainfall.
The last week of September alone brought 5.06 inches of rain to the Twin Cities, which was almost as much as we saw all summer. June, July and August totaled 5.79 inches, just 45 percent of the normal value.
The above-normal precipitation continued into October. We received 4.5 inches in October, almost double the normal amount.
9) Christmas heat wave
The much advertised strong El Niño pattern combined with climate change produced some incredible warmth for winter so far and it was highlighted by the Christmas heat wave of 2023.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day temperatures (55 and 54 degrees respectively) shattered the old record highs of 46 and 51.
We also set three record warm overnight lows Dec. 23-25. Statewide, 410 high and low warm records were set, according to climatologist Mark Seeley.
Fifty weather stations also broke daily rainfall records. The temperatures we saw Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were made five times more likely due to the warming we’ve seen in recent decades, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit group of climate scientists and journalists.
10) Warmest, wettest December on record
We are finishing the warmest and wettest December on record, on a statewide basis.
Only one high and low temperature was cooler than normal the whole month of December, and even then just barely. We shattered the old record for December temperature average set 146 years ago. It will also go down as one of the top ten least snowiest in the Twin Cities.
December caps off what was a very warm year for Minnesota. In the Twin Cities it was the third warmest year in 150 years of records. In Duluth it’ll end up the 10th warmest.
Globally, 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded in 174 years. It likely was the warmest year in 125,000 years, estimated from proxy data from ice core and sediment samples.