Weekend warmth will linger into next week; ice safety guidelines

Unusually warm temperatures and persistent cloud cover make this feel more like March than January.

Areas of fog linger in many parts of Minnesota Saturday morning. A dense fog advisory (shaded grey) covers portions of Minnesota until noon Saturday:

Carlton County and far southern St. Louis County of northeastern Minnesota are also in a dense fog advisory until noon today.

Some locations will see freezing fog at times.

You can hear updated weather information for Minnesota and western Wisconsin on the MPR News network. 

Updated forecast information will be posted by the National Weather Service offices in the Twin Cities, Duluth, La Crosse, Wis., Sioux Falls, S.D. and Grand Forks, N.D.

Who will have sunshine?

Much of western Minnesota will see some sunshine Saturday afternoon, but clouds will linger over most of eastern Minnesota plus Wisconsin.

Western Minnesota has a good chance of seeing sunshine Sunday afternoon, and forecast models show some breaks in the clouds over eastern Minnesota Sunday afternoon.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s North American Mesoscale Forecast System model shows the potential cloud coverage from 8 a.m. Sunday to 5 p.m. Sunday:

Unusual warmth

The average Twin Cities low temperature is 8 degrees this time of year and the average high temp is 24 degrees. The low temp at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was 31 degrees this morning and metro area highs will reach the upper 30s Saturday afternoon.

Most of Minnesota and western Wisconsin will have Saturday highs in the 30s. There could be a few upper 20s in far northwestern Minnesota.

Sunday morning lows will be in mainly in the 20s, with a few teens in far northern Minnesota:

Sunday highs will be mainly in the 30s, but the Twin Cities metro area could touch 40 degrees and some spots in southwestern Minnesota could reach the lower 40s:

Much of the southern half of Minnesota will reach the 40s Monday afternoon, with 30s to the north.

Twin Cities metro area highs are projected to be around 40 degrees on Tuesday, followed by mid 40s Wednesday then upper 40s Thursday and mid 40s Friday. Above-normal temperatures are expected next weekend and into the following week.

Here’s the Feb. 3 through Feb. 9 temperature outlook from the NWS Climate Prediction Center:

Ice safety

Be careful about ice safety. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has plenty of information on ice safety, including these guidelines:

According to the DNR:

Many factors other than thickness affect ice strength, including air temperature, wind, snow, streams, narrow areas or bottlenecks, sun, shade, fish communities, plant decay, and more. When a layer of snow melts and refreezes on top of lake ice, it creates white ice, only about half as strong as new, clear ice. Double the above thickness guidelines when traveling on white ice.

Addition information on lake ice can be found here.

Weather nugget

Despite cold temps from Jan. 12 through Jan. 20, the average Twin Cities temperature is running 3 degrees warmer than normal this month. This January will be the ninth consecutive warmer than normal month in the Twin Cities.  

Programming note

You can hear my live weather updates on MPR News at 7:35 a.m., 9:35 a.m. and 4:39 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday.