More rain is on the way — but will it make a difference on drought numbers?

INTERVIEWER: You know what they say about April showers. Hopefully this means that we'll see a lot of flowers coming in May. And I'm also hoping that this last bit of rain will get us out of the hole in terms of drought. MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner is here to debrief. Paul, thanks for being here.

PAUL HUTTNER: My pleasure, Emily. How are you doing?

INTERVIEWER: I'm good. All day on Twitter, I kept seeing your posts of how much rain we were getting. So how much rain did we get?

PAUL HUTTNER: This was remarkable. We had some just copious rainfall amounts, especially west of the Twin Cities. A little bit west of Annandale, about 2 miles, a gauge picked up 5.65 inches of rain. That's incredible. That's more than a month's worth of rain in summer.

And we had a lot of heavy totals, especially western metro and west of the Twin Cities. Maple Lake had 3 inches. Sleepy Eye, 2.72. Monticello, 2.7. Buffalo, 2.6. Clearwater up toward Saint Cloud, 2.5 inches, and then a little over 2 inches Saint Peter and New Ulm.

Twin Cities area, we had about 2 inches basically in the west metro and some places in Saint Paul. Roseville had 2.11, 2.05 in Ham Lake, about 2 inches in a lot of the western Twin Cities. You go north, we had less rain-- about half an inch up around Bemidji, Red River Valley, a quarter to a half an inch, and also about 7/10 of an inch in Duluth.

South, Rochester had about 7/10 of an inch. So bottom line is a real good soaker for most of Minnesota. And we even had some thunder and lightning, Emily. And that can release nitrogen into the ground, into the soil. That's why it kind of instant green yesterday when those thunderstorms came through.

INTERVIEWER: OK. Well, and it's got to help the drought monitor, too.

PAUL HUTTNER: It will. We're already out of drought in the Twin Cities and a little bit west. And unfortunately, that's where the heaviest rains fell. But I think that that drought-free area will expand when we get tomorrow's drought monitor update. Some of this rain fell after the cutoff Tuesday morning, so a lot of it will help next week.

We had the least rain in northern Minnesota. That's where we still need it-- northwest Minnesota up through Leach Lake area over into parts of northeast Minnesota as well. So we'll get an improvement, but maybe even more next week as those totals from later Tuesday will factor into next week's update.

INTERVIEWER: Well, what can we expect from the weather this week?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, kind of gray and blustery out there today. 40s across most of Minnesota, still raining steadily through northern, northeast Minnesota, especially. And we're going to stay cool for the next few days-- more typical of April, just that chance of showers today. Tomorrow, the sun will try to come out, 55 in the Twin Cities.

It'll be mostly sunny Friday into the weekend. Windy and chilly Friday, 45, even some 30s up in the far north. And then this weekend, mostly sunny, around 50 on Saturday. 59 Sunday with less wind. I think Sunday, the nicer day of the weekend, but we're going to have to watch for frost, Emily.

It looks like we'll see that Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning in the Twin Cities. Lows in the low-30s, 20s up north. So if you've planted anything yet, like I might have in a few pots, you might want to bring them in the next few days.

It's pretty typical this time of year. April 25 is the average last date for a 32 degrees in the Twin Cities. There's a 90% chance we've seen our last frost by May 4.

INTERVIEWER: OK, that's good to know. I have a few pots out and I have to admit, I've been itching to plant. But I've been holding off because I just always feel like there's more cold coming. Let's chat about this green wave. What is it, and where is it now?

PAUL HUTTNER: So this is kind of cool. There's a thing called the National Phenology Network, and they keep track of the first spring leaf-outs, the first spring blooms as they work their way north through the United States. And guess what? It made it into Minnesota this week.

I can see some little leafies coming out on some of the trees here around the weather lab in the southwest Twin Cities. And it is starting to just happen and spread across Minnesota. Now, that warm weekend we had really helped it.

Now, it's about a week early, on average, for most of Minnesota,. But continue to see that as we go through the next week-- those leafs coming out more and more. And hey, like you said, it won't be long before these April showers lead to spring blooms around Minnesota.

INTERVIEWER: Well, that sounds wonderful. I've just found such joy watching the little buds on the trees just start to poke out. So what's on Climatecast this week?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, there's a paper in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that I found interesting. It's the case for a category 6 hurricane. Several scientists have talked about this.

Five storms have actually already reached that intensity of what would be a category 6. Warmer oceans, we know, are feeding stronger hurricanes. So we'll talk to Andrew Friedman with Axios, who wrote about that in the past couple of weeks here. That's tomorrow on Climatecast on All Things Considered.

INTERVIEWER: Well, that will be very interesting. I look forward to hearing that. Thank you, Paul.

PAUL HUTTNER: My pleasure. Thanks, Emily.

INTERVIEWER: That was MPR's chief meteorologist Paul Huttner. For updates, you can hear him later this afternoon on All Things Considered with Tom Crann, and check the Updraft Blog on mprnews.org.