Wet and windy today and tonight

Soggy weather continued overnight. Early this morning, rain and drizzle are falling on many parts of eastern and northern Minnesota as well as western Wisconsin.

Duluth, the Iron Range and much of northeastern Minnesota are rainy as well.

In fact, this rain is all part of a large system of soaking rains that extends from Minnesota east all the way to New England.

Rain will taper off over the southern third of Minnesota this morning but will continue for most of the day to the north.

I also am watching a plodding cold front from the west that will accelerate as it crosses our state today.

Wind speeds will increase sharply to 20 to 30 mph with gusts to around 40 mph in open areas following frontal passage, if that has not occurred already. The temperature is likely to fall a bit, as well.

Precipitation will continue tonight and might change to snow or a rain/snow mix at times.

So how much of that precipitation will be snow? That's a good question that cannot be answered with certainty. It appears that most of the precipitation will fall as rain.

Most of it will form as snow in the clouds, but rather warm temperatures in about the lowest 3,000 feet of the atmosphere should allow the majority of the snow to melt as falls toward Earth. So it becomes rain.

I expect that there will be some areas of eastern and northern Minnesota that will receive minor snow accumulations, probably less than an inch on grassy areas, tonight. The most likely locations for accumulations will be ridge tops where the snow will not have to fall through as much warm air.

The ground is still warm and will melt some of the snow that does fall. Another factor is that forecast models indicate that air temperatures are likely to begin to rise late tonight, even before sunrise, so any snow on the ground will not persist.

Thursday will bring cool, drying weather. A warmup into November will begin on Friday.

The next chance of rain will be Friday night-Saturday morning in southern and east central Minnesota. The rain should be gone well before trick-or-treat time.