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Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News
Paul Huttner

This was likely the hottest meteorological summer on record in the Twin Cities

Meteorological fall begins Wednesday

A group of girls do back flips into a lake.
A group of girls do backflips into Lake Nokomis during a heat wave in Minneapolis on June 8.
Tim Evans for MPR News, file

Go Deeper.

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The weather books on meteorological summer close at midnight Tuesday night into Wednesday. When the final tally is done, it looks like the meteorological summer of 2021 will edge out 1988 as the hottest summer on record in the Twin Cities.

By my preliminary math, it looks like our average temperature for the Twin Cities in summer 2021 will come in around 75.6 degrees. If that number verifies it would just top the summer of 1988 which had an average temperature of 75.4 degrees.

Consistently warm

You can see on the temperatures chart from June through August below that temperature ran above average pretty consistently this summer. There were few cold spikes and relatively few record highs, even during our prolonged June heatwave.

Summer 2021 temperature graph for the Twin Cities area
Summer 2021 temperature graph for the Twin Cities area.
Twin Cities National Weather Service

Persistent June heat wave

Our persistent heat wave in June really drove the trend toward a record warm summer in Minnesota. Temperatures in June ran 5 to 10 degrees above average across much of Minnesota.

June 2021 temperature departure
June 2021 temperature departure.
Midwest Regional Climate Center

Here are some of the more notable records from our June heat wave from the Minnesota DNR Climate Working Group.

Records of note set during June 2021 heat wave:

Duluth, June 4-5: earliest-in-season occurrence of two consecutive high temperatures above 90 F

International Falls, June 4: highest temperature on record so early in the season (98 F)

St. Cloud, June 6: highest minimum temperature recorded so early in the season (74 F)

St. Cloud: most consecutive high temperatures at or above 90 F so early in the season (7)

Twin Cities, June 5: highest minimum temperature on record so early in the season (78 F)

Twin Cities : most consecutive low temperatures at or above 70 F so early in the season (nine)

Twin Cities : most consecutive high temperatures at or above 90 F so early in the season (nine)