Spring! Highs in the 60s and 70s likely next week

Remember November? That’s the last time we hit 60 and 70 degrees in the Twin Cities. Temperatures reached 76 on Nov. 2 and 68 on Nov. 10.

Fast forward to April 2023. The upper-air pattern over North America is finally ready to push a much warmer springlike air mass back into Minnesota.

Models from Environment Canada, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all strongly favor a much warmer high-pressure ridge aloft over the Midwest starting this weekend into next week.

Here’s NOAA’s Global Forecast System upper-air pattern between this weekend and next Tuesday:

We’ll melt snow quickly across most of southern Minnesota this weekend. That will help boost temperatures into the 60s from the Twin Cities south this weekend, with 50s and a few 40s up north.

By next Tuesday, the warmest part of this inbound springy air mass will arrive. Forecast models have been pretty consistently pushing temperatures into the 70s from the Twin Cities southward, with 50s and 60s up north.

Here’s the latest model temperature output for Tuesday afternoon from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts:

A weather system toward the middle of next week may bring some April rain showers to most of Minnesota.

So it looks like spring will finally arrive starting this weekend. The next phase of our Minnesota weather pattern involves melting snow and rising rivers.

Enjoy the warmup. We’ve really earned it this year.