Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News

Frigid air mass through next week; warmer in early December?

The cold is finally here to stay for a while.

Temperatures Thursday afternoon
Temperatures Thursday afternoon.
Oklahoma Mesonet

Happy Thanksgiving Minnesota!

Our balmy November has finally taken a turn toward long overdue and seasonably colder weather. November is the 7th straight warmer-than-normal month across Minnesota. May through October were also all warmer than normal.

Temperatures in the Twin Cities are running 6.2 degrees warmer than average through November 22. You can see in the daily temperature graph below how most of the days this month fall in the upper part of the normal to warmer-than-normal range.

November temperatures
November temperatures in the Twin Cities.
NOAA

The normal high and low for the Twin Cities this Thanksgiving Day are 38 and 24 degrees.

Persistent cold air

Temperatures for the next week across Minnesota and the Upper Midwest will be remarkably persistent. Highs Black Friday will run in the 20s to low 30s across our region.

Forecast high temperatures Friday
Forecast high temperatures Friday.
NOAA

Get used to it. The high-temperature maps for the next week look fairly similar.

Overnight lows will be in the teens and single digits north. We’ll be making some lake ice over the next week, but most of it won’t be safe until we see some extended subzero weather.

Light snow Sunday

The weather looks mostly dry for the next week. One exception is Sunday. A cold front dropping rapidly southward through Minnesota will create scattered snow showers and bitter winds. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GFS model picks up the trend. The forecast model loop below runs between 6 am Sunday and midnight Monday.

NOAA GFS model 2
NOAA GFS model Sunday.
NOAA via tropical tidbits

Warmer in December?

The medium-range forecast maps still suggest another milder air mass may ease into Minnesota as we move into the first week of December. NOAA’s GFS model is sometimes flawed, but it generally picks up on medium-range temperature trends. Here’s the temperature output for December 1 through 3. Highs back into the upper 30s and even some 40s look possible for Minnesota in early December.

NOAA GFS model
NOAA GFS model temperature output December 1 through 3.
NOAA via tropical tidbits

NOAA’s 8 to 14-day outlook supports the trend toward milder temperatures.

8-14 day
8-14 day temperature outlook
National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center

Stay tuned.