Brighter and breezy Friday with a very warm weekend ahead

Updated 9 a.m.

Friday will be mainly dry and partly cloudy. It will be breezy still. Warmer air moves in for the weekend with highs well into the 70s for many. Showers and thunderstorms develop Monday.

Pleasant Friday; very warm weekend ahead

We’ll have partly cloudy skies with some lingering clouds in northeastern Minnesota. Temperatures will be a few degrees above normal for most, ranging from the low 60s south to the upper 40s along the North Shore. It will still be breezy with northwest winds at 10-20 mph.

Look for more sunshine this weekend for most. There will be a few showers possible in northern Minnesota as a disturbance grazes the international border.

High temperatures Saturday and Sunday will be well into the 70s with 80-degree readings possible in the southwest.

A significant system moves in for early next week bringing scattered showers and even thunderstorms late Monday into midweek. Another system will bring colder air and the potential for snow showers later in the week, especially for northern Minnesota.

There could be a widespread 1 to 2 inches of rainfall for many.

We could also see some of the first strong thunderstorms of the season. As of now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center has part of southeastern Minnesota in an early risk of strong storms for Tuesday.

Temperatures will cool late next week also.

Lilacs likely to bloom early?

It will come as no surprise that lilacs are likely to bloom early this year. Almost every indicator of spring, from lake ice outs to frost free soils is coming at least 10 days early to as much as a month early.

The Minnesota State Climatology Office and the state Department of Natural Resources keeps track of phenology data, including the date of the first lilac blooms in the Twin Cities.

I plotted a decade and a half of data and the corresponding average temperature for March and April. There’s a strong correlation between March and April average temperature and the date of the first lilac blooms:

Plugging in March and April average temperature so far this year along with forecast average temps for the rest of the month, I come up with a temperature anomaly (departure from normal) of about 4.3 degrees.

This would correspond to a date of April 29 this year, which is 11 days earlier than the average of May 10. All of the data this year points to an early season for gardeners and farmers.