There are only a few places in the country that can boast the kinds of weather changes that can be seen in Minnesota, particularly in the fall and in the spring.
Last week was a perfect example. We experienced a full-on winter storm over Valentine’s Day weekend, stretching into the overnight hours of Sunday the 15th and into the early morning of Monday the 16th. Six to eight inches of snow was pretty common in our area, followed by a huge drop in temperature.
On Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day, the morning low in our area was 5 below zero! But by the weekend, things had turned completely around, and some parts of the state were flirting with record highs!
National Weather Service Meteorologist Joe Calderon says it got into the 60s on Friday, March 20th, the first day of spring, with temps climbing into the 70s in our area on Saturday. Calderon says the big warm-up was seen pretty much throughout the state except for far northern Minnesota which saw 40s and 50s, and the southeast corner of the state which had 18 to 24 inches of snow from the previous weekend’s snowstorm…
“That really does a lot to reflect a lot of the incoming solar radiation. So that really does impact the thermometer when you’ve got a deep snowpack like that. But otherwise, most of the state, all that is really left as far as the snowpack is anything that was plowed, piles.”
Officials say the week ahead looks fairly mild, but closer to normal for late March.
