The forecast for Western/Northwestern WI.Updated@7:50 pm

Updated at 7:50 PM  to cut back temps for Sunday night...
Not a lot to talk about in the short term forecast cycle… There are some concerns about a frost/hard frost even a freeze is possible for parts of the FA…..Dry conditions return after today with temps slowly climbing back to near normal by the middle to end of next week, however it will be cold along the shores of Lake Superior as winds remain out of the Northeast for much of the short and middle term forecast….Long term depending on what model you look at it could be wet or dry..Details on that later…


***CURRNENT CONDITIONS***

At 8AM on this cold Saturday morning…Temps range from only the lower 40s to middle 40s…Winds out of the North/Northeast from 6 to 14 MPH with gust up to 30 MPH up in Siren, Hayward… All stations are reporting cloudy skies.. EAU is also reporting light rain…Looking at the radar rain is moving into the area from the East… Should see more rain being reported in the next hr…So if it’s not raining at your place yet, give it time it shall be.

***FORECAST DISCUSSION***

Main concern will be the temps through Monday morning… Rain chances today should slowly end as we fly through this Saturday..Nevertheless it will be a blustery raw cold day in the FA.. Temps may not even hit 50 for most of us.. Winds will still remain rather strong today also… Good idea to have plan b ready to put in play…..This evening we will end the rain and should see skies become partly cloudy… Lows going to be tricky… If skies clear soon enough and if winds do become lighter than forecasted we could see some patchy frost….As of right not this does not look to be the case, however something everyone should watch for..Sunday night/Monday morning is what we will have to keep a close on eye as frost and a freeze is looking more likely now for the whole area.….We get a nice long break in the cloudy/rainy spell that we have been locked under for some time now…. Next work week is looking dry, however GFS model does try to bring some rain back into the area for Thursday and Friday…Right now confidence levels are low so will forecast dry for now…

***NOW YOUR FORECAST***

TODAY: cloudy blustery, raw, and cold with showers. Highs 46 to 51.Winds North/Northeast 10 to 20 MPH with gust up to 25 MPH.

TONIGHT: Showers ending than becoming partly cloudy winds North/Northeast 10 to 15 MPH. Lows 38 to 41

SUNDAY: Mostly sunny. Winds North/Northeast 10 to 15 MPH gusts up to 25 MPH… Highs 50 to 55.

SUNDAY NIGHT: Clear cold lows 27 to 32 frost/freeze likely...Winds becoming light.

MONDAY/MONDAY NIGHT: Clear highs 58 to 62 lows 32 to 38 with frost in most areas.

TUESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY: Dry temps ranging from 60 to 65 warming to around 70 by Friday… Lows starting in the upper 30s warming to 50 by Friday.

***LONG TERM FORECAST DICUSSION (SATURDAY MAY 21ST THROUGH MONDAY MAY 30TH )***

Differences are showing up in the long term forecasting models which makes the confidence level rather low..Depending on what model you look at it can be dry or it can be wet…Could be cooler or it could be warm….
GFS shows a 1000 MB low pressure system over Southwest MN on sat the 21st and keeps this area of low pressure around right through Thur… Meanwhile EC model has us dry with a ridge of high pressure just to our East/South East… Then if that wasn’t a kicker the differences keep going right through the end of the period timing issues for the next system to move into the area for Sat the 29th and Sunday the 30th ...

***LONG TERM FORECAST***

SATURDAY MAY 21ST : a chance of showers/storms highs 65-70 lows 50-55.

SUNDAY the 22nd: May see some showers and storms 68 to 73 lows 50 to 55

MONDAY the 23rd THROUGH WEDNESDAY THE 25TH : Off and on chances of showers/storms highs ranging from 65 to maybe as warm as 75. Lows 50 to 60.

THURSDAY THE 26th FRIDAY THE 27th: Will run with dry conditions highs 65 to 70 with lows 50 to 55.

SATURDAY THE 28th THROUGH MONDAY THE 30th: May see some off and on showers and storms highs start off warm 65 to 70 then drop to 55 to 60… Lows 55 to 60 then they drop to 45 to 50 by Tuesday morning….

June looks to be starting on the cold side which really is no surprise as we have been locked into this weather pattern for a very long time

YEAR WITHOUT A SPRING

Everyone is calling this a year with a spring...Yes you are right see below for all the info!
Hope everyone was able to enjoy the warm weather we had…We started are string of below normal temps yesterday..This will hold right through Tuesday..We will slowly moderate back to near normal as we head through the upcoming work week…We will also keep off and on showers going right through Saturday evening….Then will shall enjoy a row of dry days…Frost will become a concern mainly for Sunday and Monday nights…If we clear out soon enough Saturday night we may see some frost also…So this discussion is short and sweet and to the point…Not much to talk about… The year without a spring won’t stop…Temps have been averaging some 15 to 20 degrees colder throughout the FA…Everyone is sick of it….


The 6 to 10 day outlook from the CPC from May 18th through May 22nd is calling for near normal temps for the FA while much of the COUNS sees temps below normal too much colder than normal…Close to home above normal temps will be found over Central MN back into Much of ND…. Precip is forecasted to run below normal through this time frame…

The 8 to 10 outlook is calling for temps to be near to slightly below normal with precip near to slightly above normal the first part of Summer still looks like we will have below temps( May, June, and July)

Before we go into details about this…Lets look at some frost data….

The chances of our last frost breaks down like this.

April 25th we have 10% chance of not seeing any more frost.

May 14th we have a 50% chance of not seeing any more frost.

June 2nd we have 90% chance of not seeing any more frost.

Here is an example On June 2nd there is a 90% chance that there will be no more frost…Or there is a 10% chance we could have another frost…Rather easy to understand right? We won’t talk about our chances of seeing our first frost, will save that for towards fall…

First to make long range forecast like we do at The Weather Center, one has to know what the average temps are for every giving month…This data comes from the CPC and it ranges from the time frame of 1971 through 2000 that is the base line for the average temps per month… One also has to understand if we are in a weak or strong El Nino or La Nina period, you also have to look at the anomalies and sea temps… Also teleconnections such as AO, NAO, PNA, AAO, along with the overall blocking pattern that may be in place.. If one doesn’t understand all of this it would be very hard to make a long range forecast…Ok we have already issued our summer forecast back on April 21st

Now let’s look at the average temps for each month…

Jan: H 19 L -1.2

Feb: H 26 L 5.9

Mar: H 37.5 L 19.8

Apr: H 53.9 L 33

May: H 67.2 L 45.3

Jun: H 76.1 L 54.1

Jul: H 80.1 L 58.8

Aug: H 77.9 L 56.4

Sep: H 68.1 L 47.1

Oct: H 56.3 L 36.2

Nov: H 37.7 L 22.6

Dec: H 23.2 L 6.6

This data is for Rice Lake only.. Nevertheless when we do a long term forecast we look at info from each County in the forecast area then we average that all out to come up with our forecast whether it’s our winter forecast or summer forecast… We will have the second part of the summer forecast issued in the middle part of June…. Now with that all said lets even break this down more..We will start with Jan 2011 and work right up to the present time.

Here is the departure from normal based on mean temps per month as of so far….

Jan: -3.3

Feb: - 1.1

Mar: - 3.7

Apr: -1.5

So far in May: -1.1

Now that is the mean temps with the highs and lows averaged out…. We could even break all this down day by day to show everyone how colder than normal the temps have been or how warm they have been, if we did that you would see the highs have been averaging out 10 to 20 degrees colder on some days with some days near normal and above normal, however overall it has been colder than normal….Either way no matter how you cut it, slice it, dice it…. 2011 has been below normal… This spring has been no exception has you can see…. So what everyone is calling the year without spring keeps on going, whether you want to believe it or not.. It’s all in black and white….

So the cold and snowier/wetter than normal winter has spilled over into the final month of meteorological spring which runs from March through May….

All this info can be found at various climate sites….

Looking at the current conditions as of noon today…We find temps in the upper 40s to lower 50s…..Yes it’s cold!

Looking at the forecasted temps through the weekend high temps in the lower 50s Sat upper 50s Sun…Lows in the 30s…. Looking at next week we start with temps in the lower 60s warming to around 65 on Tuesday. So we are still running below normal…. We warm up to normal by Thur with a forecasted high of 67….

Severe weather write up and pictures.

Looking at last evening…The Weather Center is happy with how the forecast and short term updates/short term forecasts have played out…The cap did break in MN just a tad earlier than forecasted…Which allowed for storms to become severe rather fast…Lots of large hail reports and at least one tornado report…. As the storms reached WI they did weaken some, however later in the evening more storms fired up in Chisago County MN, this did prompt a severe thunderstorm warning for Northern Polk County, Burnett County…As the storms moved East/Northeast other severe thunderstorms warnings were issued for Washburn and Sawyer Counties.. As of this written there was only two severe weather reports across the FA….Short term forecast handle that rather well… Here are the severe weather reports from the Duluth NWS….


2.75” hail reported by Spooner… 1.00” hail reported by Siren…. Non severe thunderstorm hail reports from across the area include Grantsburg 0.50”hail…Hayward 0.50” hail…..

Ok here are some lightning pictures taken last night….

Short term forecast number 2 and the last one.

As thunderstorms move into the FA and move East Northeast they should start to weaken as dewpoints have dropped off into the 50s…There is no SFC  heating taking place…So the threat for severe storms has been reduced to near nothing….However there may be a one or two strong thunderstorms with some small hail….Don’t except anything severe in the FA….This will end the short term forecasting…. Live feeds are back…. With the data I have seen I see no reason to keep issuing short term forecast… Radar trends also showing storms for the most part weaken as then push more into my FA… We still can’t rule out one or two severe storms on the  low level threshold  severe limits in the very far Western Counties of the FA…. But storms are moving into more stable air….

Short term forecast number 1

Showers and thunderstorms have formed or have pushed into the my far Western FA Burnett, Polk, St.Croix, and Pierce…

The broken line of strong to severe thunderstorms remain over in Eastern MN…Seem as the storms move closer to WI they are slowly falling apart,still waiting for our live data feeds to kick back in to say whether the storms will remain severe or not… We still can’t get the info that is used for nowcasting..So as of now we are using radar only, however one needs to looks at near storm environment also,and we don’t have that info as of now our live feeds are down….

Short term update number 3

Radar still showing a broken line of strong to severe thunderstorms…This line of storms is moving into Eastern MN..The storms have been moving Northeast at 20 to 25 MPH…..So far the main severe weather from these storms has been hail…


This broken line of storms should begin to consolidate into a solid line of strong to severe thunderstorms…Thunderstorms should reach my far Western Counties around 8:10 to 8:15 PM then spread Northeast throughout the rest on my central Counties between 8:30 and 9:00 PM…We will have to watch these storms to see if they will remain severe, as of now I don’t have a short term model update and some of our live data feeds aren’t working…Once we can get that info we will issue another update/short term forecast if needed by then….

Short term update number 2

A broken line of strong to severe thunderstorms now extends from Todd County through Northeaster Stearns right through the Western Twin Cities metro area and then South to Freeborn County in Southern MN…

The thunderstorms in Northeastern Todd County has gone severe….Also the cell in Northeastern Stearns County has gone severe. I would think we will see more warning to South as them storms have been getting stronger…. Thunderstorms are moving Northeast… Should form into a solid line within the next hr or so…. Thunderstorms should start to effect my Western parts of the FA between 8:30 and 9 PM this evening….
Short term forecasts will start once the thunderstorms enter the FA, untill then will just issue short term updates....