Minnesota weather: Rainfall, crashing temps is perfect late fall combo for our drought

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – Our midweek climate has been surreal for a lot of the Twin Cities and the southern half of Minnesota. Temperatures and dew factors have been within the 50s and 60s giving us a summer time really feel. However temperatures crash Thursday afternoon going from the 60s to sub-freezing in just some hours. Whereas that is lower than best for many of us, it is really actually excellent news for our drought.

From late Tuesday by means of Thursday, a lot of the state has acquired extra rain than what we have now seen within the final couple of months. Totals nonetheless diverse wildly with widespread 1-2 inches from Marshall and Morris, east-northeastward towards Duluth and the South Shore. There have been even some areas that acquired greater than 3 inches of much-needed rainfall.

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Rainfall totals throughout Minnesota from Tuesday by means of Thursday morning.

However the rainfall was fairly splotchy throughout the Twin Cities with a swath of 1-2 inches within the southeast metro from Lakeville to Cottage Grove and Hudson, Wisconsin. After which one other 1-inch-plus space within the northwest metro. Nevertheless, the guts of the metro missed out on among the heftier totals with most spots staying nicely underneath an inch. Formally 0.88 inches at Minneapolis-St. Paul Worldwide Airport.

Drought circumstances throughout Minnesota.

Whereas this definitely helped a lot of the realm, the heaviest and most widespread useful rain simply missed the driest areas on our drought monitor typically staying simply north of the purple shaded zones which can be in excessive drought.

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However the excellent news is that our fast bounce into the freezer, and sitting there for the foreseeable future, will rapidly begin to freeze the soil. This may lock in our current moisture because the soil kinds a “crust” stopping moisture from getting in or out, preserving all of that rain locked away till the bottom thaws within the spring … once we hopefully have wetter occasions. 

It is this identical “crust” that forestalls any of our winter snow from really serving to our soil moisture, which is why winter snowpack would not typically assist us get out of a drought. Nevertheless, what the snow does do is assist replenish space lakes and ponds when it melts. So snowfall might not assist soil moisture, it is nonetheless very useful.