A mess of precipitation for MLK Jr. Day, but mostly rain in the metro

Forecast loop from Midnight Sunday Night through 6 PM Tuesday.

A messy wintry precipitation system is moving in as we head into Martin Luther King Jr. Day, with some of it lingering into Tuesday.

Starting off with the freezing rain chance, a glaze to about 0.05" of ice is expected from western Minnesota into parts of central/northern Minnesota. Most of that will fall through Monday morning.

From southwestern to northeastern Minnesota, overall 1-2" of snow is expected to fall through Tuesday. After the rain changes over to snow Monday evening here in the metro, up to about a half an inch could fall.

Meanwhile, across parts of southern Minnesota, at least a quarter inch of liquid-equivalent precipitation (rain or melted snow/ice) is expected to fall.

So, as mentioned above, precipitation will mainly stay in the form of rain during the day in the Twin Cities. As we head toward nightfall, however, precipitation will change over to snow. Temperatures will stay fairly steady in the mid-30s throughout the day, allowing that cold rain to fall.

We'll keep an eye on that wintry precipitation as we head through Martin Luther King Jr. Day across the state. For western and northern areas, it'll start off as freezing rain before transitioning to snow or a rain/snow mix. In south-central/southeastern areas, it'll be in the form of rain most of the day before transitioning to snow into the overnight period. Highs will mainly be in the 30s statewide - 10-20 degrees above average.

Forecast six-hour precipitation through Noon Thursday

We continue to track another storm that'll move through the Plains to the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley as we head into the second half of the week. Currently models have the greatest impacts from the storm to our south and east, but we continue to watch the potential of the northern side of the system clipping some portion of southern/eastern Minnesota into Wisconsin. Enough cold air would be in place where it would be snow falling from this system if we did see anything from it. We'll continue to track it - and its possible impacts - the next several days.

_______________________________________________

As we head through the full third week of January here in the metro, highs are expected to remain above average in the 30s Monday and Tuesday, dipping into the 20s for the second half of the week.

While it looks like we remain in the 20s to around 30F through next week and the beginning part of the fourth week of January... the shoe looks to drop toward the last 7 days of the month with colder than average highs in the teens expected to return.

As we are about half way through the month, lets look at the climate numbers so far. We are above average across the board!

_______________________________________________

If Skies Clear You Can Check Out A Green Comet
By Paul Douglas

You can wish upon a star - OR - gawk at a greenish-colored comet later this week. Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) - it really needs a better name - makes its closest approach to Earth on February 1 (about 26 million miles). But a new moon this upcoming Saturday may lead to the best viewing conditions. Weather permitting, of course. The comet, looking like a fuzzy star with a touch of green, should be visible in the morning sky with binoculars, possibly with the naked eye. The last time this particular comet flew past Earth was 50,000 years ago, much to the delight of our Neanderthal relatives

A cold rain today ends as an inch of slushy snow tonight. The next gently-used California storm pushes snow into the region on Thursday, and a few inches of snow may pile up. With afternoon temperatures near 30F roads may be a decent shape. Or not.

_______________________________________________

Paul's Extended Twin Cities Forecast

MONDAY: Rain today, 1" slush late. Wake up 34. High 36. Chance of precipitation 100%. Wind E 7-12 mph.

TUESDAY: Clouds linger, flurries taper. Wake up 31. High 33. Chance of precipitation 50%. Wind NW 8-13 mph.

WEDNESDAY: Mostly cloudy and dry. Wake up 29. High 34. Chance of precipitation 10%. Wind NE 5-10 mph.

FRIDAY: Cloudy with better travel. Wake up 23. High 27. Chance of precipitation 10%. Wind W 5-10 mph.

SATURDAY: A few sunny breaks. Wake up 22. High 26. Chance of precipitation 20%. Wind SW 7-12 mph.

SUNDAY: Clipper arrives, light mix north? Wake up 23. High 35. Chance of precipitation 30%. Wind SW 10-15 mph.

_______________________________________________

Minneapolis Weather Almanac And Sun Data
January 16th

*When do we see 10 Hours of Daylight?: February 6th (10 hours, 1 minutes, 13 seconds)
*When is Sunrise at/before 7:30 AM?: February 3rd (7:30 AM)
*When is Sunset at/after 5 PM?: January 17th (5:00 PM)

_______________________________________________

This Day in Weather History
January 16th

1921: Winds gusting up to 59 mph create a 'sand blizzard' across southwest Minnesota and a snowstorm across the north.

_______________________________________________

Heavy snow will continue to fall from the Sierra into parts of the Rockies, with feet expected. The heaviest additional rain will fall along parts of the West Coast into the Southwest, where some could see at least an additional 2-3" of rain.

_______________________________________________

How bad will 2023 tornado season be? Climate change may have fueled Alabama storms, experts say

More from AL.com: "A La Nina weather pattern, warm moist air coming from an unusually toasty Gulf of Mexico, likely juiced by climate change, and a decades long eastward shift of tornadoes came together to create the unusually early and deadly storm system that hit Alabama Thursday, meteorologists said. And it may be the start of a bad tornado year, one expert worries. Early signals, which could change, "indicate the overall pattern remains favorable for an above average tornadic year," said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, who studies tornado patterns."

The Key to California's Survival Is Hidden Underground

The Surprising History of Climate Change Coverage in College Textbooks

More from Inside Climate News: "If you were an American college student studying biology in the 1970s, your course textbook probably contained information about standard topics like photosynthesis, cellular division, genetics and food chains. But you might also have come across something less expected, tucked in the last few pages of your book: an explanation of the greenhouse effect and what it could mean for global temperatures in the future. "​​I was really, really surprised that it had been in our textbooks for that long," said Jennifer Landin, an associate professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University whose accidental discovery of a passage about global warming in a 1978 textbook sparked the idea to conduct a study of climate change coverage in undergraduate course materials. In the study, published in December, Landin and her co-author, Rabiya Arif Ansari, sought to understand how climate change was taught in college classrooms by analyzing 57 textbooks from the past 50 years."

_______________________________________________

Follow me on:

Thanks for checking in and have a great day!