No easing into winter this year. Nope. We fell off a temperature cliff on Nov. 26 and didn’t recover until yesterday. If you’re keeping score, that’s 20 days in a row at or below freezing. You have to go back to 1985 to find a sub-freezing streak this long and early in the winter.
Minus 11 degrees at MSP on Sunday makes this the coldest start to December since 2000. Will it last? I’ve been talking about a colder, snowier than normal winter for months. Will it be 2014 (polar vortex) cold? I’m not yet convinced. Until and unless we get a persistent blocking high over Alaska and another over Greenland to trap whirlpools of Siberian air over the Upper Midwest, we’ll probably see big temperature swings, up and down.
Speaking of thaws, a little rain later today and tonight ends as a coating to an inch of slush late Thursday. A chilly weekend will give way to more highs in the 30s next week. No megastorms brewing.
Snowmobilers are grinning again, and good news for ice fishing: Ice growth on lakes is running two to three weeks ahead of schedule compared to the past decade.
