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Weather whiplash for Minnesotans with long, hot weekend ahead

Memorial Day weekend is going to be the hottest in more than a decade, with temperatures in the 90s for much of it.

By Rochelle Olson

May 26, 2018 at 1:18AM

Use it if you've got it.

Air-conditioning, that is.

Memorial Day weekend is going to be the hottest in more than a decade, forecasters said. We're not going to set records, but temperatures will be in the low 90s for much of the weekend, hitting the mid-90s in the Twin Cities' urban core heat island on Sunday.

That's 20 to 25 degrees above the average temperatures of the low 70s this time of year.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation is warning about pavement buckling from heat.

"A lot of people were praying for a real summer, and it's here," Star Tribune meteorologist Paul Douglas said Friday.

National Weather Service senior forecaster Joe Calderone agreed. "This one's going to be a hot one," he said.

Scattered storms were a possibility through Friday, but the rest of the weekend looks dry for the Twin Cities.

The weekend provides a dose of atmospheric whiplash for Minnesotans who were all but breaking backs to shovel out from under deep snow in mid-April.

"The atmosphere has a way of auto-correcting," Douglas said. He views this weekend's "stinking hot" weather as a pendulum swing from that snow dump. "Think of this as compensation for a February-like April."

That's a sharp swing in a short time. "We didn't really have much of a spring to deal with, that's for sure," Calderone said.

The weekend's heat is coming in on a ridge from the southwest and the western Gulf of Mexico, Calderone said. Douglas said some Canadian air will come down late next week, bringing temperatures closer to normal.

Calderone said the next week or two will be above average, but that he can't say what the rest of summer will look like. Douglas was bolder.

"My meteorological Spidey-sense says it may be something of an omen for the summer," Douglas said. He's predicting a hotter, drier summer. "It's just the way the pattern is setting up."

The Thursday night-Friday morning thunderstorm didn't replenish south and central Minnesota's rain deficit, Douglas said.

By the time the weekend wraps, Minnesota will be ahead of its usual heat schedule. A typical summer brings 13 days above 90. By Monday, we'll have seen five days in the 90s. "We're not setting records, but it's early," Douglas said.

Sounds like a good reason to grab a scoop of ice cream.

Rochelle Olson • 612-673-1747 @rochelleolson

Levi Brown, 5, squirted his new friend Elijah Coleman, 5, at Cliff Fen Park in Burnsville. See more photos at startribune.com/galleries. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)