A humid flow of air coming off Lake Superior will lead to areas of fog and mist near the lake tonight and possibly into Friday as well since the wind direction won’t be changing through Friday evening, in fact it looks like we could keep a NE wind going right through the weekend.
Goes-16 visible satellite imagery from Thursday afternoon shows the low clouds moving down the lake from NE to SW while other clouds move from NW to SE today.
Source: https://weather.cod.edu/
Local Storm Reports from Wednesday night and Thursday morning, August 19-20, 2020.
Source: https://www.weather.gov/dlh/
9:07 AM 8/20: Marine Thunderstorm Wind 36 mph. La Pointe, WI (Ashland County)
7:40 AM 8/20: Hail 0.50 inch. 11 NE Island Lake, MN (St. Louis County)
6:25 AM 8/20: Hail 0.75 inch. 3 W Iron Junction, MN (St. Louis County)
8:07 PM 8/19: Hail 0.88 inch. Buyck, MN (St. Louis County)
7:21 PM 8/19: Hail 1.25 inch. Crane Lake, MN (St. Louis County) Half dollar sized hail at a resort in Crane Lake.
Note: If you were inside those two white lines you probably had a decent downpour earlier today as radar estimated around a half inch to inch of rain, but everywhere else including in Duluth and Superior just enough drizzle to wet the pavements this morning.
Not a whole lot of change in the weather pattern today as intense heat continues over the Dakotas while a cooler NE flow developed as expected near Lake Superior today, and expect this to continue into the weekend.
Source: RTMA model; https://lab.weathermodels.com/
Looks like it will stay kind of humid across the Northland through early next week with dew points in the 60s to around 70 degrees. We probably won’t get a push of much drier/low dew point air until sometime mid to late next week the way it looks now.
Source: RTMA model
A frontal boundary will remain nearly stationary across the Northland through Saturday morning, this front will act as a source of lift while a warm, humid and somewhat unstable air mass will be in place resulting in the possibility for scattered downpours and thunderstorms at times, especially Friday into Saturday. Note: Computer models are all over the place regarding timing and what areas which could see rain and storms through Saturday, but with a stationary front near the area, as well as a lake breeze boundary, the potential is there for some storms from time to time. The overall threat for severe weather is on the low side through Saturday, but an isolated strong to severe storm could occur, but I think the bigger threat will be from heavy rainfall and perhaps some localized flash flooding where thunderstorms do occur.
There is a Marginal Risk of severe thunderstorms across all of northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin for Friday (dark green area on map) Gusty winds and hail are possible with a few of the storms, and downpours and lightning will also occur in and near any thunderstorm on Friday.
Source: https://www.pivotalweather.com/
Still trying to catch up in precipitation in Duluth, Minnesota as we’re still nearly 6″ below normal since January 1st, and around 2.60″ below normal since June 1st. Just haven’t been able to stay in a wet pattern for very long so far this year which is why precipitation totals in Duluth continue to run below normal for the year and for the summer. Note: Could be setting up for a real wet fall around here if we have any chance of getting back to normal for 2020.
Drought conditions persist in parts of Minnesota.
10% of Minnesota is in Moderate Drought (orange areas on map) up from 7% last week.
26% of Minnesota is Abnormally Dry (yellow areas on map) this is down from 27% last week.
Source: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Drought monitor for Wisconsin as of August 18th, 2020
1% of Wisconsin is in Moderate Drought (orange area on map) up from 0.03% last week.
10% of Wisconsin is Abnormally Dry (yellow areas on map) up from 5% last week.
Thanks for reading!
Tim
