Highs in the 50s to around 60 degrees in the Northland on Sunday (cooler near Lake Superior) keeping an eye on rain/snow chances for midweek, and another storm threat (rain/snow) ~March 14-16

An upper level ridge currently over the Northern Plains will move east and will be over the upper Midwest on Sunday. Even warmer temperatures will cover most of Minnesota on Sunday as this ridge moves overhead, with highs in the 50s, with 60s across west-central and southern Minnesota, but as is often the case in early Spring, temperatures will remain a lot cooler near Lake Superior where highs will be in the 30s as an onshore wind continues Sunday.

• An area of low pressure along with its warm front and cold front will move across the Northland on Sunday, but it doesn’t look like will get any rain out of this system.
• Our next best chance to get some precipitation in northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin comes in the Tuesday-Thursday, March 9-11 time frame, but there is uncertainty in model data as to how this system will evolve, however, the trend is for less precipitation compared to what it looked like a few days ago. Looks like precipitation would start as rain, but could mix with or change to a period of snow sometime late Wednesday-early Thursday.
• Another system is showing up in model data in the March 14-16 time frame, but similar to the midweek system, this one also has quite a bit of uncertainty with it in regards to the track, timing, intensity and whether we see rain or snow if this system affects us at all.

A lake wind looks to continue on Sunday which will keep temps in the 30s for lakeside locations, but on top of the hill in Duluth highs might get close to 50 on Sunday. Mild temps look to continue Monday and Tuesday, with Monday holding the best chance at seeing 50 degree temps for lakeside locations. Looks like a lake wind returns then for Tuesday, meaning cooler by the lake, again.

The weather pattern does look to become a little more active across the Plains, and possibly farther north into the upper Midwest and western Great Lakes starting around midweek.

Shown below is the 12z GFS model 500mb forecast valid from March 10-15, 2021.

Note: The system which may impact parts of our area late next weekend or early the following week digs pretty far to the south before ejecting out into the Plains next weekend. This will be a system to watch in model guidance this week to see how those models handle this feature.

Tim