Early week storms

The big weather newsmaker for early this week will be a storm system slowly tracking from the northeastward from Nebraska. It will be flanked by a warm and cold front as depicted below at 7 PM Monday night.

This system will be able to tap into readily available moisture to set the stage for very heavy rainfall rates now through Wednesday night. One of the precipitation forecasts is indicating as much of Minnesota could pick up anywhere from 1.5-inches to over 4-inches of rain during this period. This rain will fall in the Minnesota River and Red River basins, which will increase river levels dramatically over the next week. Minor flooding along area rivers is a possibility should the forecast hold up, which I believe is a strong possibility with a slow moving system. It will take until Thursday until sunshine returns to much of Minnesota.

As far as the severe weather risk goes for Monday, a couple of the models have toned down the parameters for severe weather from Sunday. However, there will still be a risk for strong tornadoes, large hail, and damaging winds across eastern parts of Nebraska into western Iowa. Highlighted below is the area of greatest unstable air mass for thunderstorm development.

As the warm front from Iowa lifts northward, I expect the severe weather threat to decrease, and the existing thunderstorms to become a heavy rain producer into the overnight hours on Tuesday. A threat of severe thunderstorms returns to Minnesota Tuesday afternoon across the southeast part of the state. There will be additional updates as Tuesday’s episode becomes better defined.

RS