GophersInIowa
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Did not expect to wake up to everything covered in snow again. lol.
A regular winter is one thing. This one essentially started in mid-November, whenever the Northwestern game was, temps were low 20s. Now it's mid-April with snow, closing in on 6 months of this crap.It takes a certain type of person to appreciate the winters here and I'm not one of them.![]()
A regular winter is one thing. This one essentially started in mid-November, whenever the Northwestern game was, temps were low 20s. Now it's mid-April with snow, closing in on 6 months of this crap.
Where is a good source for storm totals? For snow or rain events?
I'm curious where people find these.....
Here are a few....
1. Probably the most comprehensive is this link from the U of M. It takes some works to get the data you may be looking for, but it contains the full reports (high/low/rain/snow/depth) going back to the beginning for dozens of official climate sites in Minnesota.
2. Also from the U of M is the Climate Journal. This is an ongoing effort to built a narrative for major weather events across Minnesota. If you are interested in a specific event I would check in here. Some of them contain detailed precipitation totals for many sites.
3. There is CoCoRaHS. This is a volunteer precip reporting organization with tons of reports coming in each day. However because anyone can do it and due to the sheer volume of them, the reports are not always accurate.
4. Similar to #1, the National Weather Service started tracking information for their reporting sites. The downside here the info at this link is only for the NWS - Twin Cities coverage area. So to find data for places like Duluth or Rochester, you would have to go to the NWS office pages for them.
Going back in history, what were the craziest period of years for MN weather? The 1917 timeframe was really bad, but my vote goes to the late 1890s. High of 76 degrees in Feb of '96, followed 13 months later by a low of 50 below (yes, different cities, but they're not all that far apart).
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This is a great post. I think I heard once that hot summers are often preceded by cold winters, or at least winters with some extreme cold temps, but I can't verify that.In my lifetime 1998 was memorable.
- You had the Comfrey - St. Peter tornadoes in March.
- Then there was a largely forgotten about billion-dollar sever weather event in Mid-May: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15,_1998,_Minnesota_storms
- Followed a couple weeks later by one of the largest derechos in U.S. history. This is personally the worst storm I have ever experienced. (which also included the famous tornado that wiped out Spencer, SD): https://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/may30-311998page.htm
- Then in November we had a storm system which set (at the time) the all-time lowest pressure in Minnesota: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/climate/journal/low_pressure_981110.html
Prior to my life, for some reason the 1960s seems to have had the craziest run of tornadoes.
- May 6, 1965 Outbreak, the worst outbreak in Twin Cities history: https://www.weather.gov/mpx/19650506_Twin_Cities_Tornadoes
- April 30, 1967 Outbreak: https://www.weather.gov/media/mpx/April30-1967-MN-Tornadoes.pdf
- Jun 13, 1968 Tracy F5 tornado: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/...es-of-tracy-minnesota-tornado-haunt-survivors
- Aug 6, 1969 tornado outbreak, the largest ever in Northern Minnesota: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_August_6,_1969
- Throw in the 1965 Mississippi floods, and that is quite the five-year period.
Also, while 1936 is regarded as being the hottest Minnesota summer ever, several record low temps were set in Jan & Feb of that year.