I think a lot of people will remember this March.  Who can forget the birds chirping, flowers and trees budding early, and of course golf courses opening up almost a month before normal in some cases.  In the middle of the month we had a stretch of days that would have made for good pool days in the middle of Summer.  In a normal year, you would think that extreme “heat” in March would be followed up by a cold blast of some sort.  With the lack of snow cover, cold airmasses crossing over the ground tend not to hold their chill without a good snow pack to insulate them was one reason we didn’t see that.  Another reason, most of our weather systems came from the pacific area, rather than down from Canada where it would have been slightly cooler.  So how warm were?  The graphics below, and more importantly the numbers on them are mind blowing!

The first is the recap of some of the records we broke.  The warmest all time high in March was 82°.  That was one record, probably the only one that didn’t fall this month, but we cam extremely close with two days hitting the low 80s. (81,80)  The graphic below breaks down the big picture of March.

This is where the the REAL eye popping stat comes in.  In doing calculations to determine how warm we were for the month of March, I had to do them multiple times to make sure I was doing it right.  The graphic below shows us where we stand for warmest March of all time.  You would think with the temps we had that we’d be right up there.  Well, we were and then some.  These numbers are compiled by averaging the daytime high and overnight low of all 31 days of March.  By no surprise we were the warmest of all time.  What was a HUGE surprise to me was that we destroyed the previous warmest month of March of all time by 6.3 degrees.  That March had been our warmest March for the last 112 years and we blew it out of the water this year!  Here is the breakdown!

Posted under climate, history, just cool, minnesota, Records, Rochester

With just two weeks remaining in meteorological winter we find ourselves getting closer and closer to setting a new record for the warmest winter in history.  As our temperatures continue to hover some ten degrees above climate average this month, our overall mean temperatures for the winter continues to climb, drawing us closer to the highest mean temperature ever recorded in Rochester of 25.1° set ten years ago in 2001-02.  The way things appear right now, we’ll pass that record in the next week or two as the forecast is calling for highs in the 30s with lows mainly in the lower and mid 20s.  Here’s the official statement and summary of our current situation from the National Weather Service in La Crosse, Wisconsin:

Warmest Winter Since 2001-02…So Far

Posted under winter weather

“Here is a photo taken in my yard (near the Zumbro River). I call it a Study in Two Colors. The sky was so deep and the yellows……….well, so yellow. Tis sad, indeed, that they are almost gone for this year.”

“We used all the snow in our front yard to make the first snowman of the season.”

Posted under KTTC, Viewer Pics, weather

While temperatures rolled into record territory for the 2nd day in a row here in Rochester, a bevy of winter storm headlines have been hoisted throughout the Dakotas, including a Blizzard Watch. Ahead of this storm system we’ve felt uncomfortable warmth, and there likely will be some severe thunderstorms throughout the Midwest on Wednesday…especially from southwest Minnesota southward to Oklahoma.

Today’s high in Rochester was 74°, toppling the old high of 72° set back in 1975.  Today’s high also set a record for the warmest Election Day on record in Rochester, MN and La Crosse, WI.

Keep an umbrella on stand-by Wednesday with a slight chance of rain in the morning with an increasing chance of scattered thunderstorms by the late afternoon through the evening hours.  Model data is coming together to show more confidence in much colder, blustery, and even snowy conditions from Friday through Saturday.  At this time, minor accumulations look possible, especially from Friday afternoon into Saturday morning.

Posted under KTTC, severe weather, weather