Cooler Weekend

We had a bit of a cold start with some locations seeing temperatures in the upper 40°s earlier this morning.  The reason for this was a high pressure influence during the overnight which kept the skies clear, but this high pressure influence will also warm us up to the mid 80°s for this afternoon!  We hang on to the high pressure influence through the overnight tonight, where we'll cool to the mid 50°s.  The clear skies overnight will allow temperatures to cool off pretty rapidly, so we could see some light fog early tomorrow morning.

A low pressure system will begin its approach from the west during the day tomorrow and will thicken up our cloud cover.  However, we'll still manage to get into the low 80°s.  The low will move in Thursday, and bring a cold front in during the evening around 7pm.  This will allow for some thunderstorm development, but these storms won't be strong as the low pressure system will be fairly weak overall.  That front will move out Friday morning, where clouds will linger afterwards and keep temperatures a little cooler in the upper 70°s.

We'll see some cooler temperatures heading into the weekend, the reason being that we'll have an upper-level low pressure system track southeast into Michigan, with an upper-level high tracking into the northern plains.  This will cause the jet stream to have strong Meridional flow, and this will end up creating an area of strong sinking motion over Minnesota.  This will develop a strong high pressure system behind the cold front after that front moves out Friday morning.  The resulting high will then pull in cool air from the north, and depending on how strong that inflow gets, we could possibly see temperatures in the mid 70°s heading into the weekend.

That high will move in over our area Sunday, which will completely clear the skies and allow for lots of sunshine.  This will allow temperatures to warm back up into the upper 70°s for Sunday afternoon, and then into the low 80°s for Monday.