Frosty yard  in secondary frosts Oct 24th

I am making a catch up post early this week to talk about the the very cold nights we had over the weekend. A chilly high pressure behind a strong fall cold front dropped lows Friday Night dropping to their coldest levels of the season so far across Southeastern Minnesota, a hard freeze was reported in all locations, with some areas dropping to as cold as the lower to middle 20s!

 Frosty lawn weed Oct. 24th 2011

Eastern areas like Winona and Dakota along the Mississippi River as well as areas in Inner city parts of Rochester had their 1st and final growing season ending freeze, making the growing season officially ending across all parts of the area. In our yard in West Downtown the low ending out being 29.F  which is the 1st time it has dropped into the 20s so far this season! The tender annuals on the deck finally got froze off and I was able to clean up the pots and put them away for winter. I got the 1st taste of how much later freezes occur here in Southern Minnesota compared to my home up north becuase having the 1st freeze a week before Halloween seems quite late to me! I also found a sign inner city areas of Rochester truly are warmer. The low temperature Friday Night was 5 degrees colder dropping to 23.F in Oronoco just 5 miles outside of the Rochester City limits where the lows were in the upper 20s.

Lows that occurred

The coldest on the list I complied came from Oronoco with a lows of 23.F and the warmest area report was from Preston with a low of 33.F