Photo showing bare grass in my West Downtown neighborhood November 9th 2011

Some people woke up to white snowcover this morning, while others woke up to dry grass depending on where you are. A system that was in question on where it would go of much this week ended up sweeping just east of the area. Only the far northwest extent of it clipped the area. Places East of a line from Preston to Washaba received a coating up to 1.50″ of snow. While places west of there were left high and dry. Here in Rochester on Tuesday Afternoon there was a brief time when some ice pellets were coming down, but if you were not outside with in the 5 minutes that it was occurring, you probably did not see it. With this amount, this system only produced a trace of precip. and this also means that I have yet to see snow at my location, which makes us behind becuase Rochester typically sees it’s first snow during the 1st week of November.

White scene from La Crosse,WI

This image from La Crosse,Wisconsin just over 50 miles east of Rochester proved how close the edge of the snow came. My classmates in class were mentioning how traffic that was coming westbound on 94 coming out of Wisconsin had snowcovered cars and chunks of snow in the highway. Which is fairly odd to see when the only snow you see are those chunks!

Snowfall Reports

Preston 0.25″ snow
Highland 1.50″ snow
Peterson 1.50″ snow

 Drought monitor as of November 1st 2011

I was hoping rain and snow would fall from this past system, and becuase it didn’t and lack of rainfall continues to be an issue. I decided to talk a bit about the drought that is currently in place. Fall here in Southeastern Minnesota has been a very dry one. every month since I moved here for college has brought below average rainfall, and some months have been extremely dry. October was recorded as the 8th driest month for Rochester, less then 0.35″ of rain fell at my station. Moderate to Severe drought covers most of Dodge, Mower, Olmstead and Goodhue counties, It has been especially dry in cities like Dodge Center, Austin and Kenyon. Lakes and streams are suffering becuase of the lack of rainfall as well many across these areas are quite low. Our fall color season was compromised and fast becuase of dry conditions and I’ve also noticed our grass take on a brown appearance way sooner then it normally should. Hopefully the more active weather pattern that is in place will bring rains back into the area.