Squall line approaching Rochester after a warm humid day April 15th 2012.

What changeable weather from one day to the next! I’ve never seen quite an extreme of this nature before! Sunday was Sunny, very windy and Humid with highs near 80.F with thunderstorms and dewpoints in the mid 60s, and Monday was cold in the mid 40s with even light snow in the morning! It was all thanks to an a strong storm system that moved across the Upper Midwest. Sunday we were on the warm side of the system, after morning thunderstorms swept through and brought some much needed beneficial rains, skies cleared and temperatures were quite warm in the upper 70s. This came with a strong pressure gradient which created very strong winds. Many stations were over 45MPH and some were slightly under 50MPH.  Towards evening the storm systems strong cold front was approaching the region and a line of thunderstorms stretching from near Minneapolis/St Paul to the Iowa Boarder pushed through the area bringing heavy downpours and gusty winds. The temperature at my station dropped very quickly as the storm front moved in going from 70 to 55 in about 15 minutes! There was no damage reported from the storms as the swept through.

Morning Sleet/Snow in Rochester April 16th 2012

Just in case people missed the short lived sleet/snow this morning here is a photo! Around 9:30am a sleetish snow mixture fell for about 5-10 minutes, it was reported as “snow” at most airports but it looked more like heavy sleet becuase the snowflakes were not fully formed. It appears more like drizzle then sleet, Either was it was frozen! Although the actual highs since midnight were in the mid to upper 50s at many locations, Daylight highs were actually closer to the low to mid 40s, a near 40 degree temp swing from Monday to Sunday! Area Rainfall amounts over the course of the last 2 days was around half inch to and inch. Here in Rochester we got 0.80″ between the rain Sunday and the rain and snow Monday with a “trace” of it being snow. Our snow was nothing like other other areas have gotten. While we were seeing Storms here in our local area, Northern Minnesota was seeing very heavy snow. Up to 11 inches were reported!

Highs Sunday/Highest wind gusts.

The highest temperature reported was just shy of 80.F at Red Wing. The highest wind gust reading was 49MPH out of Byron I must say winds of this level I guess are very common occurrence in this area compared to home becuase of the more open landscape. This is at least the 4th or 5th time I’ve seen winds like this occur without thunderstorms.