JUST A LITTLE BUMP IN THE ROAD...

Thanks to a little bump in the road known as a cold front, temperatures will be colder around the Midwest Tuesday on the back of a departing storm. The system has been a notable one too, especially in northern Wisconsin where large hail, strong winds, and even a tornado was reported near Wausau Sunday night.

By Monday night cold air had invaded and the storms have been replaced with snow. As I post this Minneapolis has already chalked up about 2". The GFS is showing up to 6" of snow for some of the areas impacted by the severe weather. Anytime you can get tornadoes and snow on back to back days that's what I call a fine stretch of weather! Here's the GFS snowfall forecast.

As you would expect with snow in the forecast, temperatures are cold and at 8pm Monday evening were in the low to mid 30s from northwest Iowa into Minnesota and northern Wisconsin.

That cold air will invade much of the Midwest Tuesday but thanks to the strong April sun the air mass will modify allowing a decent recovery where it makes an appearance. That will happen in my local area producing highs in the low to mid 50's which is a few degrees below normal. The GFS has this for highs Tuesday. Not so nice in the northwoods of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.

Fortunately the cool-down looks brief and the general pattern will remain on the mild side the next week or so. The CFSv2 climate model in the 5-10 day period shows temperatures well above normal over the central Midwest.

Warmth this time of year is often the precursor of thunderstorms. It appears the pattern will continue active with a couple of disturbances ahead. The most significant arrives Friday and Saturday and It's reasonable to assume that some part of the central Midwest will see some strong storms. It will take at least a couple more days to pin-point where.

Total precipitation the next 7 days has the potential to be generous in spots depending on how the synoptic elements evolve. The GFS shows this for 7 day rainfall.

The soakers continue into the 16 day rainfall forecast which looks like this.

With that I conclude this post. Have a solid day and roll weather...TS