High n' dry. No, not the Def Leppard album as WCCO-TV Chief Meteorologist Chris Shaffer might have you believe. That's the forecast.
Following Friday's kind of 'crummy' weather (it actually snowed this morning in parts of Minnesota's Iron Range), it gets a lot better and fast. We'll experience some really, really nice spring weather and you get to thank something that sounds like it is out of a sci-fi movie for it: welcome to the Omega Block Pattern.
It's called that because on the map, it looks like the Greek letter Omega. But the point is simply that the system is expected to bring warmer temps, dry air, and sunshine.
Joe Calderone with the National Weather Service explains.
"That Omega block is essentially going to prevent any large scale systems from impacting in our area," says Calderone. "They'll generally remain to the south of Minnesota, Wisconsin, to the south of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes. So we remain dry and virtually no chance of precipitation for at least the next week."
High's next week are expected to be in the low to mid-70s says Shaffer who said the week ahead is nothing short of fantastic.
"We should get up into the upper 60s and the wind will be pretty light, so a nice Saturday," Shaffer says. "It gets better on Sunday, mostly sunny with a high of 76. It's gonna be a really nice day. And then next week it stays sunny and warm with highs in the 70s."
The National Weather Service is calling our upcoming stretch as about as nice of an eight to 14-day stretch of weather as you'll ever see in Minnesota.
"Our temperatures all the way through we're gonna be generally in in like the upper upper 60s to lower 70s," Calderone confirms. "There's no chance of any widespread precipitation. There may be a chance of maybe some isolated showers for southern Minnesota like the I-90 corridor on Wednesday. Otherwise we're just gonna remain high and dry."
Calderone does say it won't last forever, which as we know in Minnesota is a given. Once this system moves out we could see more precipitation and fluctuation of temperatures heading into the fishing opener and Mother's Day next weekend and beyond.
According to the National Weather Service:
Much of our weather is driven by what is happening in the mid-levels of the troposphere, about 15-18,000ft above the ground. You remember the troposphere from your 5th grade weather unit, it's where all of our weather happens. The troposphere stretches from the ground up to the tropopause, or roughly 32,000ft. All those other "sphere" layers are above that (stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, etc).
The Omega Block developing over the U.S. over the next few days features low pressure over the western U.S., high pressure extending through the Great Plains, then low pressure over the far, eastern US and eastern Canada. We call this an omega block because it looks like the Greek letter omega. See the image here.
