Weather Forecast (05/07/20)
A very slow moving rain system moved across North Dakota from Sunday night into Tuesday. It was the speed rather than the strength of that storm that dropped some 1 inch plus totals to parts of eastern North Dakota. The Red River served as the boundary line as most of nortwestern Minnesota recorded little if any precipitation outside of locations right near the North Dakota border. Total Rain from those three days are presented in Figure 1 and Figure 2.
The next 7 days will continue with the cooler temperatures that arrived earlier this week. Temperatures do not appear to get back to seasonal averages or warmer than average until the end of next week. As I mentioned last week, I would expect this month to finish below average, but not as much as April. In turn, the second half of May looks much better, but the cool air that is in place, looks entrenched for another week. With the cooler air in place, soil temperatures will remain on the cool side (Figure 3). On sunny afternoons you will always see a rise in soil temperatures, but overall temperatures are in the 40s and like our air temperature, will not improve much until the middle or end of next week.
Precipitation chances in the next week looks mostly confined to this weekend and then toward the middle of next week when that expected warmer weather returns to the northern plains. If you are reading this from far southwestern North Dakota, there will probably be some rain today (Thursday), but that looks to be missing the rest of North Dakota into northwestern Minnesota. The system this weekend, may contain some snow and like you, I hope that doesn’t materialize. Certainly, it has happened this time of year before, in fact western North Dakota recorded measurable snow in early June, 2009, but if some flakes materialize or not even mentioning it is a testament to how chilly the air mass will be this weekend.
Because of the cold weather in the next seven days, growing degree days (GDDs) will be so low as to not warrant mapping the totals. Hopefully, next week the warmer air will move in and I will include estimated GDDs for the region in this weather segment.
Meteorologist
Director of the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network
