Get ready for some cold air from the North Pole

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - What an incredible few weeks of weather. Yeah, it’s been wet at times, but September and October up until this point have been VERY mild. 

Well, all good things must come to an end as an upper atmosphere pattern shift will drive much cooler air into the region that has the potential to squelch any chances of returning to the 60s, 70s and 80s for the rest of the year. Admittedly, we’re getting past the point where those kinds of mild temps becoming increasingly uncommon, but the last couple of Novembers have featured a few 60 degree days.

The overall upper air pattern over the last six weeks or so has featured a pretty good ridge in the central and eastern U.S.  This sends the jet stream, the river of air at the top of the atmosphere, to the north in Canada and effectively sets up a wall between us and the North Pole which keeps all of the cold air from making it to Minnesota. 

Well, during this week, that jet stream will dive southward twice, removing that barrier and allowing the cold air that’s really starting to build in northern Canada the opportunity to make a run for the border.  This will bring two pretty big cool downs to the region. 

The first is likely late Monday into Tuesday, which will finally drop temperatures to near normal. That in itself will feel cool because normal temps in the metro this time of year are in the middle 50s. But temps won’t cool off any further because the source region for this air is the Pacific Northwest… not typically all that chilly. 

But the second cool down late in the week has a much larger potential of cooling us off well below average because the air expected to reach Minnesota will be coming straight out of northern Canada where temperatures have been sitting in the teens and 20s for the last couple of days. Some precipitation is possible with this second wave, but it’s what too early to tell how much it could be or what type of precipitation would be possible.

Welcome back to reality!!