Twin Cities metro gets first 80° day of the year

It took till the middle part of May, but the metro has finally hit 80°.  Our May 13th arrival date is about 2 weeks later than a typical year… with our average first 80°+ day coming in right around the first of the month.  But in this case, normal is a very broad term because it doesn’t really mean anything.  The last several years, we’ve  hit our first 80° anywhere from the middle of March, which was the record earliest, all the way to the end of May.  In fact, since 1960, more than half of our first 80° days have come in May… with just a single year extending the streak into June.  So this tells us that because 80° eluded us for so long that now it’s going to be a cool summer right?  Wrong!! Despite what you may think, there is no direct correlation between when we hit the first 80° and how warm the summer will be.  There have been summers where 80° eluded us all the way to the end of May, and then the summer was well above average, and vice versa… so we will just have to wait and see.