What To Expect For Minnesota's Weather In Late January

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- Early forecasts for January in Minnesota were for it to be colder than normal. However, the first few weeks have actually been about 10 degrees above normal according to the state Climatology Office.

Assistant State Climatologist Pete Boulay says January has been an odd month, but the second half is shaping up to have more normal and below normal temps:

“We’ve had a lot of Alberta Clippers; we’ve just had number nineteen go through yesterday, and we’re going to keep adding up more clippers to that throughout the rest of the month of January, so it will be interesting to see where we wind up in the end. We’ll definitely be below normal for a number of days. It might be a photo finish to see if January will finish exactly with normal temperatures.”

Photo by Marc Kleen on Unsplash

What has stood out so far for January weather?

Boulay says the rain we had the first part of the month in the Twin Cities and St. Cloud stood out as some odd weather:

“Just getting rain in January is fairly uncommon, and it didn’t get as far north as St. Cloud much, just a little bit, but that’s the one thing that stands out so far for January, of course there’s a lot of winter left, and of course we always have February, and that can be a surprising month.”

How does the rest of the month look?

Boulay says the general pattern for the rest of January will be cold and unsettled.

He says we should be around the normals for high and low temps, but with the warmer start to the month, those normals of 20 for a high and 3 for a low will still be a bit of a shock to the system. On the positive side, Boulay says they don’t expect any really heavy snowfalls for the remainder of the month, but as always with weather, things can change in a hurry.