Beautiful start to spring... But melting leads to flooding...

We are going to try and revive my blogging! Woo! For those of you who have followed my blogs for years, you know that I would offer a detailed nightly forecast. Since then I had turned to mainly event-blogging (mainly Winter and Severe Storms). Well I am going to try and mix the old with the new... bring back daily weather thoughts (maybe not complete forecasts or very detailed, but enough to get you through the next day or so) with more detailed writings for the big weather events. We can build this blog together!

Ah, a beautiful day for the start of Spring! Birds chirping, bright blue sky with a bright yellow ball in the middle of it, temperatures in the middle 30s... Yes, a day where t-shirts are actually out in full force. We should enjoy this weather continuing through the rest of the week with highs approaching 40 especially towards the end of the week. We will continue to melt the snow pack that we do have, but just remember that anything that ponds up during the day and doesn't run off will freeze overnight, so take it safe on the roads in the mornings. We have a chance of a little rain/snow on Saturday, but I'm definitely not expecting much.

We are watching a potential system for the beginning of next week; latest model runs have that sagging southward at the moment. It is still something to keep an eye on, though.

Of course, melting is occurring at the moment -- we are down to approximately 11" of snow on the ground in STC, but there continues to be a deep snow pack to our south and west, ranging over 2' in areas. Updates within the past week (click on the links for more information) show that there is a good chance of flooding at Montevideo and also the Mississippi River below the junction with the Minnesota River (St. Paul and Hastings); the Crow River at Delano has a large chance of flooding; the Mississippi River above the Minnesota River (i.e. our area) has a 20-40% chance of flooding. Meanwhile, the chance of major flooding along the Red River has increased to 80% in the Fargo-Moorhead area and 60% in the Grand Forks area. While the conditions of the past few days have been ideal melting conditions to minimize the threat, any addition of moisture or rapid increase in temperature will likely increase all these flooding percentages. Also, temperatures in SW Minnesota haven't been able to get as high as we have the past few days, therefore they haven't been able to melt as we have been, leading to a lot more increased melting for them as the weeks go on.

Already today, sandbagging is occurring in Fargo and Grand Forks in anticipation of the upcoming flooding which has the potential to come close to last years historic flooding of the Red River. Stay tuned in upcoming weeks for the latest.

Forecast: 10-15 tonight with clear skies. Around 35 Tuesday and continued sunshine.