An Air Quality Alert has been issued for the northern half of Minnesota from 4am to 4pm Tuesday. Smoke from fires in Canada will be pushed southward along a cold front overnight. Orange (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups) AQI is forecasted in the alert area.

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The smoke analysis by midday Tuesday shows widespread smoke overhead across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Region thanks to wildfires burning in Canada. This will make skies smoky and hazy through much of the day.

Weather conditions through the rest of the week remains quiet through Wednesday. However, a cool front will sweep through with a few showers and thunderstorms into Thursday. Skies will quickly clear on Friday as cooler air settles in for a couple of days.

The precipitation outlook through the end of the week doesn't appear to be all that impressive with some locations seeing 0.25" to 0.50" tallies. The heavier amounts of up to 0.50" will be found closer to northeastern Minnesota and into northern Wisconsin.

The weather outlook for the Twin Cities on Tuesday, May 16th shows another sunny and mild day with highs warming into the lower 80s for the Twin Cities. Thanks to Canadian wildfires, skies will be fairly smoky/hazy with some air quality concerns north of the Twin Cities.

Temps on Tuesday will be nearly +10F to +15F above average across the region with highs warming into the 70s and lower 80s, which is more like mid-June standards.

Temperatures will be very mild on Tuesday with readings warming to near 80F, which will be nearly +10F to +15F above average. Wednesday and Thursday will still be nearly +5F above average as we warm into the mid 70s, but Friday will be quite a bit cooler as we drop nearly 10F into the low/mid 60s.

The extended weather outlook for the Twin Cities looks sunny and mild through Wednesday before a cool front sweeps through the region on Thursday with a few showers and thunderstorms. Post-front we'll cool into the mid 60s, which will be a little bit below average for this time of the year. However, mild sunshine returns as we slide into the weekend.

The NBM extended temperature outlook for Minneapolis keeps fairly mild readings in place through midweek. A cold front sweeps through on Thursday with a few showers and storms. Temps will then fall into the mid 60s Friday in the wake of the front, but the cool down will be brief as temps warm back into the 70s this weekend and into next week.

It'll be quite a big quieter in the Central US as we approach midweek. However, a cool front sweeping out of Canada will create unsettled weather across the Midwest with a few showers and storms.

According to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, the 8 to 14 day temperature outlook shows warmer-than-average temperatures settling in across the northern tier of the nation and especially across the High Plains and the Northeast. Cooler than average temps will be in place across the Southern US

Would Best Buy or Mayo Clinic be around today had it not been for tornadoes? Not sure. Both owe their "Creation Stories" to ill-timed tornadoes.

An extreme, F5 tornado leveled much of Rochester, Minnesota on August 21, 1883. The Mayo brothers oversaw the creation of a makeshift hospital to assist the injured, inspiring St. Mary's Hospital, which would become The Mayo Clinic.

A 1981 tornado hit the "Sound of Music" store in Roseville, causing significant damage. Management held a Tornado Sale to get rid of inventory. People wanted to see the tornado damage and get the "best buy". The sale did so well it sparked a new business model that became... Best Buy.

Expect 80s later today with a little smoky sunshine, the result of prevailing jet stream steering winds blowing from the direction of Alberta, Canada, where multiple fires are blazing.

Showers arrive Thursday; another clipper-like swipe of showers next Monday - otherwise dry weather prevails most of the next 2 weeks. Dry and comfortable. Sounds good.

TUESDAY NIGHT: Mostly clear. Winds: NNE 5-10. Low: 55.

WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny and pleasant. Winds: SE 10-15. High 77.

THURSDAY: Clouds increase, late PM showers. Winds: S 10-20. Wake-up: 58. High 73.

FRIDAY: Cool wind, pop-up shower late? Winds: NW 15-25. Wake-up: 54. High 63.

SATURDAY: Plenty of comfortable sunshine. Winds: NW 10-20. Wake-up: 50. High: 71.

MONDAY: Gusty, few passing showers. Winds: N 10-20. Wake-up: 52. High: 65.

May 16th

1934: An extremely hot spell results in temperatures over 100 across parts of Minnesota, and record highs of 94 in St. Cloud and Minneapolis.

May 15th

Average High: 69F (Record: 94F set in 1934)

Record Rainfall: 1.10" set in 1905

Record Snowfall: Trace set in 1916

May 15th

Sunrise: 5:42am

Sunset: 8:35pm

Daylight GAINED since yesterday: +2 Minutes & 15 Seconds

Daylight GAINED since Winter Solstice (December 21st): ~ 6 hour & 06 minutes

2.4 Days Before New Moon

Temperatures on Tuesday will be very mild across much of the nation and especially Midwest and Western half of the nation, where readings will be nearly +10F to +15F above average.

The weather outlook on Tuesday will be unsettled across the Southeastern US, where some showers and storms will be possible. The best chance of strong to severe storms will be found across the Mid-Atlantic States.

According to NOAA's Weather Prediction Center, the extended precipitation outlook shows heavier precipitation across parts of the Central US. A few locations from the Front Range of the Rockies to the Mid-Atlantic States could see 1" to 3" of rain over the next several days.

"You might say the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore has earned the label "long-suffering" honestly. Moore was among the places in central Oklahoma devastated on May 3, 1999, by the final tornado to earn an F5 rating on the original Fujita Damage Intensity Scale or F-scale. The long-track tornado led to 41 deaths, injured more than 550 people, and caused some $1 billion in damage in 1999 dollars. The F-scale, meant to rate tornado intensity based on damage assessments, was decommissioned in 2007 and replaced with the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Moore was also ravaged on May 20, 2013, by the most recent tornado to be rated EF5 — meaning winds gusted over 200 mph — on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. With top winds of 210 mph, the 2013 twister killed 26 people, destroyed more than 1,100 homes, and left an estimated $2 billion in damage (2013 USD), putting it among the most expensive tornadoes on record."

See more from Yale Climate Connections HERE:

"For tens of millions of Americans, drought has become an ever-present natural disaster. That's particularly true in the Western United States. Because of the West's largely semi-arid and desert climates, droughts are natural occurrences across the region. However, regional climate isn't the only culprit in drought activity. Climate change, namely rising average temperatures driven by human-generated emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, is contributing to droughts, too. Global warming increases the risk of drought in several ways. For one, water generally evaporates more quickly at higher temperatures. For that reason, hotter weather can result in drier soils. As high air temperatures sap liquid water from soils and plant leaves, transforming it into atmospheric water vapor via a process called transpiration, ground-level drying will increase in some regions. (Ironically, this additional atmospheric moisture triggers heavier downpours in other regions, which explains why the overall trend in the U.S. has been toward wetter conditions.)"

See more from Yale Climate Connections HERE:

See more from the Conversation HERE: