Sunny Friday - Dangerous Heat Builds Into Father's Day Weekend

A very pleasant mid-June day is expected Friday across the region, including for the MSHSL baseball games out at Target Field. Morning temperatures start in the 60s with highs in the mid-80s. It won't be quite as windy with northwest winds at 5-10 mph.

Highs will be a few degrees above average as we head through the last day of the work week - mainly in the 70s and 80s across the state - under mainly sunny skies.

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I'll have more on the stretch of dangerous heat on the way below, but first here's a quick look at your steamy and breezy Father's Day Sunday for the metro. Morning temperatures will be in the 70s, with highs climbing to the 90s for grilling out dinner. Southerly winds look to gust up to 25 mph.

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As we head into the Father's Day weekend and early next week we are going to see a northward surge of dangerous heat and humidity into the Upper Midwest. While we remain in the 80s Saturday in the Twin Cities, you can see that bubble of heat already out into the Dakotas and western Minnesota where highs will climb into the 90s and 100s. That will start to work eastward on Sunday, with everyone except the Arrowhead and far southeast Minnesota expected to reach into the 90s for Father's Day (and even a few 100s out in far western Minnesota). Monday will be the hottest day for the metro with record-breaking highs and a shot at 100F. As we head toward Tuesday and Wednesday "cooler" air will start to move in - but at least on Tuesday, we'll still be in the 90s in the metro.

Records look to be broken during this heat wave as well. The highest odds of record-breaking temperatures on Father's Day will be up in the Red River Valley, with record heat spreading east for Monday. Locations that could see records on Monday include here in the Twin Cities, St. Cloud, Brainerd, Duluth, Hibbing, Park Rapids, and Fargo.

And we won't get much of a break as we head through the overnight hours during this heat wave. Lows are only expected to drop into the 70s Sunday through Tuesday mornings, with temperatures maybe not even making it below 80F Monday morning. In Twin Cities history, there have only been 31 lows at or above 80F, with the warmest low ever recorded being 86F back on July 13, 1936.

I can't stress this enough - we will be watching for the threat of heat illnesses this weekend into next week with this extended stretch of dangerous heat and humidity across the region. Make sure you are staying hydrated, taking frequent breaks if you are outside, and checking up on vulnerable groups.

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The latest Drought Monitor came out Thursday morning, showing no change week-to-week across the state of Minnesota. 1.73% of the state (all in south-central Minnesota) is still in abnormally dry conditions, but there is no area that is in drought conditions.

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Welcome To A Hot and Sweaty Minnesota Summer
By Paul Douglas

Remind me not to take quasi-normalcy for granted ever again. I just returned from a week in Tuscany and an AMS weather conference in Milwaukee. I realize the risk is far from zero but it's good to see people's faces again.

Back in April, when it seemed spring would never come, I shared NOAA model guidance suggesting an abnormally hot summer brewing for much of the USA. Increasingly, it looks like predictions of sizzling heat have gone from theory to reality. After a comfortable Friday and Saturday (dew points in the 50s) expect to be hot and bothered early next week with another surge of 90s, even some upper 90s Monday and Tuesday. I expect the Heat Index to reach 105F early next week, so my plan is to get yard work done over the next 36 hours, and not fight this next wave of incandescent heat. 80s return later next week - this will not be an extended heat wave for Minnesota.

That said, my money is still on a "stinking hot summer". Statistically our hottest days usually arrive in mid-July. Oh joy.

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Paul's Extended Twin Cities Forecast

FRIDAY: Sunny and pleasant. Wake up 64. High 83. Chance of precipitation 0%. Wind NW 8-13 mph.

SATURDAY: Partly sunny and breezy. Wake up 63. High 82. Chance of precipitation 10%. Wind SE 10-20 mph.

SUNDAY: Hot sunshine. Wake up 68. High 92. Chance of precipitation 10%. Wind S 10-20 mph.

MONDAY: Blazing saddles. Record is 98F at MSP. Wake up 73. High 97. Chance of precipitation 10%. Wind SW 10-20 mph.

TUESDAY: Heat dome lingers. Late thunder? Wake up 75. High 95. Chance of precipitation 50%. Wind SW 8-13 mph.

WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny, breathing easier. Wake up 70. High 84. Chance of precipitation 20%. Wind NW 10-15 mph.

THURSDAY: Some sun, stray thundershower. Wake up 66. High 83. Chance of precipitation 40%. Wind S 7-12 mph.

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Minneapolis Weather Almanac And Sun Data
June 17th

*Length Of Day: 15 hours, 36 minutes, and 21 seconds
*Daylight GAINED Since Yesterday: 18 seconds

*Day With Most Daylight: June 20 - June 21 (15 hours, 36 minutes, 50 seconds)
*Earliest Sunrise?: June 13 - June 17 (5:25 AM)
*Latest Sunset?: June 20 - July 2 (9:03 PM)

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This Day in Weather History
June 17th

2010: The largest single-day tornado outbreak in Minnesota history occurs with 48 tornadoes across the state. This outbreak would set the stage for a record breaking tornado year in Minnesota that finished with 113 tornadoes, the most of any state in the US that year. There were three EF-4 tornadoes and four EF-3 tornadoes in Minnesota. Four tornado fatalities occurred, which was the highest daily number since July 5, 1978.

1989: Frost develops across Minnesota with crops destroyed on high ground in southeast Minnesota. Preston got down to 32.

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A frontal boundary from the Northeast to the Ohio Valley will spark showers and storms across these regions on Friday. More rain and higher elevation snow are expected across the Pacific Northwest. Monsoonal showers and storms will kick up in the Four Corners region as well.

The heaviest precipitation through the first half of the weekend will be in the Northeast where some areas could see 1-2" of rain. Heavier rain is possible in any monsoonal thunderstorms in the Southwest as well.

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It's Hard to Do Climate Research When Your Glacier Is Melting

More from WIRED: "NEXT YEAR, A data collection site on the Wolverine Glacier in southern Alaska in the United States will disappear due to melting. The site, near the terminus—aka the lower end of the glacier—contains a mass balance stake that Christopher McNeil, a geophysicist for the US Geological Survey, uses to measure the rate at which the glacier is growing or melting. "We've actually had to deal with this at pretty much all of our glacier sites," McNeil says. Snow and ice are extremely important tools for researching our environment. There are ice cores from the poles and from glaciers around the world stored at the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility in Denver; they show everything from when volcanic events happened to how much carbon dioxide and methane were in the atmosphere millions of years ago."

Extreme heat poses significant and growing health risk to babies and children, study shows

More from CNN: "When Aaron Bernstein became a pediatrician 15 years ago, it didn't occur to him that the climate crisis would grow into a critical health problem for his young patients. But over the years he started to notice more children visiting emergency rooms for heat-related illnesses, and some even suffered from climate-induced mental health issues. "Almost nobody was considering climate change a health problem at the time," Bernstein, the interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told CNN. "I feel like a total idiot for not seeing it earlier, because we could have been more ahead of this than we have been.""

Can a DOE-backed project help save the grid?

More from E&E News: "As the nation braces for a summer of drought, heat waves and hurricanes, a group of U.S. utility planners and scientists has begun investigating how power grids should be strengthened for a future of extreme weather that they believe will only get worse. In the first of these studies, the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory will adapt forecasts of global climate change to predict how future weather threats are likely to hit Commonwealth Edison's network of generators, power lines and substations that serve greater Chicago and more than two-thirds of Illinois. It's part of a three-year project led by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) looking at potential future weather impacts that marks a sharp shift in focus for U.S. utilities."

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Thanks for checking in and have a great day! Don't forget to follow me on Twitter (@dkayserwx) and like me on Facebook (Meteorologist D.J. Kayser).

- D.J. Kayser