Twin Cities swelters in record 101-degree weather

The last time the metro area was hotter was July 6, 2012 at 102 degrees.

June 21, 2022 at 3:06AM
With the temperature sitting at 100 degrees, Franklin Salazar cooled off and rinsed out his T-shirt in Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis after working in his yard in the record-breaking heat Monday afternoon, June 20, 2022. (Jeff Wheeler, Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The Twin Cities' road-buckling heat broke a summertime record on Monday.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul airport reached 101 degrees, according to Caleb Grunzke, meteorologist at the National Weather Service. The last time the metro area was hotter was July 6, 2012, at 102 degrees — and the last time the Twin Cities hit 100 degrees was May 18, 2018.

St. Cloud also broke a record, reaching 101 degrees at around 4 p.m., breaking its previous record of 98 degrees set in 1933, Grunkze said.

The extreme heat on Monday buckled roads across the state.

In a tweet on Monday, Minnesota Department of Transportation officials asked motorists to be on the lookout for roads that fell apart under the heat, advising motorists to call 911 if they spotted one.

The agency reported that Hwy. 169 south of St. Peter and Hwy. 60 east of Windom both had spots where the road buckled. The Chisago County Sheriff's Office also reported a major road buckle on Interstate 35 near Rush City.

As temperatures reached the high for the day, nearly 11,000 customers were without power across the state, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us.

The Twin Cities will reach 91 degrees on Tuesday, with little relief the rest the workweek, according to the Weather Service.

"We may have a little bit of a warmup again in the lower to mid-90s by week's end but we won't be nearly as hot as we were today," Grunzke said. "We'll cool down a little bit."

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about the writer

Alex Chhith

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Alex Chhith is a general assignment reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune.

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