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Arctic Front Brings Winter Weather and Colder Temperatures to the Eastern U.S.

A series of cold fronts will bring heavy lake effect snow to the northern Great Lakes. The fronts will merge over the Ohio Valley and bring colder temperatures east of the Mississippi River later today into the end of the week. Additionally, wintry weather will develop over the Ohio Valley, Appalachians, and Northeast as rain switches over to snow tonight into Thursday morning. Read More >

Meteorological autumn (September - November) will end up as being one of the driest on record for many locations across northeastern South Dakota and west-central Minnesota.  In fact, several reporting locations have set or tied their all time record for driest autumn periods on record!

The table below shows the Sep-Nov 2011 precipitation totals for several sites across the Aberdeen forecast area, along with the overall ranking, and year and amount of the record (or previous record) dry autumn.

 

Location

Sept-Nov Precipitation

Rank

Record (or previous record)

Year

Clark

1.41

1st

1.44

1935

Watertown

0.93

1st(Tie)

0.93

1935

Artichoke Lake

1.44

1st(Tie)

1.44

1976

Browns Valley

1.33

2nd

1.30

1980

Victor 4NNE

1.31

3rd

0.91

1976

Wilmot

1.51

4th

1.39

1976

Summit 1W

1.59

4th

1.20

1980

Wheaton

1.33

4th

1.19

1976

Sisseton

1.64

10th

0.88

1935

Aberdeen

1.47

11th

0.80

1964

 

 


 

 

Figure 1 below depicts the 90-Day Departure from Normal Precipitation.  Notice that precipitation departures across far eastern South Dakota range from 2.0” below normal to as much as 5.0” below normal!

 

Figure 2 below depicts the 90-Day Percent of Normal Precipitation.  Notice that some areas across far eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota have only seen 5% of normal precipitation.