April is finally here. The sounds of baseballs hitting the bat, birds chirping, and lawnmowers starting are just hitting the airwaves. April can be either average or interesting. Keep in mind we live in Minnesota. Average is a rare thing for us, weather-wise! April sets a few key events for us, from sunsets later in the evening to chances of snow. Time to take a look at the averages, records, and big events we get in the month of April.
TEMPERATURES: Averages in April trend to get warmer the further we go into the month, unlike Winter! Starting the month, we have average highs around 50° and average lows of 31°. By the end of April, those numbers rise a lot! On April 30th, our average high in the Twin Cities was 65° with an average low of 44°. Surprisingly, we can get warm in April! We have a record high of 95° set back on April 211980. The Twin Cities has never had below zero daily low temperatures, though; our coldest temperature for a low in the Twin Cities was 2° set back on April 13th, 1962. I think most would agree. Those 60s would be a lot better than single digits, for sure!
PRECIPITATION: Precipitation can and has fallen in both forms for the month of April! On average, we typically see 2.31” of rainfall in the Twin Cities. Snowfall is for sure not rare. Just remember, back in April of 2018, our little weekend storm that left quite a few inches of snow was a good reminder of what can happen! We can usually expect 2.5” of snowfall in the Twin Cities for April. We had a soaker back on April 6th, 2006, in the metro, with 2.58” of record rainfall reported. Some of our biggest April snowfall totals can be found within the past 36 years! In 1983 we had 21.8” of snow for the month of April. The chart below shows the snowiest April months we have had recently and the average and record precipitations!
WHAT TO EXPECT: The maps below from the Climate Prediction Center show the outlook for the month of April. It appears as if we can expect an above-average month, precipitation-wise, for Western Minnesota and parts of the Twin Cities. A trend of some cooler-than-average temperatures can be expected for areas in South-Western Minnesota and West Central Minnesota.
BIG EVENTS IN APRIL: April does bring us a much-welcomed event, sunsets that are later in the evening! Daylight hours will be getting longer as we see the sun up above the horizon until the evening and later starting on April 16th. The amount of daylight will be up to more than 14 hours by the end of the month. Just think, soon we will have our close to 9 PM sunsets in a few months! Has brought us some severe weather as well. A tornado was reported on April 14th, 1886, at around 4 PM. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, this was the “Deadliest tornado in Minnesota history. Eleven members of a wedding party were killed, including the groom. The bride eventually remarried.” Heavy damage was reported in Sauk Rapids.
Some information in this article was provided by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
