May and Spring 2021 Saint Cloud Weather Summary

 April and May Showers Often Absent in Minnesota

May and Spring 2021 Saint Cloud Weather Summaries

The weather trends have been quite fickle during the 2020-2021 cold seasons coming to end. There have been both incredibly warm periods, like St. Cloud's 7th mildest March, periods of intense cold, like 2 weeks in February, and big snowstorms at odd times in October and November. However, the consistent trend all during the cold season was a precipitation shortage in North Dakota and parts of Minnesota. Those conditions spread across all of Minnesota, except for the northeast and southeast (see National Weather Service Minnesota rainfall map). The May rainfall at the St. Cloud Regional Airport was only 2.30 inch, 1.30 inch below average. And, the Minnesota map shows less than 2 inches from western and northern Stearns County through most of west central and north central Minnesota. A swath between Baudette, Bemidji, Alexandria, and Brainerd had less than half an inch of rain (blue). So, the area of unusual dryness on the US Drought Monitor from June 10 shows that weak drought conditions have again spread through western and southern Minnesota. The rest of the state is shown to be drier than average. Minnesota is generally on the eastern edge of much drier than average conditions that extend westward to the West Coast. Some parts of the Northern Rockies have had their lowest cold season and spring snowfall on record, which portends problems for the wildfire season.

In Minnesota, the consequences of the dry conditions has been the prevalence of wildfires on any breezy day with a temperature warmer than 70. Also, river and streamflow has been lower than average, especially in central Minnesota where parts of the St. Louis, Crow Wing, St. Croix and even the Mississippi Rivers have less than 25 percent of the average streamflow. Rivers in southern Minnesota are doing better and extreme northwestern Minnesota got some important rain in the severe storm outbreak on May 19 and 20.

The temperature pattern was again quite inconsistent. After St. Cloud barely missed a 90-degree high on May 1, the northwest to southeast air flow allowed some cool leftovers from north central Canada to dominate Minnesota's weather for most of the following two weeks. St. Cloud's high temperature stayed 65 or cooler from May 2 through 11. This included a hard freeze on May 8 and 11 (lows of 27 and 26, respectively). Milder weather dominated the middle of the month, although the warm air was still quite dry. An air mass for May 19-22 was increasingly warm and humid. That regime produced 80-degree highs on May 21 and 22, the first since May 1, and some uncomfortable nights with lows in the 60's. There were thunderstorms in the area, but the strongest ones either hit northern Minnesota or produced a day of short-lived tornadoes in south central Minnesota. Once that air left Minnesota, we returned to a cooler pattern, during which the high temperature stayed below 70 on May 26-30. There were two days of unusual late season frost on May 29 and 30. St. Cloud Regional Airport didn't quite get to the freezing point, which would have made it among the latest 10% of St. Cloud frosts. It was also within a degree or two of a low temperature record.

Just to keep the roller coaster temperature theme going, some usual early season heat that spent the end of May in the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Rockies moved into St. Cloud, beginning on June 3, producing 7 straight days of 90-degree highs and tying or breaking 4 record warm high temperatures.

The overall May temperature ended up being 56.0 degrees, 0.2 degrees cooler than average, despite most of the month being considerably away from average. Only of the 31 May days were within 5 degrees of the daily average.

For the spring season (March 1-May 31), St. Cloud ended up being 2.1 degrees above average with a temperature of 45.6 degrees. The March through May precipitation was 5.92 inches, 1.1 inches below average.