As I posted 6 months ago we had our first snowfalls in late October. The temperatures bounced around in November and most of December. Then as predicted the Boreal winter set in as Autumn turned to winter. It struck hard on December 20 with snow and an arctic blast. It has not let up.
The snow banks here have been piling up on my lot.
This was a couple of weeks ago.
This is today, when we have been clipped by this weekend's blizzard in Southern and Central MN.
The Twin cities have been hit hard were they have had heavy snow for 36 hours that will end tonight, with more for midweek.
Where my eldest son live in Richfield an inner suburb, they have had 27.1 inches and counting.
I see at our Eagan residence we have had 15 inches with 5 more expected.
We have now smashed the record for April snow fall in Minnesota by a wide margin.
No lake in Minnesota has so far declared ice out. The far southern lakes should have had ice out a month ago. Even lake Pepin, which is actually the Mississippi River is largely ice covered. Therefore there have been no tows into St. Paul so far this year. The Leech Lake system has 3' of hard ice still. There are still vehicles travelling on the lakes. The lakes north of here like Red Lake and especially The Lake of the woods, report 6' of hard ice. They reckon this may not go until late June or even early July.
This time last year it was 72 F and we had the lifts, docks and boats in. This will be a May ice out. The latest on this lake since we have been here was May 5. I think it will go past this. The latest ice out for Leech was May 25 1893. I think we will go right up on that. The immediate long range forecast is for well below normal temperatures for the next 30 days. It will go a little above freezing by day this week, but with hard freezes at night. We have only had a couple of nights were it has gone a degree or two above freezing so far.
I was watching the news last night and some hardy Minnesotan's were skiing Buck Hill in he Cities in the blizzard. Yesterday was Minnesota Trout fishing opener. There were some hardy souls fishing the trout streams in the blizzard yesterday in the Twin Cities. The stream are still frozen up here.
Minnesota fishing opener is May 12 and my guess is it will be a bust.