Showers return Friday, pleasant weekend ahead

Our next chance of rain arrives Friday morning as a front pushes across southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, providing the focus for scattered showers and a thunderstorm or two. It looks like many of us will see rain Friday, especially between 9am and about 1pm, give or take a little. Some stubborn showers may linger into the afternoon and one or two evening showers are possible, but not likely. The trouble is, and there always seems to be something, amounts won’t be heavy for most of us. It looks like a few, lucky winners may receive a bit more than a quarter inch of rain, but generally speaking, the majority of us are not going to see heavy, soaking rain Friday.

Behind that front, winds will shift Saturday, coming out of the northwest a bit stronger around midday Saturday. Temperatures will still hold up to seasonable levels, topping out around 73° Saturday afternoon. From the weekend through at least Wednesday, we’re in for a quiet, sunny spell of weather. There are some good signs of a slow-moving, closed system affecting the upper Midwest late next week into the weekend. Those are always tricky to time, but could be very helpful in regards to some needed rainfall.