By DJ Kayser, filling in for Douglas:
My spouse and I have been on a few trips during the past three weeks, checking out the fall colors across mainly eastern Minnesota. Some of the trips have featured lots of color, while others have a lot of green, courtesy of our delayed fall color season this year.
One other thing we saw was low river levels due to our recent plunge into drought conditions.
According to provisional data from NOAA/USGS, the Mississippi River at St. Paul dropped to 2.90 feet on Sept. 27 and 2.88 feet this past Sunday — the third-lowest recorded water level. Severe drought now covers 19.7% of Minnesota, mainly in areas toward the Arrowhead and down in southwestern Minnesota. Moderate drought covers the metro.
I hope you enjoyed the taste of summer today, as temperatures crash this weekend and widespread freezes are expected by early next week. Most precipitation chances this weekend should stay north of I-94.
Florida is cleaning up from Milton. Tampa saw its wettest October from just one day of rainfall on Wednesday.
