April 2013 is turning out to be a very cool and wet month. A measure of the wetness so far in April is the number of days of measurable precipitation. In fact, there was a stretch of ten days in a row of measurable precipitation from April 5th to April 14. A stretch of at least ten consecutive days in a row of precipitation is quite rare and has only happened two other times in the Twin Cities record back to 1871. The longest stretch is 11 days from May 30 to June 9 1883, which at least had a rainbow during the evening of June 6th. The other stretch of 10 days is June 18 to June 27 1951. In that stretch a tornado was sighted in the NE section of St. Paul on June 19th, but caused no damage.
The total precipitation for the ten day stretch from April April 5-14, 2013 was 2.73 inches with 6.8 inches of that falling in the form of snow.
Pete Boulay, DNR Climatologist