The growing season is now officially over

KMSP - Over the last week or so, cooler temperatures have finally taken hold of much of the Upper Midwest with overnight lows hitting the freeze mark, and in some cases, dropping into the 20s.  This means that our growing season has officially come to an end… well for most of us.  While just about the entire state has seen temperatures at or below 32°, there are still a few spots around the metro, including our official climate location at MSP Airport, that have not dipped to the freeze mark.  This means that the metro has yet to see our first official fall freeze.  In a typical year, the first time the metro drops to 32° is in the first 10 days of October which we have obviously now passed.  And if the current forecast holds, it would be AT LEAST another week before we get a shot at it.  This puts us in the last part of October and well behind schedule for freezing conditions. 

There are some up sides to this though with the main one being that those fall colors will hang around longer in general. In fact, if the mild temperatures hold for a while, it could very well be the first or second week of November before all of the leaves are off the trees. 

The images above show the lows for Thursday morning along with climate sights that have hit the 32° mark and the 28° mark.  The color of the dot corresponds to when that sight hit the threshold listed.  IF the sight doesn’t have a colored dot, then they have not hit those thresholds yet.