Three of the local National Weather Service office's top 10 stories of the past decade happened in 2019, which will go into the books as a cool and wet year, National Weather Service meteorologist Nick Carletta said.
“That’s probably the main defining characteristic of the year, just the amount of rain and snow that fell,” Carletta said.
The NWS in Grand Forks ended the year with 33.92 inches of precipitation, not including snow. It's 12.30 inches above normal.
Grand Forks received 98.6 inches of snow in the calendar year. That number got a fairly substantial bump at the end of the year, thanks to a Dec. 28-30 snowstorm that dumped 12.9 inches on Grand Forks. Named Blizzard Brenda by the Herald, it was the greatest snowstorm total of the year. That storm also holds the title for most snow in a day in 2019 with 10.1 inches on Dec. 29.
The three 2019 events that made the local National Weather Service office's Top 10 from the past decade are:
- The extreme cold from Jan. 29-31, when temperatures reached 30 degrees below zero with wind chills around 60 below zero.
- The October and December blizzards that hit the region. The first, which hit Oct. 10-13, brought several feet of snow to the western part of the region and rain and snow to the Grand Forks region. In late December, Blizzard Brenda brought 12 to 18 inches of snow with winds around 50 mph to much of eastern North Dakota.
- The wet fall also made the decade list. It started with a major September flash flood event across much of eastern North Dakota. This event, when combined with other heavy rainfall episodes plus the historic October blizzard and its subsequent melt/runoff, all contributed to major river flooding across most of the Red River basin. Fall harvest was severely impacted, with crop losses in potatoes, sugar beets, beans, and corn likely to range into the billions of dollars once assessments are completed.
But flooding wasn’t just kept to this fall. After heavy snows last winter, rivers rose in April, causing road closures and other issues for the region.
Other top weather stories of the decade, according to the local office of the NWS, include the June 17, 2010, tornado outbreak, including a deadly tornado in Mentor, Minn; spring flooding in 2011; the winter of 2013-14, when eastern North Dakota had 10 blizzards; spring-summer wildfires and smoke in 2015; the June 27, 2015, tornado outbreak, when at least 19 tornadoes occurred in the region; the Dec. 5-7, 2016, heavy snow and blizzard event; and the 2016 Christmas blizzard/ice storm.
Highs and lows
Grand Forks’ overall average temperature was 38.3 degrees.
Average high? Just over 47 degrees. And the average low sat at 29.3 degrees during 2019.
Grand Forks didn’t quite crack the triple-digit mark last year. The hottest temperature was 96 on June 7.
A prolonged January cold snap brought the area its lowest temperature in 2019 at 34 below zero on Jan. 30.
The area saw two record highs in 2019: 40 degrees on Jan. 3, 2019, and 93 on June 8.
Warnings
The area had 10 blizzard warnings in 2019, as well as six wind chill warnings.
Frigid temperatures, or frigid temperatures with wind, can be deadly, the weather service notes. In 2019, the months of January, February and March brought six wind chill warnings to the area. The six wind chill warnings in 2019 ties 2014 as the most in the last 10 years.
During the summer of 2019 there were 27 tornado warnings across the region, the most being in Cass and Richland counties in North Dakota and Becker County in Minnesota.
The region also had 223 severe thunderstorm warnings.
The highest total of severe thunderstorm warnings was 34 in Polk County, Minn., and the lowest total was six in Grant County, Minn. Polk County also had the highest number of severe thunderstorm warnings in 2018 with 37.
