MINNEAPOLIS — There's a potential for more heavy rainfall as long as the humidity sticks around, but we had a textbook example of thunderstorm 'outflow' interactions Tuesday in Minneapolis.
Ever wonder what tropical weather is like? Tuesday was it! With very little wind in the atmosphere to move storms along it was all about subtle interactions.
As showers and thunderstorms were collapsing in southern Minnesota their outflow (cool air flowing out of the storm) moved straight north toward Minneapolis into some humid air and another outflow boundary. The interaction forced humid air upward and produced thunderstorms literally right on top of Minneapolis. Without any upper level wind to move the storm along we had to wait for it to rain itself out, and you could see the storm's outflow push out in all directions.
The result? Over 2" of rain in under 90 minutes, which overwhelmed the Minneapolis storm drainage system.