How Will Hurricane Florence Impact Minnesota + Wisconsin?

The big news this week is Hurricane Florence - a major tropical storm that has been dubbed one of the worst in history.

As of Thursday morning, it has since downgraded to a Category 2 but is still expected to hit the Southeast hard. It will bring heavy rain, strong winds and a damaging storm surge.

Although that part of the country may seem far away to us here in the Midwest, it turns out the hurricane will impact our weather, if only slightly.

I reached out to WDIO Storm Team Meteorologist Taylor Dayton to ask him just what we can expect and here's what he had to say:

”We don’t expect a direct impact from Hurricane Florence in Minnesota, but with large hurricanes like Florence we often see the storm track across the country change. This could lead to the current warm temperatures and humidity sticking around through the weekend in the Northland before Florence finally gets out of the way and allows a cold front to bring cooler temperatures and rain by early next week. These large hurricanes can act like roadblocks in the jet stream, which is why the current warm pattern we are in will likely stick around until Florence dissipates and the trough over the Western U.S. can finally move Eastward and cool us down next week.”

Well, there ya have it! We won't see any major, direct impacts but it will change up our weather pattern a bit.