Rain began in southwestern Minnesota just after midnight on Nov. 2 and kept arriving in waves until Nov. 5. By the time it stopped, the National Weather Service’s cooperative observer at Two Harbors had measured 5.73 inches over three days, a total that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says appears to be the highest three-day November figure in state history. Normal November precipitation along Lake Superior runs about 2 inches for the entire month.
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Little of it fell hard at any single moment. The DNR’s State Climatology Office, in a climate journal entry dated Nov. 6, says rates on Nov. 2 were generally not excessive, though they topped a quarter inch per hour for five to eight hours in some areas. The unusual part was persistence: moderate to heavy rain returned in the morning, afternoon and evening, and many places collected two to four times their normal November precipitation in roughly 72 hours.
Two Harbors, Grand Rapids and the 5-inch club
The Two Harbors reading comes from a National Weather Service cooperative observer, and the DNR’s wording is careful. According to the State Climatology Office journal entry, the 5.73 inches appears to be the highest three-day November total on state record. Grand Rapids, Hibbing and Ely also collected more than 5 inches, while at least 3 inches fell across more than a quarter of Minnesota, from Big Stone County in the far west to Grand Portage in the far northeast. The entire Arrowhead, from the Canadian border through Duluth, sat inside that band. Every part of the state measured something, and over 80 percent of it received at least an inch.
Daily records piled up along the way. Duluth set a Nov. 2 mark of 1.48 inches and International Falls added 1.05 inches the same day. By the morning of Nov. 3, observers between Hibbing and Grand Rapids had reported more than 3 inches in 24 hours, and about a dozen stations set the record for the wettest single day of any November. Duluth, St. Cloud and the Twin Cities set daily records on Nov. 3, and Duluth, International Falls and St. Cloud did so again across Nov. 4 and 5. Dozens of long-term stations logged their wettest three November days on record.
A secondary rain area near Duluth on Nov. 4 stretched up the Lake Superior shore toward Two Harbors, which is how the lakeshore town ended up with the statewide high. The National Weather Service office in Duluth lists daily precipitation reports and event summaries for the region, which is where later confirmation of the Two Harbors total would be expected to appear. The DNR does not say when or whether that will happen.
A 63-degree dew point in the Twin Cities
The air feeding the storm was warm and loaded with water vapor. Many southern and central Minnesota stations posted dew points above 60 degrees Fahrenheit on Nov. 2 and 3, with numerous readings in the mid-60s on the 2nd. In the Twin Cities, where records begin in 1902, the dew point reached 62 on Nov. 2 and 63 on Nov. 3, each a daily record, and the 63 is the highest November dew point ever logged there. The DNR’s 72-hour precipitation map came from the Weather Service’s Twin Cities forecast office in Chanhassen and ends on the morning of Nov. 5.
The DNR traces the moisture to the ongoing major El Niño, which has evaporated large amounts of water and left record available moisture over the equatorial and subtropical central and eastern Pacific. A low-pressure system approaching Mexico drew on that supply, caused days of excessive rain and flooding in the southwestern United States, then crossed the southern Rockies on Nov. 1 and pushed moisture northeastward into the Upper Midwest. The agency’s separate El Niño write-up says the event could become the strongest on record, and the National Weather Service’s Brownsville, Texas, outlook of Oct. 31 put the Niño 3.4 region at 2.5 degrees.
Caveats the DNR attaches to the record claim
Hedging runs through the agency’s own text. It calls the event likely the wettest November storm in Minnesota history, and the 72-hour map it published shows estimated rather than measured totals. The Two Harbors number is a single observer’s gauge, and the journal entry does not report any formal record certification and the DNR keeps the word appears in its statement for that reason.
The DNR does draw one firm conclusion: the soaking guarantees a wetter-than-normal November statewide and puts the month in contention for the wettest November on record.
Normals show how lopsided the three days were. The 1991-2020 November average runs from about 0.8 inch in western and northwestern Minnesota to 2 inches or more near Lake Superior, so the Two Harbors gauge collected in three days nearly three times a 2-inch lakeshore November. The DNR adds that no other 2026 event matched this one for the size of the area receiving significant precipitation, a notable claim in a year it describes as dominated by an exceptional El Niño.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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