Live weather for Rochester, MN and the Zumbro River valley — current conditions, forecast, radar, air quality, and river levels, plus aviation, fire/smoke, and fall-color tools.
A sibling site to duluthareaweather.com. Everything updates live from public NWS, USGS, and AirNow data.
New🔭 Sky Watch card — next to Sky Now: the next meteor shower, next lunar & solar eclipse (with Rochester-specific visibility), the next planetary conjunction, and when Orion returns to the evening sky, all computed live client-side (no API/key) plus a link to the NWS hourly sky-cover forecast.
New🌡️ Threshold days & streaks on Weather Nerds — a new box shows this year's count of days ≥90°F, ice days, and days ≤0°F for Rochester vs. the 30-year average, plus the current dry/wet streak vs. the all-time record.
Update💭 Percent of normal on precipitation — the Month & Year to Date box now shows precipitation and snowfall as a percent of normal alongside the inch departure, e.g. “21% of normal”.
New🌱 Freeze dates & growing season on Weather Nerds — a new box shows this year's last spring freeze and first fall freeze (once it happens) for Rochester, plus the growing season length so far, each compared against the 30-year average.
New❄️ Snowfall since Jul 1 on Weather Nerds — the Month & Year to Date box now shows this season's running snowfall total for Rochester, vs. the 1991–2020 climate normal for the same date.
Fix✈️ Aircraft page fixed — the live ADS-B feeds behind it had stopped sending the headers browsers need to read them, so the map showed “all feeds failed” for everyone. Now proxied through our own server, which also fixes a second bug where one of the three feeds' data was silently being ignored due to a naming mismatch.
New🗺️ Statewide maps on Weather Nerds — under Yesterday's Extremes, a Minnesota map you can flip between High, Low, and Precip. Every reporting station is a colored dot over a smooth interpolated color field, so you can see yesterday's pattern across the state at a glance, and the statewide record is ringed in gold right where it happened.
New📡 Sky Now: full screen, tooltips, and live satellites — tap the ✥ button to expand the sky chart full screen (works on any device, including iPhones where the browser's native full-screen mode doesn't). In full screen, tap or hover any object for a popup card with an icon, a one-line description, and its rise/set time. And the ISS and the current Starlink launch "train" now show up as moving dots — but only when they'd actually be visible to the eye: above the horizon, lit by the sun, and your sky dark enough to see them, the same honesty rule the rest of Sky Now already follows for stars and planets.
New📊 Yesterday, Month & Year to Date on Weather Nerds — yesterday's actual high/low/precip, plus heating/cooling degree days and precipitation for the month and year so far, vs. the 1991–2020 climate normal. Records for This Date also now shows the coldest daytime high, warmest overnight low, and average precipitation for today's date.
Update🌂 Animated home-page radar — the Radar card now cycles through 4 recent scans instead of a single snapshot, so you can see which way precipitation is moving.
New📄 Print brochure — a tri-fold, black-and-white PDF for hotel lobbies and visitor centers, with a QR code straight to the live site. Download it from the link at the top of this window.
New📶 NOAA Weather Radio stations on Weather Nerds — a map of the 22 NWR transmitter sites within 125 miles of Rochester. Green markers have a verified live audio feed on Broadcastify; grey ones don't — NOAA doesn't stream NWR audio itself, and Broadcastify's crowd-sourced coverage misses most stations, including Rochester's own (WXK41).
New🏆 Average high/low on Records for This Date — the Weather Nerds records box now shows Rochester's typical high and low for today's date (a rolling 30-year average, same span NWS uses for climate Normals) alongside the all-time records, so you can tell “hot for August” from “just a record.”
New⛷️ Ski Areas page — a new standalone map of 49 real, operating downhill ski areas across MN, WI, MI, IA, SD, ND, IL & IN, with resort links and directions. Locations only for now — live trail-open and snow-base status is planned for ski season.
New🤖 AI Forecast — a plain-English weather summary for Rochester, written by Claude AI from the NWS forecast and the meteorologist's own discussion (AFD), with a note on how Owatonna differs when it does. Regenerates only when the underlying forecast actually changes, not on a timer.
New🌌 Sky Now — a live sky chart shows what’s overhead right now, any time of day: the sun, moon (with phase), and the five naked-eye planets, plotted against ~1,000 stars and every constellation, facing straight up (N at top, E at left — the correct mirror for looking up, not down at a map). Stars fade out in daylight rather than pretending they’re visible, but the sun, moon and planets stay live all day. Tap the sun, moon, or a planet for its rise and set time. Positions computed locally (astronomy-engine, MIT); star & constellation data from d3-celestial (Olaf Frohn, BSD-3-Clause).
Fixed🔗 Growing Conditions links — the Drought Monitor link had moved and the old U2U GDD tool is gone; both now point at their current homes (U2U is replaced by the MRCC GDD Tracker).
New💨 Air quality on the Fire & Smoke map — a new Air quality (AQI) layer shades the region by what is actually breathable, from AirNow's own contour data. The smoke plumes show what a satellite sees overhead; this shows what reaches the ground.
New🌾 Crop prices — front-month CBOT futures for corn, soybeans, wheat and oats now sit below Growing Conditions, with the day’s move on each. Delayed quotes, refreshed through the day.
New🌊 Flood forecast on the Zumbro gauges — both river cards now show the National Weather Service flood status next to the USGS flow: the category (No flooding / Action / Minor / Moderate / Major), that gauge’s own action stage, and the forecast crest when one is issued. The flow tells you what the river is doing; this tells you where it’s headed.
New❄️ Snow on the ground — current snow depth plus the next three days’ snowfall. It appears only when there’s snow down or snow coming, so it stays out of the way all summer and returns on its own with the first real snow.
New⚡ SPC Day 1 severe-weather outlook — the national convective outlook from NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center is now on the Weather Nerds page, under “This Date in Weather History”.
New✈ Flight routes on the aircraft map — tapping a plane still gives type, altitude and speed, and the popup now links that flight straight to FlightAware for origin, destination and history. Also fixes the satellite background, which was showing grey “no imagery” squares instead of photography.
New🧠 Weather Nerds records — the Weather Nerds page now shows all-time records for today’s date at Rochester (KRST) and statewide, plus yesterday’s Minnesota and national high/low/precip — the same NOAA ACIS data as duluthareaweather.com.
New🌍 Regional Dashboard — a full multi-page dashboard (Local / Regional / Road / Wind) in the style of duluthareaweather.com: current conditions, a station map with animated radar and alerts, winter road-sensor conditions, and a live wind-particle map of southeast Minnesota.
New🎉 Site launched — current conditions (Rochester, Owatonna, Austin), 7-day forecast from NWS La Crosse, radar, air quality, moon phase, and South Fork Zumbro / Zumbro Falls river gauges.
New🌽 Growing Conditions — live soil temperature & moisture plus season growing-degree-days and rainfall for SE Minnesota agriculture, with links to USDA crop progress, the U2U GDD tool, and the drought monitor.