Today marks the official start of spring.  But already, a few places got their first taste of severe weather on their final day of winter.
     Damage reports are not widespread but there were some reports of roofs torn off and power knocked in Elysian, that's northeast of the local area near Mankato.

     Closer to home, a few communities saw strong winds.  A wind gust of 58 mph was reported at the airport in Rochester Intl. Airport.  63 mph was recorded in Mason City.

     A semi was toppled by winds near Dexter.

     Two miles north of Albert Lea a grain bin was shifted off it's foundation by strong winds.  It's pictured above.

     In Glenville, a power pole fire caused an outage for nearly 400 people.

     Also tree limbs in a few communities sustained some damage.

It's the winter that hasn't been winter.  This Winter (December-February) in SE Minnesota is so far the 2nd warmest all time seeing an average temperature of 24.7°. The warmest was back in 01-02 at 25.1°. There's still 13 more days left to this month and with mild temperatures ahead we could break the alltime record.  Temperatures only need to make up 0.4° on average.

Here's the list:

The weather we see every day greatly depends on a lot of things.  One of those is ocean temperatures in various regions across the world.  The most common one you've likely heard of is El Niño and La Niña.  The two occur in the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean.  When waters are warmer than normal it is considered an El Niño year.  Conversely, cooler waters compared to normal make a La Niña year.  This winter we are currently seeing a La Niña setup which usually leads to cooler temperatures in our region of the country, which so far this winter has not been the case.  Only four of the 20 La Niñas since 1949 have lead to cooler than normal temperatures in our region.