Weather in Minneapolis in April

Shoulder season. April sits in between. You will get good days and you will lose some. Highs sit at 13.5 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

April ranks 7 of 12 in Minneapolis: past the worst of the year but short of September, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 11 days, 3 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 13.5 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 13 nights fall below freezing. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest April day reached 30.6 °C and the coldest night fell to -14.9 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 46 mm — roughly 56% of the month's rain in one day.

April is moderately variable: 38 mm in the driest year against 165 mm in the wettest, around an average of 82 mm. Roughly two Aprils in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 10.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 71%.

How April sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 8.2 °C warmer than March, and May adds another 6.5 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in April

13.4 hours of daylight, gaining 1.5 hours across the month. That is between Minneapolis's extremes of 15.6 and 8.8 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

Minneapolis has no sea to moderate it, and it shows: 43.8 °C separates the hottest afternoon of the year from the coldest night. That is a genuinely continental range, and it means summer and winter here are barely the same place.

How busy it gets

Shoulder. The value months — prices ease off and you get the place closer to itself.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

April in Minneapolis versus nearby

If Minneapolis is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Sioux Falls is a better bet in April — within a degree on temperature, 2 days less rain. Des Moines is a better bet in April — 3.6 °C warmer, 1 day less rain.

So: April is a compromise. September is 23 points better and is what Minneapolis is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Minneapolis

See all twelve months in Minneapolis, or where else to go in April.