Weather in Minneapolis in November

A hard month. November is a hard month in Minneapolis, and worth planning around. Highs sit at 5.7 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

November ranks 8 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 falls on only 6 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 5.7 °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: 23 nights drop below freezing, so anything left outside stays frozen. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest November day reached 24.6 °C and the coldest night fell to -20.3 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 40 mm — roughly 121% of the month's rain in one day.

November is moderately variable: 2 mm in the driest year against 94 mm in the wettest, around an average of 33 mm. Roughly two Novembers in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 8.7 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 79%, which at 5.7 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How November sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 8.3 °C cooler than October, with December dropping another 8.5 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in November

9.6 hours of daylight, losing 1.2 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

Off season. The genuine off season: cheapest by a distance, with the caveat that some tours and restaurants close entirely.

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

November in Minneapolis versus nearby

If Minneapolis is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Sioux Falls is a better bet in November — within a degree on temperature, 2 days less rain. Des Moines is a better bet in November — 3.9 °C warmer, the same number of rain days.

So: November is a compromise. September is 42 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 November.