For those of you who gasped at the "winter's here" part, the National Weather Service offered some semi-comforting news.

"We'll have a brief warm-up - I don't know if you really want to call this a warm-up - but tomorrow it's going to be in the upper 40s (Fahrenheit or 4.4 degrees Celsius)," said meteorologist Todd Krause of the NWS's Chanhassen office.

"We're still going to be having a few bouts of snow here and there," Krause said. "Nothing major."

The forecast for the Twin Cities metro (Minneapolis and St Paul) area includes chances of snow ranging from 30 per cent to 50 per cent on Sunday night into Monday morning, as well as Tuesday afternoon and night into Wednesday morning.

This October was chillier and rainier than average, Krause said. "The way the pattern is, it looks like we'll have more snow than average, starting in December," he said.