Is it just me, or is the midwest weather really crappy this year?

Great idea! That should make for a great story.

So, this afternoon I flew from KRRT to KMSP in my trusty ERJ-145. This time, I set ASN to the "easy mode" before starting. Surprise, while not perfect, I managed to cross the threshold on Rwy 4 at KMSP pretty much on the localizer and glideslope, just a bit over Vref+5, with a respectable landing vertical velocity. On cursory inspection, it looks like the principal change effected by going to the easy mode was a reduction in the turbulence variation from its earlier value of 100/100, to a setting of 50/100. While this did not entirely suppress the rapid variations in my airspeed coming down the glideslope, it did reduce them to manageable proportions. It would be good to know how large these variations are in the RW and how pilots go about managing them.

Yup. That's pretty much the point I've been making. If the turbulence that has been creating my difficult approaches is "real", then I should be trying to master it.