A Very Snowy Winter So Far With More on the Way

We’ve already had more snow than we typically get during the winter, and a trifecta of weather systems will bring additional accumulation to the region over the next several days. Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld and Jim du Bois discuss the coming storms, the prospects for spring flooding, and the snow’s impact on the drought. Also, a look at whether there’s a correlation between heavy winter snowfall and an active severe weather season. Finally, an opportunity for volunteer amateur weather enthusiasts to measure precipitation and make a meaningful contribution to atmospheric science through the CoCoRaHS program.

James du Bois
The Top 5 Weather Events of 2022

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld and Jim du Bois recap the State Climatology Office’s top 5 weather events of 2022. Also, a look a the recent snowstorms, the atmospheric river plaguing California, the gusty winds of the past year, and the top 24 snowfalls in the Twin Cities from 1884-2023.

James du Bois
A Powerful Winter Storm Brings Mix of Precipitation

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld and Jim du Bois discuss the major storm system that is impacting a large part of the US over the next several days. In Minnesota, we will see a mix of snow, rain, sleet, and freezing rain creating slick roads and hazardous travel conditions.

James du Bois
A Stormy May With More On The Way

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld and Jim du Bois discuss last week’s destructive and deadly storms, including a rare haboob (a windstorm that kicks up topsoil and produces a menacing-looking dust cloud). Also, a look at the potential for severe weather in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin this afternoon and evening.

James du Bois
This Weekend's Storm Packs A Lot Of Moisture But Where And In What Form It Will Fall Is Uncertain

A storm carrying significant moisture will impact much of Minnesota starting this evening and continuing through Saturday. A wintry mix of precipitation is likely north and west of the Twin Cities. Rain will dominate from the Metro southward. Severe weather is possible in the south-central and southeastern parts of the state including the possibility of tornadoes. Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld and Jim du Bois discuss why this storm system carries so much uncertainty.

James du Bois
Don't Rely On A Rodent's Weather Forecast

SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

Jim du Bois  00:00

Predictions, prognostications, and Punxsutawney Phil? This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, how are you doing on this Groundhog Day?

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:15

You know, it's a nice brisk, cold morning. Rode into work on the bicycle and didn't regret it. But understand why people would if they didn't have the right gear. How are you, Jim?

Jim du Bois  00:26

You know, Kenny, I'm doing well. I agree with you. It was a little chilly this morning. But I found it kind of bracing in a way when I stepped outside. So, it gave me energy. I don't know if...it sounds like from what I'm telling you, Kenny, maybe, maybe I'm starting to have a little affinity for winter.

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:44

Well, I mean, you know, it's about time. You've been here how many years?

Jim du Bois  00:48

My entire life. But...

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:49

Yeah. Well, you know it's good. At some point, you stop fighting and you just accept.

Jim du Bois  00:55

Right, right.

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:56

You know, you gotta live with this sucker for five months out of the year, most years. So, you know, you can either enjoy those five months and make peace with the fact that you know, you might need some extra layers. Or you can...I can't imagine the alternative. Can't imagine spending five months in...

Jim du Bois  01:18

In lockdown?

Jim du Bois  01:20

Yeah, misery.

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:21

I can definitely imagine five months in lockdown. Maybe previously I couldn't imagine that.

Jim du Bois  01:26

Exactly, exactly. Well, Kenny, I'm doing my best to embrace winter and I really need to do that because if you are to believe Punxsutawney Phil, he is the groundhog who comes out from his den as legend has it every February 2. He's done so since 1887 in Gobblers Knob, which I just love the name of that. That's just fabulous. But Punxsutawney Phil emerged today, saw his shadow, which means if you believe in such things six more weeks of winter. So that's why I went out this morning and I opened my arms and just felt winter all about my body because I know if Punxsutawney Phil is correct, I better get used to it for another six weeks.

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:12

I mean, I was out this morning, and the Sun was starting to shine, but I couldn't find my shadow. I wonder what that's about?

Jim du Bois  02:19

Well, apparently, from what I understand, it doesn't always matter if the Sun is out or if it's an overcast day because I guess on occasion, Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow on days where according to the climate records, it was overcast in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and there have been other days when he has emerged from his den and not seen his shadow but according to the climate records, it was a bright sunny day, so I guess it all depends. But anyway, we almost didn't have the traditional Groundhog Day this year because Milltown Mel who apparently is the groundhog who has served as Punxsutawney Phil for multiple years, passed away recently and as of yesterday, according to NPR, they were scrambling to find his replacement and weren't sure that they would in time for the usual event to take place this morning. But they found a stand-in. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and the rest is history.

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:22

I'm gonna, I'm gonna just do a timeout here.

Jim du Bois  03:24

Okay. Yeah.

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:25

Real quick, Jim. I think that Milltown Mel is a different, that's a different groundhog.

Jim du Bois  03:25

Oh, it is...I totally, okay maybe I confused myself.

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:32

I think it is. I think, I'm on the NPR story. And it's basically there's several different cities that have kind of their version of Punxsutawney Phil.

Jim du Bois  03:43

Oh, you are correct.

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:46

Punxsutawney Phil is alive. It's that Milltown Mel croaked.

Jim du Bois  03:51

Well, then that's my mistake because now as I skim further in the story, I see that he is associated with Milltown, New Jersey, and has absolutely nothing to do with Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. So, I digress. But I guess it serves the point that apparently this phenom of the ability of groundhogs to predict the winter weather isn't limited to just one city in one state. This is, this is a, perhaps it's even a worldwide phenom. We don't know.

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:23

Right. And then the Groundhog Day tradition, I think that Punxsutawney Phil is the longest-running one in the US. You know, where this particular groundhog became the winter spokesperson for the rest of the country is beyond me. But let's just be honest here, Jim. With the forecast being either a mild winter or six weeks more of winter, on February 2, to Minnesotans, that's a little like saying okay, you can have vanilla ice cream, or you can have the one that's not strawberry. If we only have six weeks of winter, that's actually a pretty warm winter. So, to us, what's the difference?

Jim du Bois  05:05

Good point, Kenny.

Kenny Blumenfeld  05:07

What's the difference? If our winter's over on March 15, we got off easy.

Jim du Bois  05:12

Exactly, exactly.

Kenny Blumenfeld  05:13

And that's even in light of, you know, the way that the climate has changed. Certainly, we have had winters that have ended before March 15. But you know, you also got to remember the Thunder Blizzard 2018. We had heavy snow in mid-April in 2019 and 2020 in Minnesota, and some listeners may recall that on May 1, May 2, somewhere in there, in 2013, we had over a foot of snow in southeastern Minnesota in the area, you know, around Northfield and Rochester in towards the Red Wing area. So yeah, if we only get six weeks of winter, good for us. And I don't want to pick on Phil, I mean, this brings up a lot, a lot of questions. Jim. Right? A lot of questions. Okay. So, if a groundhog, does a groundhog actually see its shadow? And if a groundhog sees its shadow does it know it sees its shadow? Do groundhogs know what shadows are?

 Jim du Bois  05:59

Yeah, you know, I think the problem is you just...

Kenny Blumenfeld  06:25

I think it's a fair question.

Jim du Bois  06:26

It's a very fair question. And I guess the followers of Punxsutawney Phil just go on blind faith because I believe his handlers are known as the Inner Circle. It's a very elite group of people in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. They're the guys who wear the top hats that you see with Punxsutawney Phil. And one of them is able, apparently, to speak Groundhogese. So, it's not only that Punxsutawney Phil does or doesn't allegedly see his shadow, he also engages in a conversation with this guy from the Inner Circle, and apparently goes into greater detail about his predictions for the weather. So, who knows?

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:09

You know, I figure while he's at it, they should get his opinions on other things.

Jim du Bois  07:13

There you go. Maybe he can fix the political mess we're in?

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:17

Yeah. Or, you know, who's gonna get the most golds at the Olympics? I, I think that you know, I'm glad that they do this because it is a, it's a cherished tradition. Listeners should know it is total malarkey. The National Weather Service did an assessment of recent forecasts on a national basis. So, this was basically during the 2010s. Punxsutawney Phil's batting average was just under, I think it was coming in around 400.

Jim du Bois  07:56

Not even a coin flip.

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:58

Yeah, right. So basically, this notion that the groundhog sees its shadow and makes an accurate prediction about the remainder of winter is actually less accurate than random chance. So, okay, so have fun, enjoy it. I would not make plans specifically based on it. But you know, in a way this gets at kind of our larger need, this larger desire that we have to understand things that are out of our control. And the weather, especially late in winter, and early in spring is one of those things. You know, people can feel better about the planting season coming up if they understand that the weather is going to be favorable for it. And so, it's a nice tradition. I just hope people understand it's completely non-scientific. And I think most people do get that.

Jim du Bois  08:54

Absolutely. And we should point out, too, that the science of predicting the weather is, I guess, in the scheme of human existence on this earth, a relatively recent phenomenon because, correct me if I'm wrong, Kenny, but we really didn't even understand what warm fronts and cold fronts were until the early part of the 20th century, correct?

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:14

Yeah, yeah, that is correct. And, you know, in Phil's defense, there are professionals with advanced degrees in atmospheric science who try their hand at seasonal forecasting, and I can't say that they're that much better than Phil. I mean, you know, they, obviously there's nuance, and they, this is the Climate Prediction Center, but they're not the only ones, they're the most famous ones through the you know, mainstream will probably recognize those maps that say it's going to be above normal or below normal for temperature, precipitation. There are also private sector, long range forecasters who work for, you know, they work for the various industries that would really care, energy sector and agricultural sector. There are commodities forecasters who try to, you know, get a good sense of what's going to happen in the next several months or in the coming season. It's hard work. I mean, that's just, it's really hard. And it's not only because forecasting the weather in general is hard, it's just because it's, it's such a, it's such a complex system. I mean, and think about the things that we're looking for. I mean, so let's say, Jim, we're talking about the weather three months out, and there's a strong indication that it's going to be a cool period and a wet period. And this is hypothetical. But now, just imagine that, that it's largely correct. And it is, you know, generally, below normal temperatures, and fairly wet, but it's punctuated by an astronomically hot, you know, 15-day run of, you know, warm and very dry weather. Okay, so then, was it right? Was the forecast, right? You know, was it? There's so much nuance in here, too, and what people experience and remember, is often different from what the facts are. So, for example, last winter, the winter of 2020, to 2021, making sure I get my years straight here, it was a warm winter. It was, you know, and we were actually on our way to one of the warmest winters on record, probably top 10 territory. But there was a two-week interlude during February where it was very cold. And it, you know, you and I talked about this, but temperatures were 20 degrees, 25 degrees below normal on average for a period of almost two weeks. And so that's actually what people tend to remember about last winter, and they don't so much remember the fact that it was actually, you know, 80% of the season was mild. They don't remember that so much. They remember the piercingly cold outbreak in February. So, it's interesting. It's hard work to make those forecasts, and you're right, just forecasting in general, is really a, I mean, you know, the old joke is that Aristotle coined the term meteorology and, you know, within a couple hours, someone asked him what the weekend was going to be like. But truthfully, forecasting is a relatively recent endeavor, and really got kind of serious in the 20th century.

Jim du Bois  12:45

And we should point out that the accuracy of forecasts has improved dramatically, particularly since the 1950s. We actually have some stats. I have one here that in the mid-50s, the 36-hour National Weather Service--then the US Weather Bureau--forecast was about 20% accurate. By 2014, that 36-hour forecast was accurate over 80% of the time. Very similar for the 72-hour forecast. In 1975, 25% accuracy. 2014, 70%. So, we've made major strides in the last 40 to 60 years. Is this, Kenny, due to the fact that we now have supercomputers that can crunch numbers, and we didn't have access to that prior to say the mid-1950s.

Kenny Blumenfeld  13:37

Yeah, that's a great point, Jim. And I would say that it's a combination of things. I mean, one is forecasters are now better trained. Meteorology is still pretty much the same science, but the tools that meteorologists have to bring into forecasting, they're not just super computer based, but there's just other analytical tools, and there's concepts that really weren't available in the early decades of forecasting that are. So, you have some very well-trained forecasters who have some very good tools. We have much better, in many cases anyway, better monitoring and better data, better data quality, better programs to help analyze the data. So, it's just all in all a better system. And, you know, some of the stats that you read, I think it would be easy for a person to say, well, yeah, but they're still wrong, you know, X percent of the time. But there's been, you know, in our lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of people who are older, there's been a huge change in the kinds of mistakes that are sort of acceptable in forecasting. And one thing that you know, some of the younger listeners might not even be aware of is that it used to be really common for a forecast on a day to, you know, completely miss the potential for some kind of a cataclysm or a disaster and you know, it wasn't like it happened all the time. But sometimes, you know, forecasters would know that it could rain today, but they didn't foresee tornadoes, or they said that it would be partly cloudy, but you ended up with a flash flood. And even in the 1980s, we had some phenomena where it was not supposed to snow, and then we got a lot. Or in 1984, there was this surprise blizzard that really wasn't particularly well forecast in western Minnesota and killed a lot of people. And those kinds of things really don't happen anymore. And now, there's more of the other kind of error where maybe people are expecting severe weather or expecting floods, and they don't materialize where the snowstorm, you know, is forecast to hit, but instead, it ends up 40 or 50 miles away. And that can really upset people because they make plans based on that. But it's a totally different kind of error from what we used to get. I mean, now, you know, forecasters largely can see most of the big weather events several days out. And they generally make accurate forecasts on them, with the exception of, you know that very close geographic specificity that's still kind of hard to resolve. And so ,you still see those types of mistakes. But we're sort of done with the days where, you know, we expected it to be clear, and we ended up with huge downpours and damage, or the days where, you know, the forecast called for, you know, brisk winds and temperatures in the 20s but people ended up freezing to death with temperatures plunging, you know, well, well below zero. So, big changes, and you know now, the forecasters are often, they often have a pretty good handle on the general picture five days out. And when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, early 90s, that was, you know, five days out was like a holy grail. It was a best guess. And it was definitely a guess at that time. And so, there's been huge improvements in forecasting, indeed.

Jim du Bois  17:09

Kenny, is it fair to say that forecasting may be a bit more challenging in areas with high variability, and I'm thinking like the Midwest, and maybe easier in places where there are large moderating influences like areas around an ocean. Any truth to that?

Kenny Blumenfeld  17:27

There's some truth to it. But I would be careful. There was a huge snowstorm this past, I guess it was the past weekend in Boston.

Jim du Bois  17:35

Yes, two feet of snow.

Kenny Blumenfeld  17:37

Two feet of snow. And that forecast was definitely a razor's edge type of forecast. You know, there's this big, explosive low pressure system, tracking over the ocean, not too far away from Cape Cod, you know, 100 miles or so from Cape Cod. But its position really, really mattered. Because that determined where the precipitation cut-off would be, and where the precipitation, you know, wouldn't go. And so with those sort of razor's edge forecasts, we've seen, you know, areas in the East Coast that are expecting a foot, foot and a half a snow, and they end up with six inches, and everybody's mad, or they end up with two inches. So, they do have some of the same issues as us. But the ocean does produce a moderating influence. I would say one of the bigger factors that makes the weather easy or hard to forecast is, aside from the variability, which is one piece of it, is the kind of complexity of the general weather patterns. So, for example, Hawaii, doesn't really have very much complexity. Most days, the Sun comes out, especially on the sunny side of the islands, they've kind of a sunnier side and the cloudier side, depending on if you're up the slope, going up, the slope with the winds are going down the slope with the winds. The winds in Hawaii are usually out of the east. So usually, the west sides are very, very bright and sunny and dry, and the east sides are kind of wet. In any case, the weather there doesn't change all that much. And it's fairly simple. They don't get low pressure systems frequently, they usually just have kind of random heating from, you know, the topography and from the patchy sunlight that's there every day. So, you can pretty accurately forecast in most of Hawaii almost any day of the year, you know, sunny until early afternoon with a chance of isolated showers late in the day or by mid-afternoon. And that's a fine forecast almost any day of the year for most of Hawaii. And so, it's a little harder to have huge errors there. And another type of influence that I think is important is, you know, here in the Midwest, and also on the East Coast, we have a lot of these very sharp fronts that move through bringing in, you know, really cold air from northern Canada. And those are those sorts of razor's edge type of situations where there's a sharp cut-off on where the precipitation is and isn't in the path of the weather system is going to be really important to the success of any forecast. But out in the western US, a cold front is a different animal, because when the winds come out of the, you know, when the winds come out of the west in Seattle, they're just coming off the Pacific Ocean. It's not the same kind of airmass transition that we have here. And they tend to get these very broad areas of precipitation that might be, you know, 1000 miles long or wide. And it's just much harder to make big mistakes when you're dealing with a huge mass of ocean moisture. So, I'd say complexity or simplicity of the weather pattern, which does get at the variability. And then whether the kinds of things that you're forecasting are generally very geographically focused. So being right or wrong is kind of a matter of miles. So that's one thing versus these larger kind of broad systems where, you know, you can easily forecast that it's going to rain because there's a swath of rain that's the size of three states moving on shore. So yeah, there's some differences here. And I would say cutting your teeth as a forecaster in the Midwest is probably a good way to get used to the real difficult type of weather where there's a lot of geographic specificity, there's a lot of sharp changes, and as you pointed out, there's a lot of variability. Changes from, you know, week to week, day to day even.

Jim du Bois  21:53

Well, we will talk more about forecasting in a future episode. But for now, I think it's safe to say rely on the science, rely on the professional forecasters, and don't put a lot of faith in a rodent.

Kenny Blumenfeld  22:07

That's a great, that's a great statement. Jim, I support that.

Jim du Bois  22:11

All right, Kenny, great talking to you as always, and we'll check in with you soon.

Kenny Blumenfeld  22:16

Very good. Thanks, Jim.

Jim du Bois  22:17

This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll catch you next time.

James du Bois
The Top Five Weather Events of 2021

SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

Jim du Bois  00:00

Goodbye, 2021. How did it go climatologically?  This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's climatologist. Here we are at the cusp of the end of 2021, New Year's Eve. Kenny, how you doing? You got to be kind of excited about this as we look back over the top five weather events of this past year.

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:23

Yeah, I'm doing well. Thanks, Jim. Happy New Year to you. Happy Holidays, belated to everybody. And hey, may we all soar in 2020.

Jim du Bois  00:35

That's what we said about 2021. Didn't quite work that way.

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:40

Yeah. But you know, so now we're really due for a good year.

Jim du Bois  00:44

Yes, exactly.

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:47

I would say, if our number one event hadn't occurred in December, we would have been looking back at 2021 as the year of drought, heat, and smoke. And I think a lot of people are still going to remember it that way. It was a hot, dry, and smoky summer for sure. But as you know, it was unseated. And I think our memories are going to preserve the number one even longer than the rest of them. So yeah, it was a surprising year with a kind of surprise ending.

Jim du Bois  01:22

Well, without a doubt. And let's start with the number five top weather event of 2021.

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:31

Yeah, sure. So you know, and listeners are wondering where this arbitrary top five comes from, the state climatology office kind of rounds up a list of the greatest weather events that are summarizable. There are some kind of abstract things that are I think people will remember, but they're hard to summarize. And it's hard to make a story about some of those, but the things that, you know, are sort of stamped in time, one way or the other. And then what we do is one of my colleagues, Pete Boulay, sends the list out to, you know, basically publicizes it as much as possible, shares it through our Facebook page, sends it out to a list of people who interact with our office a lot, sends it to the National Weather Service and some of our contacts there some media partners, and then has a very simple voting scheme. If something ranks at number five, it gets one point and if it ranks it, number one, it gets five points. Real simple. And then just kind of adds up, totals it up. So, the number five was the June heatwave. This was the one, you have to get to stretch your memory now. Some of these are a little bit far back there. And maybe don't remember exactly what we're talking about. This was not, and we talked about this, Jim, June heatwave was not a phenomenal magnitude event. We didn't shatter any records for, you know, highest temperature recorded at any station for all time or anything like that. And so, there have definitely been worse heatwaves. What made this one interesting was it was the longest and most severe heatwave to occur so early in the season. So it wasn't the magnitude. This has actually become a kind of common theme. It wasn't the magnitude, so much as it was when we found it. And Jim, you and I have talked about this kind of thing. It seems like countless times in recent years where we're, you know, talking about some event that's the latest to be so warm, or the earliest to be so warm, or the most severe for how early or late it was. That kind of thing. So that's our number five. It's the June heatwave. We had a lot of records for the time of the year. It was the most 90 degree days so early in the season consecutively in the Twin Cities and at some other stations. It was legitimately hot in northwestern Minnesota, where several stations a number of times cracked 100 degrees, something we did not do in the southern part of the state. Yeah. So you know, the kind of weather that isn't unusual in July is somewhat unusual in early June and we had never seen it this hot for that long that early in the season before. So that's our number five event. You must have loved it because you're, you know, remind the listeners this is Jim hot weather du Bois.

Jim du Bois  04:34

No, I reveled in that June heatwave. So that's certainly one of the events of this past year that I did enjoy weather-wise. So we'll go from one extreme to another from a heatwave to a cold outbreak in February of 2021. That's the fourth-ranked weather event of 2021, and Kenny, that one covered a good portion of the US going as far south as Texas. That was the event that caused problems with the Texas electrical grid, correct?

Kenny Blumenfeld  05:06

Yeah. So you know, we get, we get kind of stuck in this pretty brutal cold outbreak. And I'll just say this one, number four, the cold outbreak, is very similar in how we position it to that June heatwave. It was not the coldest that we'd ever been by a long shot. But it was pretty late in winter to have it be that cold for that many days. So it actually, you know, the kinds of things that we do, they're not always warm, warm, warm, warm, warm. Some of the ways that we've expanded the seasons a little bit has been to displace or dislodge some of the coldest weather from its traditional time of year and send it, have it happening a little earlier, or later in some cases. Yeah, so this was, you know, about two weeks of really cold weather here, this period during the middle of February for almost two weeks where we were averaging over 20 degrees below normal for the entire period. And there were some days that were close to 30 degrees below normal, depending on where you were looking. We had gone all winter without having a 50 below anywhere in Minnesota, and that that ended with this cold outbreak. We had some very low wind chills. And the only real saving grace was that it was late enough in the season that a lot of the days were sunny, and you can actually feel the sun beating down on you even as the air temperature was below zero. So there was, you know, at least a little of that subtle February warmth, because, you know, there you're only a month away from the spring equinox. And you are correct. This is basically while this large sort of dome of high pressure was anchored over our region, and we had this kind of pretty significant cold outbreak covering a large part of North America, a separate lobe kind of lurched southward and really ran down, right down kind of just to the west of us from the Dakotas through Nebraska, into Oklahoma and Texas. And it was during that period that we had the electrical grid, energy grid catastrophe in Texas and in parts of Oklahoma. So yeah, it was a pretty major event up here. Again, we didn't break any cold weather records. It wasn't the lowest temperature we'd ever recorded. It wasn't even close to that. But it was pretty late in the winter to have it be that cold for that many consecutive days. And that, people remember it. And so got ranked number four.

Jim du Bois  07:46

Well, checking in at number three is the summer of smoke.

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:51

Gosh, you remember that, Jim?

Jim du Bois  07:54

I do indeed. And if I recall correctly, it broke a record in terms of the level of particulate matter that the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency measured. I think it was at the highest level ever since measurements have been taken. So very, very unhealthy conditions.

Kenny Blumenfeld  08:11

You know, real kudos here to the Pollution Control Agency, we couldn't have summarized this event, if it weren't for them. They're the agency that's responsible for monitoring our air quality and issuing advisories that then get transmitted through the National Weather Service. And they had a very busy kind of a career summer, because there were, you know, there was, I think there was a highlight or a low light, which was this period between July 28 and August 6, where we kind of had this unprecedented smoke outbreak with visibilities that were often below a mile. We actually could find some stations that reported half and quarter-mile visibility during this period. Just to put that in perspective, that's in the air, there's nothing falling, it's just the particulates hanging in the air close to the ground, so that they're reducing visibility. When it snows hard enough to reduce the visibility to a half-mile, you're generally clocking in around an inch an hour. And if, and if it's a quarter-mile visibility while it's snowing, you're usually coming in over one inch per hour of accumulation. So basically the smoke at times was reducing the visibility to levels that you really only get during moderate and heavy snowfall. And apart from that smoke outbreak, you know, the Twin Cities only being one example, but in the Twin Cities there were 25 days during the summer where the airport reported smoke present as part of its present weather so it was a that's you know, almost a third of the meteorological summer had had smoke pretty bad. And so people do remember it. It came from mostly the fires that were in the region in northern Minnesota, and especially across the border in parts of Ontario and Manitoba. But there were a few times at least where we actually got caught up in some westerly winds and high smoke, you know, not necessarily making it to the ground, but was enough to filter the sun and reduce the temperatures a little bit that drifted in from some of the fires in California and Oregon and Washington. So yeah, very smoky summer. And people won't remember it fondly from that aspect, because it obviously caused some pretty severe consequences, and at least imminent threats for people with respiratory conditions. And also, you know, even for the healthy population, posed some challenges on some of those days where the air quality was, was really low. And again, kudos to the pollution control agencies, air quality forecast crew, they did a great job. And they are the reason that we know what we know about this summer.

Jim du Bois  11:02

We're recapping the top five weather events of 2021. Coming in at number two is the drought of 2021, which looks like it may become the drought of 2022, at least the way we're going.

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:16

Yes, so it was a pretty nasty drought, for sure. And this was going to, I think this was slated to be the walkaway number one. You know, there were months during the summer where it just seemed like we could not buy a good rain across the state. And, you know, it was, it was hot. People didn't have enough water. We saw Minnehaha Falls basically get reduced to just drip, drip, drip like a leaky faucet, which, you know, is something that we had not observed since the great drought of 1988. It was common to see lakes, shallow lakes, in particular and streams, especially in northwestern Minnesota just dried up, not flowing. And it was a dry, dry summer. It was a major, you know, in northwest Minnesota, it was the worst drought that we've had in over 40 years since 1980. And the rest of the state, most of the rest of the state, including, let's say, including the Twin Cities, and north central and northeast and southwest Minnesota, it was more like a 10 to 30 year drought. So not unprecedented, but, and not even necessarily generational, but you know, pretty substantial. And it behaved just like a drought, it was mostly hot, it was frequently quite hot. And here's an area where some of these different pieces work together. Obviously, the hot weather is easier when the air is dry, so you can get those heatwaves. But also because everything was so dry, and we had so many fires, there was actually smoke, which we just covered, the number three event prevented the heat from being worse than it was. And we had talked about this on the show. There were quite a few days in late, mid and late July where the smoke might have suppressed the temperature by five or possibly even 10 degrees. And by suppressing the temperature, you know, July was incredibly dry. And by preventing it from being even hotter, it really prevented the drought from getting even worse. So this was a big story even with, you know, the kind of, quote, benefit of smoke holding some of the temperatures down. So that was obviously a huge story. We started climbing out of it. Drought is a long, kind of long lasting animal though, and it takes a long time to revert some of those deficits. So even though we got a lot wetter during the fall in much of Minnesota, and winter's honestly off to a pretty good start, we still have a long way to go. And still much of the state is technically in some kind of drought condition. And it's quite likely that unless we get you know really high amounts of precipitation over the next couple months, it's pretty likely that drought will persist and remain in Minnesota at some level as we get into spring.

Jim du Bois  14:12

And drum roll, checking in at number one, an event that occurred just a couple of weeks ago, the historic mid-December severe weather and wind event. And the National Weather Service actually on its website, you can find a recap. They call it historic, unprecedented storm of December 15 and 16 of 2021. Kenny, this was one for the record books, correct?

Kenny Blumenfeld  14:38

This is another one where I think the event itself was actually pretty remarkable. I think any time of year, the severe weather event would have probably made the top five because it had a huge footprint. Did a lot of damage. And it just, the whole thing had a lot going for it. Very big complex system. But it was really the timing. So just in terms of the way that the votes got tabulated, this was our kind of hands down runaway number one, the next one wasn't even close. And, you know, again, think of how influential the drought was, and how much we, how much time as a state we collectively spent talking about it. But you throw a severe weather outbreak that includes 20 tornadoes in Minnesota, and technically a serial derecho, that's the prolonged damaging thunderstorm winds that race oh, you know, in this case across several states. And then you also throw in some of the other things that are a little more typical, but just heightened the intensity of this, that you had these very strong winds that set up after all the thunderstorm activity subsided as the pressure gradient started getting equalized, and wow. So we had power going out across Minnesota from thunderstorms. And then after the thunderstorms, just from regular winds, and during that time the temperature was dropping, and you started to have snow falling in parts of central and northern Minnesota. So it was quite a storm. The magnitude in and of itself maybe could have secured it a number one spot, but probably would have gotten it in the top five in any case, but having it come in December, Jim, we just had never seen anything like that. You know when the latest tornado on record had been previously, Jim?

Jim du Bois  16:29

 It was sometime in November, wasn't it?

Kenny Blumenfeld  16:32

Yeah, it was November 16, I believe 1931, there was a tornado in Hennepin County that was reported. So November 16. So this broke the record for latest tornado on record by almost a full month. And it wasn't just one tornado. I think, if you would talk to climatologists or meteorologists, you know, and said, well, what's gonna happen, you know, are we ever going to have a winter tornado? I think a lot of people may have said no. I know that those of us who follow the changing climate have been talking about how at some point we're going to get a winter tornado. But, you know, honestly, what I would have expected would be that it would be one kind of renegade severe thunderstorm that has a little bit of rotation in it, and produces a small tornado, somewhere in the southern or southeastern part of the state. I think that's what almost any sane meteorologist or climatologist would picture, Jim. They would not think, oh, yeah, someday there will be a mid-December massive, you know, severe weather outbreak that covers tens of thousands of square miles and includes, you know, what looks like on a on a regional basis over 60 confirmed tornadoes. And 20 of those coming in Minnesota. What? No! And then in addition to the tornadoes, you know, large number of hurricane force wind reports or greater, and storms moving at 60 to 80 miles an hour. It was just too much. We had no real ability to see this kind of thing coming. So just if only for its element of surprise, that event gets number number one.

Jim du Bois  18:24

Well, Kenny, it's been quite a year, 2021, not only from a historical standpoint in so many ways, but from a weather standpoint as well. So we're going to start out to 2022 on the cold side.

Kenny Blumenfeld  18:40

Yeah, it's, uh, you know, not memorable, but a cold outbreak, kind of typical Minnesota cold outbreak coming, starting basically on New Year's Eve, and peaking overnight and into New Year's Day. We're gonna see some wind chills around 40 below, 45 below maybe in parts of western and northwestern Minnesota, northern Minnesota, and maybe more like 20 to 35 below in the southern, central and eastern parts of the state. This will be one of those situations where it's not the temperature so much, it's the winds. Temperatures will be in the negative teens at their lowest, but the winds are going to be up 10 to 20 miles an hour. And that's really going to drive those wind chills down. So, is it one for the record books? No, no, not not at this time of year it's not, but it is dangerous cold weather conditions. We might see these things, you know, a dozen or so times this winter. They're always dangerous. Always worth noting. And it does look like it's going to be mostly cold during that first, first week or so of January. So my question to you, Jim, is how does a hot weather loving person cope with cold weather? Do you just stay inside the whole time or do you find a way to get outside?

Jim du Bois  20:00

You know, Kenny, I don't spend a lot of time outside when it's bitterly cold like this. But, you know, I do get out. I kind of do it for my own mental health, considering we're still kind of in this quasi-COVID lockdown right now. So, while I don't embrace cold weather, I've come to learn to tolerate it.

Kenny Blumenfeld  20:19

Yeah, I think a lot of people have, have that sort of coping mechanism. I try and do as much as I can outside until it becomes unbearable. But I, in my hands, my fingers tend to get very cold, but I do like, you know, I like the days where it's cold, but calm. The ones where it's really windy, and so that cold just sort of penetrates everything, those are, those are a lot less pleasant. And again, I think that, I think that this one, you know if you think of some of the real brutal outbreaks, if you've been in Minnesota for a long time, this is not an upper echelon cold weather event. But this is a rude awakening to anybody who hasn't spent a lot of time in Minnesota or maybe is new to the area. And it's also kind of our first real serious one of the year, so it's gonna jog your memory. I mean, going outside  Saturday morning, New Year's Day morning, for more than a couple minutes is going to be pretty, very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. And you know, especially if you don't have the right gear. So keep those extremities covered nicely, cover your head, your ears. And obviously, you want to keep enough heat in your core area. So you know, an extra couple layers around your chest always a good idea. This is something that I think Minnesotans can generally handle and we can do this. But you know, on the other hand, don't ever underestimate the climate. It can hurt you, if you don't respect it

Jim du Bois  21:56

Well, sound advice, Kenny. Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to our listeners, and we will check in with you again next year.

Kenny Blumenfeld  22:06

I'll talk to you in 2022 .Thanks, Jim.

Jim du Bois  22:09

They care, Kenny. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll catch you next time.

James du Bois
A Severe Weather Outbreak That's Potentially A Record-Breaker

 SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

Jim du Bois  00:00

Damaging weather likely in parts of Minnesota this afternoon and evening. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, this is the stuff that makes history. This system that's on its way has everything.

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:19

It does. It's kind of unbelievable. Let's just talk real quickly for listeners, kind of give them an overview. It's Wednesday, December 15. We're talking in the morning. There's obviously some uncertainty, but there's also some certainty. So basically, we have a powerful storm system moving in, one of those big low pressure systems. It is likely to produce severe thunderstorms and possibly tornadoes in Minnesota. Even if it doesn't produce tornadoes, the chance for very strong winds with those thunderstorms is pretty high. This is especially true over southern and eastern Minnesota, basically, south and east of a line from say Worthington to the Twin Cities, you know, including New Ulm and everything southeast of there. The greatest risk running from you know, Mankato and Albert Lee and Rochester over to Red Wing. So that's one threat. So, unprecedented risk for severe weather, including tornadoes. And we usually don't discuss specific products from, you know, the Storm Prediction Center, because these things move and change during the day. But as of this morning, there is a moderate risk for severe weather from the Storm Prediction Center. And Jim, we, you know, have not had that happen in Minnesota in November, let alone December. So, even if we don't get the tornadoes, and, you know, maybe the thunderstorms underachieve a little bit, just the potential is something we have not seen in December before. So that's one piece. Another piece is, even if we don't get the storms, the one real certainty here is that there are going to be very strong regional scale winds that follow the temperature boundary this afternoon and evening. And so, there's a pocket of very strong winds with gusts up above 50 miles an hour. And in some cases exceeding 65, 70, maybe even 75 miles an hour are going to come out of Iowa, and they're going to pass into many of those same areas in Minnesota. Greatest risk is in the southern and southeastern part of the state. But the risk does extend farther up into, you know, central and southern Minnesota, including the Twin Cities. Much of the area's in a high wind warning, which is a step up from a wind advisory. And again, between the severe weather and the wind potential, there's a decent chance of some power outages, trees coming down and some damage, at least scattered or an isolated to scattered fashion across Minnesota. I would not expect, you know, that everyone's gonna have property damage or anything like that. But the chance for things breaking somewhere is quite high. And it's even higher, to be honest, if you look in the southern couple tiers of counties in Minnesota, you know, along  and south of I-90, and into Iowa and into parts of southwestern Wisconsin, so major regional weather event. And then not to be outdone, some of this, at least the thunderstorm activity is going to be riding in on and also produced by some really unusually warm and unstable air. Temperatures into the 60s are quite likely in at least far southern Minnesota. And up in the Twin Cities, you know, temperatures getting into the 50s and possibly touching 60 degrees. You know, this is all on the table. And with that, dew point temperatures rising into the 50s. And some of the models actually have dew point temperatures in the upper 50s. Which this will just obliterate our old dew point records for, say the Twin Cities where we have not recorded a 50 degree dew point anytime between I think it's December 5 And February 20. So, this would be an expansion of the you know, kind of 50 degree dew point season. If we do indeed get an hourly dew point reading 50 degrees or higher. We also haven't had a 60 degree reading, it's roughly the same basically from early December to mid February, there has not been a 60 degree reading in the Twin Cities. So, if we happen to do that, which is possible, then that would be another record. So, kind of unprecedented in three ways. We haven't had severe weather potential this time of year. We haven't had this kind of warmth and humidity. Even if that warmth and humidity doesn't make it into the Twin Cities, there are going to be records broken in other parts of the state, southern and eastern Minnesota.

Jim du Bois  04:48

Well in terms of the biggest threats today, obviously we have the possibility of tornadoes. We have the likelihood of extremely strong winds associated with the thunderstorms. And we should mention that there are two really separate wind events associated with this storm, the first being associated with the thunderstorms, the intense downdrafts, the fact that these storms are going to be moving, what, 60, 70 miles per hour, which is pretty incredible. And that will be the first wind threat, then we have a wind threat after that, which is related to the intense low pressure. And that's going to be a more sustained event, correct? Almost a derecho? Can we use the D word here, or is that more associated with the thunderstorms?

Kenny Blumenfeld  05:31

Yeah. Good questions, Jim. Yeah, so the derecho that the Weather Service was discussing in their morning discussion would be associated with the thunderstorms. Those are thunderstorm-related winds, they kind of progress through an area. You know, at least looking at some of the short term, high resolution weather models, they do show a derecho tracking from northeastern Nebraska and eastern Nebraska through Western and Northern Iowa into southern Minnesota and into western Wisconsin. If that actually happens, I don't know. But that would be associated with the thunderstorms. And you brought up a really good point, there's two different wind risks. So if you think of why thunderstorms produce winds, it's because air rushes out from the top of the thunderstorm, and then it hits the ground and fans out. And so that air that comes out of the top of the thunderstorm has the momentum of that downward acceleration. But it also brings with it some of the momentum that's transferred from the winds that are blowing higher up in the storm. These storms won't be particularly tall, they probably only be 20 or 25,000 feet, but the winds up there are over 100 miles an hour. And so that momentum will get transferred down. And then, you know, come down with that with the downdraft and hit the ground. And there's a lot of cold dry air behind these storms, so there's plenty of fuel for that sinking air into each storm. That's one piece. The other thing is then whatever speed the storm moves at, those winds just kind of move along with it. So if the storms are moving 60 miles an hour, you're pretty likely, almost guaranteed to have winds, if they're coming out of the storm, exceeding 60 miles an hour. So there's a lot pointing to the potential for at least as short but very intense burst of destructive winds with this kind of arc of thunderstorms that's going to sweep across Minnesota, between, oh, probably three or 4pm in the southwest, and maybe seven or 8pm in the east central and southeastern parts of the state. And then as you mentioned, the second wind event is with this powerhouse low pressure system. Now that low pressure system is going to pass probably through, you know, maybe the St Cloud area up towards Duluth. And there's going to be a very tight pressure gradient. This is probably the strongest low pressure system that we've had in Minnesota in, you know, maybe a decade. There was a really, a much more intense one actually in 2010. And we do get storm low pressure down just below 980 millibars, every, every couple years, but this one looks like it's going to bottom out in the lower or middle 970s in terms of millibars. And that would be about as low as we've had in, you know, maybe at least six or seven years and maybe a decade. That kind of storm can produce very strong winds, and also has these other features that actually get integrated vertically through the system that can actually enhance wind in these little pockets. So, that's going to be a more prolonged wind event that comes in basically after the storms pass through, the storms will probably be a little bit scattered, and they won't be particularly long-lasting at any one place. Sometime after they pass, there'll be a much longer push of gusty winds, maybe several hours. And at the peak of those you could have winds that are just as strong as the thunderstorm winds. So, you could have gusts exceeding 60 miles an hour, maybe even 70 miles an hour in some places. And this, this will happen on and off. This is the most likely outcome of all these things that this will happen almost certainly on and off for at least a few hours. And then even once the winds subside a little bit from that peak, it's still going to be a gusty and kind of blustery time as we get into Thursday. Just, I think the real wind damage potential comes first from the thunderstorms and then second from this larger aerial push of winds that will mostly be occurring in the late evening and overnight hours.

Jim du Bois  09:35

And then we see a dramatic drop in temperature, correct?

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:40

Yeah, the temperatures are going to drop you know somewhere between 25 and 40 degrees depending on where you are and exactly how warm it gets. (If) temperatures hit forecast levels in the Twin Cities and southern Minnesota, then the temperatures will probably drop even more than 40 degrees within a, you know, only about a 12 to 24 hour period. Now funny though, Jim, temperature dropping 40 degrees might only get us down to about normal.

Jim du Bois  10:08

Wow. It kind of puts it in perspective, doesn't it, about how record setting all of this is?

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:15

Yeah. So it's really the potential for multiple records. And we should, you know, talk about the tornadoes, you know, tornadoes are very hard to predict. And it's not clear if these storms will produce them. But with storms moving at 60 miles an hour, any tornado will come up very quickly. The National Weather Service has been urging people to just, you know, stay alert, and you know, know where to get your weather warnings and be up to date about them. Because, you know, 60 miles an hour is a mile a minute which means if a tornado is headed towards you and is seven miles away, it's gonna be on you in seven minutes. That's not a lot of time, you know, to get out of its way or get down into the basement. So, you know, there's a lot of potential today, a lot could happen, and people should probably be aware. This is one of the, boy, I suppose, Jim, forecasters could be really hanging their heads tomorrow if this thing under achieves because I'd say the messaging is going out on all channels that this is one of the most dangerous weather systems that a lot of forecasters have seen in their careers. So, it's unlike those summertime systems because this one has strong winds aloft that you find, especially in the winter season, even though we don't have the same level of heat and humidity that you get in the summertime, there's just an awful lot to work with. And (the) storm is producing a lot of potential in terms of, you know, not just the temperature and humidity, but the winds and severe weather. I should also, we should also mention, Jim, that on the other side of this, I mean not to be sneezed that the same system, which is really going to wind up is going to produce some winter weather in northwestern and western Minnesota. And you know, basically the northwestern half of the state is going to be on the cooler side of this system. And you know, right now the forecast office in Grand Forks is calling for, you know, a few inches of snow in parts in northwestern through north central Minnesota, but the winds will be very strong. And these could actually produce blizzard conditions in open country. So, if you are driving east or south out of the Twin Cities area today, just be careful late afternoon through evening for the chances for severe weather, and also those damaging winds. And then if you're heading northwest, if you're driving through northwestern Minnesota overnight, you got to watch out for, you know, whiteout conditions. There's not enough time for this system to produce dramatically heavy snow, but it's got a lot going for it. And for a short amount of time, the snow could come down at pretty high rates and be driven by you know, 40 and 50 mile an hour winds.

Jim du Bois  13:02

Well, Kenny, as you mentioned, it's very important to stay weather aware today. Stay tuned to local media, however you get your weather information. If you have a NOAA Weather Radio, make sure that's all set so it will go off in the event of any warnings that are issued. And we should also point out that at least in the Twin Cities and other parts of Minnesota, a lot of this activity is going to occur after the sun has set. So, if people are relying on looking out the window and seeing an approaching system, that may not be possible, given the fact it's going to be dark out.

Kenny Blumenfeld  13:34

Yeah, that's a great point. Thanks for bringing that up. This is such a bizarre setup. Most of the high resolution models that we use to try and understand, you know, when things are really going to kick off, they don't actually, don't actually show the storms beginning in Nebraska and southeast South Dakota and maybe far western Iowa until three or 4pm. That's kind of when things get kicked off. And well, what time's the sun go down here, Jim?

Jim du Bois  14:01

About 4:30 now, thereabouts?

Kenny Blumenfeld  14:02

Yeah, well, you know, before five across the region in any case, and it gets dark pretty quickly after that. So you're right, very good point. A lot of this risk is going to occur, you know, after darkness has fallen. So what a strange system not only do we have the potential for way out of season severe weather, but this could be happening at night. So, a lot of this is gonna, and the strong winds are almost entirely going to be occurring, those strong regional winds will occur almost entirely at night here in Minnesota.

Jim du Bois  14:38

Well, everybody stay safe. Keep an eye on the weather. Kenny, we will connect after this has all transpired and probably have a lot to talk about in terms of how this system actually plays out.

Kenny Blumenfeld  14:49

I think so. Everyone should honestly, especially if you are in that high wind warning, secure loose objects, secure anything that could become projectile or anything that you don't want damaged. Also, you know, high profile vehicles and other high profile objects are really going to struggle against some of those strongest winds, even if you don't get the thunderstorm, so those regional winds are going to be tough. And they're going to be coming out of the southwest later this afternoon. So, if that helps you ,if you're driving down I-94, that could be very difficult because you'd be basically, the wind would be perpendicular to your vehicle. So this will be something to pay careful attention to for sure.

Jim du Bois  15:35

Well, Kenny, thanks a lot for all of your insights on this. We'll check in with you again soon. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Stay weather aware today. Stay safe

James du Bois
Another Winter Storm on the Anniversary of the Domebuster!

SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

Well, it's the first big one for the Twin Cities at least. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, you got to be excited. You did a documentary on this. After all, this is real winter, or at least sort of quasi real winter coming our way. Correct?

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:22

Yeah, either. Jim, I gotta say I like your teaser, you're more confident than I am. Maybe I'll have you handle the forecasting, take care of it. I'll ask you questions. Tell us, Jim. How much snow can we expect over the Twin Cities area? Go ahead.

Jim du Bois  00:39

Well, someone who is more educated in this area than I am, is saying we could see four to eight inches, at least in the Twin Cities area, and more, of course, down to the south of us or the southeast of us in particular.

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:54

Yeah, you know what, these storms are always a hotbed of uncertainty. And so we're recording it on Thursday evening. Most people will hear this hopefully before the snow starts, but there's probably going to be a lot that changes between when we're recording this and when the snow actually begins. And you are correct that as of, you know, Thursday afternoon, all of the signs have been pointing to a swath of very heavy snow, kind of oriented south, southwest or west southwest and east northeast, across basically an area from say, northwestern Iowa into south central and then southeastern Minnesota, just kind of nicking the Twin Cities with, you know, appreciable snow in the southern, southeastern parts of the Twin Cities, you know, several inches, as you alluded to, but maybe, maybe up to a foot or more than a foot. The models have all been really happy about, you know, 14, 15 inches of snow in these little isolated bull's eyes, seems like it's most likely to be just south and east of the Twin Cities. But I gotta tell you there, Jim, it would only take a 25 to 30 mile shift to bring that band southeast and leave the Twin Cities high and dry, with very little snow in the northwestern part of the metro and, you know, only a few inches, couple few inches in the center, and maybe you know, a little more in the southeast, or shifted the other way. And we're all of a sudden, you know, snow central. So, it'll be interesting to see. Actually, some of the models have hinted at the heaviest snow setting up over the Twin Cities, some of the recent models, but these things bob and weave and go up and down all the time. And you can't focus on any one model, because it'll drive you crazy, because the next one will come in and completely contradict it. But yeah, several inches at least. We have the potential for more, we also have the potential for less if things go the other way. But in any case, I'm real confident there's a 10 inch-plus, kind of a double digit snowstorm unfolding for a little narrow swath of southern, southeastern Minnesota somewhere in there.

Jim du Bois  03:13

So the culprit here is a Colorado low, not an Alberta Clipper. So, this is a classic setup for a winter storm in Minnesota, isn't it?

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:24

Yeah. So when I was back in my, finishing my undergrad, and listeners should know I did that really late. I was, you know, I was sort of take two or almost three of being a student but I finally finished it up, you know, late in my 20s and I did a really neat senior project where I actually looked at all the times that it snowed heavily in the Twin Cities. And then I went to the weather maps and I traced the track of the low pressure system because it's almost always a low pressure system that caused the heavy snow, and what's really interesting is we do get some heavy snow from Alberta Clippers, but generally heavy in terms of, you know, high accumulations, more than four inches, but that's usually a fairly light in terms of its character the snows kind of light and powdery but those can be somewhat blizzardy. And then we have the Colorado low, which is a storm system that forms in eastern Colorado. It often dips down into the panhandle region of Texas and Oklahoma and then hooks northeastward into the middle or, usually it's the middle Mississippi Valley or the upper Great Lakes region. That trajectory used to give the Col...has given the Colorado low, you, I'm gonna make you say it, Jim. What's the unfortunate name that also sometimes refers to these Colorado lows?

Jim du Bois  04:49

Is that the Panhandle hooker?

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:51

Yeah, say it again, say it again.

Jim du Bois  04:53

The Panhandle Hooker.

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:55

Yeah, I'm on state time here, so I can't really say that, but that's correct. That's because it hooked. Yeah, nobody's thinking of the other meaning for the Panhandle Hooker. But it's the same storm. They tend to be very strong because that path brings the low pressure area very close to the Gulf of Mexico. And as it's close to the Gulf of Mexico, it basically pulls in a lot of that moisture. And then as it travels north eastward, it brings that moisture with it into the much cooler air off to the north of the system. Those two factors help tighten the circulation, bringing in even more cold air on the backside. Some of our strongest winter storms have been that sort of Colorado low, Panhandle Hooker type of storm, you know, many of the big ones from history. There's another type that just comes out of the west, basically out of Wyoming. Some climatologists love those, they're very dependable. They don't necessarily produce huge snowfall amounts, but they're fairly reliable. So, if a low pressure area comes out of Wyoming marches, you know, kind of goes right through Iowa, and into northern Illinois, we usually are good for, you know, five to 10 inches of snow somewhere. And often they're they're a little bit colder than those Panhandle storms. So, they have a little less moisture, but a little more cold air. They tend to be kind of blizzardy when they're at their finest. And then you get the ones that are like the Halloween Blizzard where they kind of start out as Colorado lows, but they do their main intensification a bit farther to the east. And that storm actually came out of Houston, out of the Gulf of Mexico just right off the water and just shot up the Mississippi Valley. Yeah, so the Colorado low is one of the more common low pressure trajectories causing winter storms in the Upper Midwest, and they can produce some, it can produce some big snowfall totals. And this one is one of those types.

Jim du Bois  06:54

So, we've got a lot of moisture coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, and that's going to supply the moisture that will produce our snowfall. Now, this is not going to be a typical winter storm in the sense that we're not going to see a big drop off in temperatures once the snow is over, correct?

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:10

Yeah, that that actually, that's a really good observation. And that makes the storm kind of interesting too. Typically, following a low pressure system like this, where you've got strong winds coming out of the northwest, I mean, you know, as this thing starts drying down, coming to a close up late Friday night into early Saturday, winds won't be howling, but there'll be pretty strong. And the system's actually going to keep intensifying as it passes over, you know, somewhere between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, it's just going to keep intensifying. And those winds are going to get even stronger off to our east in eastern Wisconsin and in northern Michigan. But they're not going to be pulling in very much cold air. Usually, you get a big rush of cold air in those northerly winds, but you know what, the really cold air is so far away. Honestly, it's, you know, over 1000 miles away, before you get to the really cold air off to our north. And those northerly winds behind this storm, they won't be able to reach that far north to pull in that really cold air. So, they're just going to kind of mix in the same kind of general, you know, cooler airmass that's already in place. So, we don't see much of a temperature drop, even though, you know, you're gonna have a big blanket of snow on the ground, it's gonna reflect a lot of sunlight. So yeah, it's a little unusual. I wouldn't say it's unheard of. We've certainly had storms that end, you know, about as warm as they begin. But it's a little unusual for a storm of this intensity, you know, at this time of year. It's not April, and it's not, it's not October. It is a little unusual for a storm, you know, as you're getting towards the heart of winter that has strong winds on the backside to not have really cold air. And you know, we could take listeners back. One of the least favorite things for people to do is try and recall other people's weather memories. But Jim, do you remember the final Dome-Buster snowstorm? You remember that one?

Jim du Bois  09:11

That would have been back when in 2010, correct?

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:14

Yeah. And that was a, that was actually, in many regards, a very similar storm. The low pressure wasn't much stronger than this one. The moisture was probably a little bit higher than what we have with this one, but not, not by a lot. And but the big difference was that thing had some really cold air behind it. And so, as the storm was winding up, and this is perfect, because it's what, there'll be 11 years ago to the day, essentially because that was the same, yeah, it was the same, same date, so we're probably, it's gonna be hard to break snowfall, daily snowfall records in Minnesota with this thing because, because it's up against a beast, that thing, and we call it the Dome-Buster for listeners because the Metrodome broke from snowfall several times. And so, there was a number of different snowstorms in the 80s. And then the final one in, you know, that really made it an unsafe place to do anything in the winter time was December 2010. Storm, didn't the lights come crashing down?

Jim du Bois  10:23

Yeah, there's, there's actually, I'm sure it's still out there somewhere on YouTube. But there's a video of a grounds crew on a cart literally fleeing for their lives because the snow begins to plummet from the yorn hole in the roof.

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:39

You think about it. To rip, the Metrodome you've got, you've got tons, I mean literal tons of snow sitting up there exerting weight upon that roof. And then when the roof caves in, those tons of snow come down onto the football field. And mercifully, there wasn't a there wasn't a game or any big event happening at the time. But there were some folks there. In any case, that was a, you know, similar system, but it had that advantage, it had the cold air, and that just tends to kick these storms up a notch. So in a way, the storm is kind of getting penalized for not having the cold air with it. And what's interesting is, even with that penalty, it's, it's gonna produce very heavy snows, you know, double digit snowfall totals in at least a little narrow streak, and a pretty wide swath of six inches plus, so, it'll be a good system.

Jim du Bois  11:34

And not only are we not going to see intensely cold temperatures following the snowstorm, but next week, and it's early to talk about this, there is the prospect of record warm temperatures, like a, I guess, a December heatwave for want of a better term.

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:52

Yeah, so I mean, we're kind of on the edge here in Minnesota, and what we're watching, we've been watching this for a few days, now, there's a really strong signal in the models, that one or two days after the snowstorm leaves the region, there's just gonna be a long kind of persistent push of mild air into the region, you know, beginning as early as Sunday, and it's gonna peak sometime in the middle or end of next week, probably Wednesday and Thursday. And the indications are well, okay, we're gonna have a new snowpack, somewhere from the Twin Cities into northern Iowa and much of Wisconsin. And so, this airmass moving in, the warm air moving in is going to get stuck in place for a while, because it's going to have to spend its energy, you know, heat can only do so much. And it's first going to have to melt some of that snow or a lot of that snow before it can really change the temperature. So, I wouldn't look for massively warm conditions, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday of next week. But then, you know, after a few days of melting off that snow and decreasing the snowpack and keeping it pretty mild at night, I mean, temperatures will probably barely fall below freezing during that time, if they even fall below freezing at all. Then, then we start to see this push of really warm air come in, in association with both the melting snow, and also a strong low pressure system forming off to the west. Now we don't know exactly where that will go and exactly what time it's going to form, but there's a huge and really powerful trough of low pressure, kind of moving into the western United States early next week. And that thing is guaranteed to spin up a fairly strong low pressure system somewhere east of the Rockies, once that kind of front end of that trough gets out past the mountains. And once that low pressure area forms, it's probably just going to shoot almost due north or north-northeast. And that's going to take it off to our west and leave us in even warmer air than we started in. And as that low pressure system if it's really close, but off to our northwest, we could see temperatures soaring through the 50s. Even in the evening, next Wednesday, you know, and having temperatures even reaching the 60s is not not out of the question. And if we do get into the 60s, for example, in the Twin Cities, that would be the latest in the year we'd ever recorded that. So, it could be record-breaking. I think we're guaranteed to be mild. And then we're beyond that guaranteed to be mild. We're highly likely to be quite warm on Wednesday, and there's some question Wednesday, Thursday, there's some question about whether we actually break records. There's a lot that needs to be resolved yet, but looks like a very mild to warm pattern moving in. And even behind that, you know, as that large low pressure system comes through, there's still no signs of a really frigid air mass moving in. You know, a lot of times when you get warm, you know what do you think of as the other side of it in the winter, if you get 50 degrees 55 degrees in December, Jim, you know, we usually know what's on the other side of that. But in this case, we don't see, you know, any real sign of the, you know, massive subzero outbreak or anything like that just, you know, kind of a cool down. And maybe that's it for the really warm air for the year, for the calendar year anyway, but it's it certainly bears watching. So we got snow storm, and then we have this, we have this other system to watch where it gets mild and then potentially very warm in the middle of next week. And then also potentially very windy as the airmass transitions from the warmer to a cooler one.

Jim du Bois  15:42

Now, we've talked about previously on this podcast, Kenny, some trends that have been emerging in Minnesota, and those are warming minimum temperatures. And that is most pronounced during meteorological winter, which is December, January and February. Is the storm we are about to see unfold its wrath upon us on Friday and Saturday morning. Is this kind of typical of that pattern? And is this reflective of a change in kind of the nature of winter storms, compared to what those of us of a certain age may have remembered from their youth? Is this something we can connect to those changing climate patterns in Minnesota?

Kenny Blumenfeld  16:25

Yeah, that's a, that's a really good way of phrasing it, Jim. I would say kind of the answer is both yes and no. Yes, you know, we've had low pressure systems and storms before that didn't have much cold air behind them in the winter time. I mean, that, that's not new, necessarily. What is a little bit new about this, is that we've seen more of these, in recent years, where there's kind of a lackluster cold front behind the system, even though the system itself is pretty intense. The lack of cold air, the lack of access to cold air, again, we, I would never be able to prove that, you know, the fact that we're 1000 or more miles away from really cold air right now is because of climate change. Because these are patterns that have emerged before our climate was changing, and, you know, it happens in the winter. But we also know that as our climate has changed to, you know, especially enhance the warming of winters, we've seen these conditions with higher frequency, where there's just no cold air to be found in the region. And so, even though, we can't say, oh, this is because of climate change tomorrow, that we could say, this has become more common as the climate has changed. And that's kind of the link, that lack of cold air is sort of a disturbing, I mean, I like cold air. And I think, you know, we're pretty dependent on it, too. And it's not that we never get cold. We just did this past weekend, you know, we had a really strong storm system move through the northern part of Minnesota. Sunday was incredibly windy, and anybody who went outside Monday morning, well, that was a rude awakening. I mean, I, I spent a lot of time outside, I bike into work every day, and I bike home from work. And that was brutal. I mean, the winds were just screaming out of the north, garbage cans were being knocked over. And the temperature was really, you know, unpleasantly lows, like, you know, five degrees and windy, which is, you know, not unheard of in terms of cold, but we were tapped into some cold air at that point. So that still happens, it's just that these instances have more warm air around and less cold around are also becoming more common. It's kind of like a, you know, almost like a generational conflict here. You have the snowstorm, and it's, you know, just like olden days, it's gonna be an over the boots kind of snow, over the boot laces, it's gonna be a big one. And then that feels nice and old timey. But then you have this kind of newer thing that's happening more frequently, where there's, there's no cold air to come in behind that storm. And so, you get kind of a lackluster performance from the air mass behind it. Also, just another thing that's a little, I mean, as we've warmed, we've had more moisture in the air. So there's been more fuel for all of our passing and precipitating weather systems. And so even though our winters have warmed a lot, our snows have tended to be heavier, in much the same way that some of our rains have gotten heavier. It's not that every time it snows it's more than it's ever snowed, it's just that, you know, the heaviest snow of the year tends to be a bit heavier than it used to be. And we see a slightly higher frequency of those four, six and eight inch snowfalls than we used to see. And that's even as our winter is warming. And I think, you know, the fact that we're looking at a storm system that doesn't have you know, all of the ingredients perfectly aligned and is still going to produce probably over a foot of snow in some areas that maybe, you know, maybe that gets a little boost too from the extra moisture that's available.

Jim du Bois  20:08

So, what does the timing look like Kenny? I assume the snow starts on Friday morning to the south of us and progresses our way as the day unfolds.

Kenny Blumenfeld  20:20

Yeah, so those folks in far southern Minnesota, you're gonna wake up, it'll probably be snowing. And you know, one of the things my colleague and I were just talking about too, a lot of these storms, if you know, if the forecast is, wherever you are, that snow is going to start at, say, 10am. If it starts early, then you're probably getting bonus snow and you're probably going to over achieve that relative to the forecast, relative to the snowfall forecast. A lot of our big snowstorms kind of hit and started a little bit earlier and gave everything an extra boost. That just means that, you know, some of the extra moisture in the atmosphere gets wrung out and starts precipitating a little bit earlier. And that can be signs that a storm has kind of got its act together and is going to, is going to overachieve. But by and large by daybreak it'll be snowing pretty good at a pretty good clip in far southern Minnesota, and that is going to lift, you know, east northeast word into the rest of southern and southeastern Minnesota throughout the day, kind of the busiest snow time for the Twin Cities area. And again we still don't know exactly where the heaviest snow is gonna be so some of this is a little speculative, but, you know, looks like for the most part wherever the heaviest snow is going to be, we're going to be getting down to business probably, you know, during the afternoon and into the evening. And then, and then things will start tapering off as you get you know past 7, 8, 9 o'clock, things will start ,you know, slowing down but the winds will pick up, and then we'll see, you know, flurries and lighter snow through the night. But by the time you wake up on Saturday morning in Minnesota the snow should be over, but you know if the sun is shining it's going to be that blinding bright white light if the reflecting, all that sunlight reflecting...

Jim du Bois  22:10

Blinded By The Light, yes Blinded By The Light, cue Manfred Mann.

Kenny Blumenfeld  22:14

Yeah, cue Manfred Mann.

Jim du Bois  22:19

Well, Kenny, needless to say, enjoy the storm. Drive carefully. Certainly some road conditions could get hazardous. Now it doesn't sound like we're going to have any blizzard conditions out of this, at least at this point.

Kenny Blumenfeld  22:32

Yeah, I, I mean, that's true and officially there's no blizzard. There's been no mention of blizzard. But I think that if you're traveling eastward on I 94 into Wisconsin Friday evening, expect major major problems, that's going to be a difficult situation. The winds are going to be, they're going to be strong enough to, you know, with the amount of snow that's going to be falling, the winds certainly aren't going to help things. So while it's not going to reach blizzard criteria, you know, we're still looking at 25, 30, 35 mile an hour gusts in open areas. That will blow those snow around. Where it's snowing heavily, the visibilities will be already restricted. The winds will only restrict the visibility further, the snow piling up on the roads is going to make things tough. This is a kind of storm, I wouldn't be surprised to see, you know, sections of roads, especially the smaller ones shut down for you know, a few hours just to just to give crews a chance to clear some stuff out. Yeah, it'll be tough. I mean, I wouldn't be hitting the roads eastward into Wisconsin for sure. I would not be hitting the roads out of the Twin Cities after six o'clock. That's gonna be tough.

Jim du Bois  23:42

Alright, well, no unnecessary travel then. And everybody stay safe. Kenny, we’ll check in with you next week and see what may develop here with regard to our possible record- breaking temperatures and high winds.

Kenny Blumenfeld  23:57

Yeah, I mean, we'll see. If there's something to talk about, we'll make sure we talk about it.

Jim du Bois  24:00

Alright, Kenny, good to see ya.

Kenny Blumenfeld  24:02

Good talking with you, Jim. Thanks.

Jim du Bois  24:04

This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll catch you next time.

James du Bois
Minnesota's First Winter Storm of the Season Is On Its Way

Speakers: Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

Jim du Bois  00:00

And so, it begins. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, how you doing today? You know, it's going to be our first experience with snow since what? April of this year? Maybe March?

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:17

Yeah, it's been a long time. You caught me off guard. As you were introducing it, I was thinking how many times we probably use it. So it begins. Is it beginning? But it's been a while. Yeah, I can tell you that the last measurable snow, oh boy, you're gonna have to give me a second here. But the, we're doing well over here in the State Climatology Office. It's, you know, we're still kind of keeping an eye on that drought because it's easy to forget about it when you get into fall. You know, you get into fall, and everything seems nice and moist, and this is really, it's a matter of perception that I'm trying to understand still. If we go back to January 2020, on average, the state is still over 10 inches short of normal precipitation. Now, of course, there are some areas that have an even stronger deficit than that, and some that have less of one. But then again, if you go back to January of 2013, well, then it's a different story, then we're still in a large precipitation surplus on the order of a foot and a half or so. So, I think that the the bottom line is climate’s really interesting, and it operates on multiple scales. And maybe one of the reasons that we're not feeling the drought as severely right now is because we did get some precipitation, and it's fall, and you're able to hold on to your moisture a little better in the fall. And maybe some of it has to do with the fact that for several years before this drought, we were running such enormous precipitation surpluses that there's there may be some extra water still around from that, that, you know, is preventing things from sliding further. But, you know, on the drought front anyway, you don't expect big changes once you get into November through about March because it's our dry season. And I mean, really dry season. You know, over the next five months, it's normal to get a total of 10 inches of precipitation, or maybe even a little less in parts of Minnesota. And, you know, if you take five months of the warm season, May through September, for example, and only get 10 inches, that's a disaster. So, we can kind of probably hold it steady a little bit. But how are you, Jim?

Jim du Bois  00:26

Yes. Yeah.

Jim du Bois  02:49

I'm doing well, Kenny, I have to tell you, I'm kind of excited to see a little taste of snow here. We've had a glorious fall. I mean, I, I have to say, Kenny, and I don't know what you're hearing over through the auspices of the DNR, but I know there was a lot of talk about due to the drought, we might not have such a vibrant display of fall colors this year. But I think it's one of the better fall color displays I can recall seeing in many years.

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:18

Okay, well, so you like the prolonged nature of it?

Jim du Bois  03:21

Yes, I do.

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:23

You know, we've had fall colors on the landscape now for five weeks. The one thing that we kind of missed, and I think that that's what, that's what folks were referring to, we kind of missed that peak where that sort of harmonized peak where the majority of trees in an area are changing at the same time. I was down by the river, crossing the river by bicycle and then by car and just noticing Minnesota and St. Croix rivers both had beginning in, you know, late September and early October, a real patchwork of, you know, where different trees that seemed to have the same exposures were in terms of their color advancement. And that has persisted. So, you know, you'll have one, one or two trees in a stand or in a bunch that are starting to turn and getting to you know, if it's a maple maybe they're showing their reds, and then other ones that are still green. And so, we never had a big coordinated peak but we have had is several weeks now of decent colors. So, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

 Jim du Bois  04:31

Absolutely. Well Kenny, what is in store for us? I guess it starts as rain at least here in the Twin Cities. And this is a multi-day event, correct?

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:40

Yeah, I gotta say I'm not too excited about the snow prospects in the Twin Cities area.

Jim du Bois  04:46

Okay.

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:47

I think it will get some. How much if any of it sticks with the whole first wave through Friday is up in the air. I'm not even positive that we'll get accumulations in the Twin Cities. Now in far northern Minnesota, north of Highway 2, it's a different ballgame. They're going to get heavy snow, and they're going to get wind-driven snow. And this would actually begin, so what is it Wednesday that we're talking? So, this would, some of this would begin today, tonight, and then especially on Thursday. It's kind of a three, three wave system. So, the first wave is this rain that's going to move through Wednesday afternoon and evening, over most of Minnesota. In parts of far northern Minnesota, it's going to turn to snow relatively quickly. And this would be north of the Duluth area, but you know, in the Arrowhead north of Highway 2, and then as this, that low pressure system moves out over towards the Great Lakes, it's actually going to intensify and kind of pivot a little bit. And that's going to allow the precipitation on the north end, especially to intensify while colder air is being drawn in. So, then another kind of wave of heavy snow with strong winds is going to overtake you know, again, maybe the northern quarter of Minnesota. So, I'm not sure how many listeners will be affected by it. But you know, I know a lot of people are out, we'll be out, you know, with Veterans Day, tomorrow, a lot of folks that have the day off or going to visit people or take a little vacation, there could be some problems traveling in northwestern and northern Minnesota in some of those wind-prone areas. It'll be close to, I would say by, you know, by the time we get into mid-Thursday, it'll be close to blizzard conditions in the open country of parts in northwestern Minnesota with strong winds 35, 40 miles an hour and some heavy snow. But for the rest of us, it won't be until that system starts to kind of weaken. And that allows the precipitation area to expand and lunge southeastward that here in the Twin Cities, we would start seeing anything other than flurries where we might actually see some, you know, snow that's mixed with rain and maybe heavy enough to restrict the visibilities down to a mile or so. This would be, you know, later Thursday into Friday. I'm not seeing any real strong signs of large accumulations in the Twin Cities with relatively warm ground still, Jim. You know, we could see, I wouldn't rule it out, getting an inch or two is certainly possible. But I also wouldn't be surprised if we didn't get much, if any accumulations in the Twin Cities, especially in the urban core on the streets. You know, once you get outside of the beltway that 494/694 corridor, the chances of accumulation on any surface really go up outside of that urban heat island. We've been kind of watching a second wave that would move through later in the weekend, Saturday evening into Sunday. But that just doesn't have much oomph. It had at times looked like it could also be good for several inches of snow. But at least in the current model iterations, I'd say keep an eye on it. It'll start out colder, so it'll have more cold air to work with. But even that system, you know, in the latest models looks like it may be as good for an inch or two in parts of Minnesota at best. So, there's a lot of uncertainty with that second system. First system, I'm pretty sure northern Minnesota sees heavy snow. Twin Cities sees very little areas in between get kind of a gradient where, you know, out in central Minnesota, between St. Cloud and Park Rapids, you get one to three inches of snow, something like that. But then north of that area, north of Highway 2, much heavier snow and hugging the international border. I wouldn't be surprised if some areas got, you know, 8 9, 10 inches up there. So big snowstorm but you know, this time of year, what's this gonna be? November, so November 11 when it's all kind of getting down to business? You know, how many much more significant weather events we've seen on November 11?

Jim du Bois  08:59

Oh, yes, it's the 81st anniversary of such an event, isn't it?

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:03

Yeah. So, we had the Armistice Day storm back in 1940. There was a huge storm in 1911. It really clipped southern Minnesota and Wisconsin but produced tornadoes, up to 70-to-80-degree temperature drop, along with 70 to 80 mile an hour winds. So, an all out blizzard then swept basically from Iowa and southern Wisconsin, right through Missouri and into the Ohio Valley, and this was a massive storm. That was in 1911. In 1998, there was a gigantic low-pressure system that at the time broke the low-pressure record for Minnesota and produced catastrophic winds in Wisconsin where, you know, I think 10 deaths from that. So, it's gonna be a pretty powerful storm but as November 10th, 11th, 12th storms ago, this one is small potatoes, Jim. I mean, you know, 10 inches of snow and 40 mile an hour winds which is definitely in the cards in parts in far northwestern Minnesota, that's pretty substantial, but it's nothing compared to what we've seen in other years. So, you know, just be smart. If you're out on the roads, be careful. If you're traveling in outstate, Minnesota, north of Highway 2, you should definitely have a winter survival kit, know where you are, and let people know where you're going. But, you know, for most of the rest of us, just a kind of fall, fall weather system. Not a huge deal.

Jim du Bois  10:27

Well, we will definitely enjoy it. And as you said, folks, stay safe. Make sure you break out the shovel just in case. And Kenny, great talking to you. It's been a while.

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:39

It has been a while. It's been, yeah, it's been about, I don't know, a few weeks anyway. and yeah,

Jim du Bois  10:44

Yup, exactly. Well, we'll will be back on a more regular track here, Kenny.

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:48

Yeah. I mean, you know what, though, we got to have something to talk about. Right?

Jim du Bois  10:51

Well, true, very true.

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:55

So...

Jim du Bois  10:56

 Well hopefully the weather will give us plenty of things to talk about over the next few weeks.

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:01

I mean, that's, you know, as someone who works in this field, I gotta say we like it when it's active. You know, we don't want anyone to be negatively affected by the weather. But you know, it's a little more interesting when there's something to talk about.

Jim du Bois  11:15

Well, Kenny, good as always to talk with you and we'll check in with you soon.

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:19

All right, next time. Jim. Thanks a lot. Have a great rest of your week.

Jim du Bois  11:23

This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll will catch you next time.

James du Bois
Enjoy Some of the Best Weather of the Year!

SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

The greatest time of the year...period. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, hope you're doing well. We're celebrating all the wonderful weather we've had which segues perfectly into what we're going to talk about today. So, if you are planning a wedding or any outdoor event, this is the time, isn't it?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:24

Well, I mean, so here's the thing. It's a dice roll. Yeah, you're right, Jim, this period, it really centers on the last few days of September, and the first few days of October, it's more likely than any other time of year to be clear. And that, that's we're putting it up against even January when, you know, you get a lot of clear days. But those days are cold. Here in early autumn when it's clear, we get yeah, kind of crisp in the morning, but you can get nice, beautiful, you know, 60s and 70 degree days. And even as we've had this here, some 80s. It's a little bit, a little bit much for some people, but we know that Jim du Bois likes it hot.

 

Jim du Bois  01:03

Oh, yes.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:05

And so the trick, of course, is that it doesn't mean that it's always clear, it's just more likely than any other time of year to be clear. So, you know, in this time of year, if you don't get that bright sunshine, things can kind of turn on you because we really are dependent on the sun to stay warm this time of year. But yeah, if you're just looking at clear days, and that's what you need. If you're a photographer, or someone looking for clear weather, this is definitely the time. If you're planning a big event, I think you have to weigh what are the risks of you know, and how much can I tolerate if, if it's cloudy and cool, and only in the 40s? Because that's possible too this time of year. But honestly, yeah, it's, it can be spectacular. And that's exactly what we've had, right on cue this year. Love it.

 

Jim du Bois  01:59

Well, it's October, when most people will hear this podcast, and is it safe to say, Kenny, for the very reasons you mentioned that September would be the sweet spot for, say, an outdoor wedding or some other ceremony where you'd be kind of rolling the dice a little bit more if you pushed it into October?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:18

Yeah, I would say again, you know, late September, early October has that. I mean, here's the thing. There's a famous paper written by Don Baker, former university professor and a few colleagues. This was written almost 40 years ago now. Maybe it was a little over 40 years ago. But the idea is that this is a synchronized micro-season. I kind of made up that last term micro-season. But when I say it's synchronized, I mean, the entire region experiences the same peak in frequency of clear skies. And when they looked at it, atmospheric pressure tends to go up at that time. But when they looked even more deeply, so that, you know, high pressure, that usually means you got pretty nice, often clear weather. So that makes sense. But when they looked even more deeply, and they looked at some other studies, they realized that, well, there's a wet season in this entire region, and it tends to shut off right around September 20 or so. Now again, give or take, it can be later than that it can be earlier than that, you can always get surprised what events but they'd noticed that the wet season, the monsoon, the summertime sort of monsoon, a wet pattern, on average ends around September 20. That tends to coincide with when the photosynthesis in the plants starts to shut down. And so at that point, and just for those who don't remember, photosynthesis is just, you know, basically the sun activating living things and then kicking off some biophysical processes. And one of those includes evapo transpiration, which is how the plants share moisture, give moisture back to the atmosphere. And so Jim, when you have no more plant-sharing moisture, you tend to reduce the humidity, and that could be one of the reasons that we see an end to our rainy season. The whole point is this, is that it's a fairly narrow window. If you go too early in September, you got a good chance of it being kind of muggy, murky, cloudy, stormy, and if you go too far into October, you got a good chance of it being cold, dreary even and maybe get some snow. So, I would say if you're planning something the sweet spot would be right around now. Not a huge difference between late, very late September and very early October that way. I would just say again, it's not the most likely type of weather necessarily. It's just the most likely time of year to see clear weather. And I love it.

 

Jim du Bois  04:52

As do I Kenny. Well, the latest updated Drought Monitor is out. How do things look for Minnesota?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  05:01

Ah, yeah, you know we've been doing well. The basic message over the last week was hold steady. We didn't make any big changes, we didn't see any big changes to the drought pattern in Minnesota. The conditions are worse in northern Minnesota. The entire northern third of the state is in severe drought, with pockets representing about almost a quarter of the state still getting that extreme level of drought. Now it's not the highest level. We did lose, going back last week, we actually had our exceptional drought, the highest level of drought taken off of the map, and that was a relief. But it doesn't mean that we're out of the woods at all. It just means that the really terrible drought conditions subsided a bit in response to some rainfall. I'd say the main message was that we got decent rains in August. September had enough hit and miss rains to kind of hold things at bay, although I think we're going to find that a lot of the state finishes the month below normal for precipitation again, and also above normal for temperatures. So, we are really hovering on the edge of a pretty big drought situation right now and should not count our chickens before they hatch. In fact, you know, this dry weather, if we don't get significant precipitation, this dry weather could cause some of the drought categories to deteriorate again, maybe not quite to the levels we saw this summer, but you can lose a lot of moisture in the fall as things are cooling off. But you know agriculturally, most of that damage is done, most of the damage to the sort of landscape level stuff, that's been done. We expect to kind of be in a holding pattern wherever we are, once we get into winter. We don't expect huge changes in the drought conditions unless we get a ton of precipitation which ,that's, we don't have much guidance telling us about that. But so all in all a general improvement since mid-August, in drought conditions.

 

Jim du Bois  06:58

Well Kenny, as we close out the working week, a lot of folks in Minnesota are going to be seeing some rain. And the temperatures will be, oh I would say moderating a bit but it sounds like next week, it's going to be pretty nice again with temperatures largely above average for this time of the year.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:16

Yeah, that seems to be the way things are looking. Certainly Jim, you know, this is definitely a good time to get outside and do your outdoor tasks, and get some exercise. We don't have much smoke around. The air quality's good. The temperatures are for most people pretty comfortable. And the humidity is down. And also the sunlight is not particularly potent. I mean, it's always dangerous, and you can always get sunburn and skin damage from, from too much sun. But you know, we're not looking at nearly the intensity level of say a mid-June sun. So you know, actually the sun right now is about the same intensity as it is in early to mid-March. So, you can be outside fairly easily and comfortably. And it does look like the next week or so is going to be maybe not quite as warm as it's been. I think some of these 80s, they're going to go away but still 60s and 70s right into the next week.

 

Jim du Bois  08:17

Well Kenny, this is a shorter edition of Way Over Our Heads but we will reconvene next week and talk about the month of September.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  08:26

Very good. Yeah, look forward to it. Thanks, Jim.

 

Jim du Bois  08:28

Always great talking to you, Kenny, and we'll talk to you soon. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll catch you next time.

James du Bois
It's Meteorological Fall, But It's Going To Feel More Like Summer

SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

Ah, it's September. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, my goodness, the switch has been thrown. It was 51 degrees in my backyard when I woke up this morning.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:18

Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's just like that first day of school whether right?

 

Jim du Bois  00:22

Right.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:22

Although it's not really the first day of school in a lot of places but has that feeling that you get after Labor Day where, yeah, it's actually chilly. I woke up and I thought, oh, my goodness, I have to wear long sleeves biking into work today.

 

Jim du Bois  00:37

The temperature this morning was 34 degrees somewhere in Minnesota. And I can't remember where, Bemidji? Or was it, was it Hibbing? I can't remember, my goodness.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:47

So, it's okay. Because what's interesting is the various media personalities will often go through the various airports that report generally hourly. And so, you can get kind of real time temperature data from them. What's interesting is in the climate office, we generally don't include those as valid readings. So, there might be an airport, for example, Grand Rapids, or maybe Big Fork or something like that that reports a really low temperature. We wait until, and I think you know about this, Jim, the daily temperature and precipitation readers who use a little higher quality instrumentation that's more standardized, we wait for their data to come in. And that's usually not until the next morning, although sometimes it's the same morning, depending on what time they take their observation. So, it'll be a few hours before we know what the lowest temperature around Minnesota was. But you're right, here on Monday, the 13th of September, we definitely had some northern Minnesota airport stations that were in the 30s. The Ely airport, even at 8am, was still in the 30s, for example. So, well, you can get frost just about any time of year way up north but we're definitely entering that that frost season in northern Minnesota.

 

Jim du Bois  02:11

Well, Kenny, you and I have talked about this before in previous episodes. And it always seems that right after the State Fair, right after Labor Day, that somehow a switch is thrown, and it goes from...rather abruptly I might add some times, from summer to fall. And we certainly have noticed that waking up some mornings when there's been a certain crispness in the air that wasn't there in late August. And today was the day it really kind of hit me in the, in the face when I got up this morning and I thought it is downright chilly this morning. And there was a lot of dew on the grass, so it was kind of damp. But I thought this has not only the feel but kind of the smell of fall too.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:53

Oh, the smell of fall. I love it. And you know pretty soon, and maybe even this morning, walk along by the creek or by an area lake, and you'll see that steam rising off of it. That's the, ooohhh,  that's, that's, that's a good one. Because what that is, is the warmer water left over from the hot summer, you know, in any summer. But this summer in particular, we didn't have much water, so it was easy for it to get warm. And then you see that steam because that's the water essentially, the warm water, basically being evaporated into the cooler air. And the way that that works is really interesting. The water essentially warms the air right above it. And then that warm air then pulls some of the water off of the surface and puts it into the atmosphere as humidity. So, you see that steam, and then it, and then it very quickly saturates that air right above the, right above the water. So, you see this steam coming off, and it's a sign that your water is cooling down fairly rapidly, in fact, and we tend to lose a lot of standing water, you know, basically, through early November from about early, early, mid-September right into early November, you lose a lot to evaporation. But what you're, what you're observing, Jim is, you know, it's all those terms that people, I say a typical person slept through or tried not to pay attention to. But as you get into fall, the intensity and the duration of sunlight declines. And that shuts down--here's the big one, Jim--photosynthesis, and without, and remember, the easy way of thinking of photosynthesis is that's just sunlight, activating living things, plants, and when the photosynthesis shuts down because the sunlight intensity and duration isn't great enough, then the plants stop essentially sustaining themselves. So, all of those seasonal plants, hardwood trees and grasses in particular, and many crops, they just stop production. And once they stop production, they, they stop sharing moisture that they conduct through their various systems with the atmosphere, the atmosphere gets a little bit drier. We're not quite at that point yet. But on a good cool morning, you can certainly notice that, you know, some of the things have really slowed down.

 

Jim du Bois  05:18

Well, we did bid farewell to meteorological summer on August 31. We now of course are in meteorological fall. Astronomical fall still a little ways off for us. So Kenny, let's go back and look at the month of August. What was August like for us from a climate perspective?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  05:35

Yeah, so August was another warm month. It was a good warm month, but it wasn't like June. But it was, you know, it was up there. And it had highly varied rainfall. So basically, if you lived in the southern part of the state and parts of western Minnesota, you actually did pretty well with precipitation during August, above normal from the Twin Cities West northwestward through Alexandria, all the way south to the Iowa border. Parts of far southeastern Minnesota got absolutely dumped on again. There actually, there's no drought in far southeastern Minnesota. And then, you know, kind of hit or miss areas in western and northwestern Minnesota also had above normal precipitation in August, but then a big swath of northeast Minnesota failed to have normal precipitation again. This was the area, you know, St. Louis and Lake and parts of Cook County, way up in far northeast Minnesota, where they struggled to get even two inches of precipitation. So uniformly, it was warm. across the state. There was actually more heat in terms of hot weather in northern Minnesota than in southern Minnesota. So for example, Jim, International Falls had eight days, 90 degrees or higher. So, you should have been in International Falls, Twin Cities only had four of those days during August. Rochester had none. So, it was an interesting kind of reversal of the geographic pattern of hot weather. You know, it really just had to do with the configuration of the high pressure and low pressure systems that were affecting us. But yeah, so it was kind of a hot month in northern Minnesota and more of a warm month in in southern Minnesota. And then it was very wet in parts of southern Minnesota, and very dry in northeast Minnesota. And that kind of capped off the whole summer. Is that where you're going to go next, ask about...

 

Jim du Bois  07:34

Absolutely. What was the summer of 2021 like for us in Minnesota?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:39

Well, you know, here in the climate office, we've been kind of battling some misconceptions that folks have, because when you look at the average seasonal temperature across, across the state of Minnesota, it's actually the second highest that we have on record. So, it was a warm summer for sure. second only to 1988. And that's true in a few places. And several individual locations actually had their warmest summer on record. The misconception that we're kind of working with, you know, is that people tend to say, oh, well, it's the hottest summer on record. Well, here's the thing, what is hot? You know, I know how Jim du Bois, he likes it, he likes it, he likes it 90 or better.

 

Jim du Bois  08:28

Yes.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  08:29

He wants to he, he wants to earn his relief. You know, whatever lemonade, he's gonna drink later on. He wants to earn it. And I think that's how a lot of us really think of hot weather. If it's, if it's 90 or higher, or maybe you have, you know, really, like the highest temperature of the summer is higher, or as high as anything you've observed. We didn't have that. International Falls is probably the one station, and there's a couple sprinkled around northern Minnesota, where we have to give it to them. They had legitimately hot summers by their own standards. So, far northern Minnesota, it was a hot hot summer, and it was potentially the hottest on record. But when you look into southern and central Minnesota, and that's where a lot of these terms are being generated, you know, around the Twin Cities, this was nowhere near our hottest summer because we've had summers, you know, we didn't even rank in the top 10 for a number of days above 90 degrees. And our highest temperature of summer didn't even crack 100 degrees in the Twin Cities. And you know, you've got a couple dozen other years where that did happen. So, you know, it was a very warm summer, no doubt about it. And we saw some of the highest temperatures that we have recorded on an seasonally averaged basis. That means you take the average from June, July and August. No doubt about it, warm, warm summer, and some parts of the state were hot. We just aren't comfortable saying this was our hottest summer yet because anybody who experienced 1988 would say, yeah, what about that one? Or people who just know the history and know what happened in say 1936, for example, when, you know, there was 14 days in July in a row where the temperature was 90 or higher, and I think something like eight of those days, it was over 100 degrees and including our all time high temperature record. And since we weren't anywhere near those types of metrics, you know, this is where, you know, dorky climatologists get, you know, we just like to keep people on message a little bit here. Because if you live in Portland, Oregon, for example, they absolutely had some of the hottest weather they ever recorded. No doubt about that. And we can't really claim to have had the same experience that Portland had. And we want to make sure we use those types of terms when we know we did have that kind of summer, and we haven't had that one yet. So hopefully, it's not coming. But you know, gosh, seems like almost anything can happen now.

 

Jim du Bois  11:11

How is our drought situation shaping up?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:14

Yeah, that's a good question. So you probably noticed, Jim, nice, green lush vegetation in South Minneapolis.

 

Jim du Bois  11:22

Oh, yes. It came back, it came back.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:23

Yeah, I think that, you know, Minnehaha Falls came to life. This allows, I think people in southern Minnesota in particular to kind of forget what else is going on. So, in the Twin Cities area, we got a good push of precipitation. And certainly southern Minnesota has done better. We still have large deficits, anywhere from four to eight inches, depending on where you are in most of southern Minnesota. Parts of southeastern Minnesota, there's effectively no long term deficit now. And so, it's not clear how long they'll remain in official drought conditions. But in northern Minnesota where the precipitation was a little more spotty, and in many cases, scarce, the drought, if anything intensified during August. And you know, I think if I were in northeast Minnesota with all the fires from the summer, I would not be resting on our laurels just yet, because they didn't get as much precipitation as other parts of the state. And they're coming into that same thing, we just described the whole mechanism that makes it crisp in the fall. That also dries out standing, living vegetation. So, if you've already had really dry conditions, and then the dry season kicks in where you don't have photosynthesis so you don't have that evapo- transpiration where the water comes out of the plants and goes into the atmosphere, that's really when the main fire weather season is. So, parts of northeastern Minnesota have a two year deficit going back to February of 2020. So, it's like 18 or 19 months deficit on the order of a foot of rainfall or precipitation. So, they're really low. They need more precipitation. They're coming into their dry season. Much of northern Minnesota is still in that extreme level of drought officially, and we still have a little swath of northwestern Minnesota, kind of from the International Falls area through Red Lake that remains in what's called D4 or exceptional drought, the highest level of drought on the US Drought Monitor. So, I would say southern Minnesota can feel a bit better. We're still behind, but we're in a much better position than northern Minnesota where they haven't had as much help and where the deficits are much larger.

 

Jim du Bois  12:38

So, what do the weather trends look like in the days and maybe weeks ahead? Anything interesting that you've seen?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  13:52

Yeah, actually, the most interesting thing starts I mean, there's one shot today, that's Monday, September 13. I don't think it's a major outbreak of severe weather. But you know, the Storm Prediction Center has indicated slight risk of severe weather over parts of southern Minnesota, basically south of the Twin Cities. I think I-90, that kind of I-90 area, and maybe a little bit north into say Mankato and Red Wing. So, a chance for severe weather this evening. And heavy rain will also be possible over parts of southern and central Minnesota. Again, I don't think this is the event of the year at all, but there's a chance that, you know, decent signal that some areas are going to get another one to two inches, kind of I don't know if it's irony, but a lot of that rain looks most likely in the areas that you know, needed the least. They'll take it. I think it's good to put it in the bank. When you're in a drought, put as much water in the bank as you can, but there are parts in northeastern Minnesota that it probably won't see anything from this. Then we move into a really warm pattern especially as we get, you know, later into the week and into the weekend. The outlook from the Climate Prediction Center has an 80% chance likelihood of being above normal for temperatures in the six to 10 day period. And in the eight to 14 day period. So, we're getting, you know, right around the Fall Equinox and slightly after that. So, you know, September 18, through basically 25th or so 26, that period has a very high likelihood of being above normal for temperatures. And depending on where in the state you are potentially anyway, above normal for precipitation. Essentially, what the models are showing as we move into kind of a warm and stormy pattern. And we've seen this before, my colleague and I will joke about oh, every time it looks like the whole state of Minnesota is about to get really warm and really wet, it ends up being that southern Minnesota gets pounded and northern Minnesota just gets hot, so I'm not betting on anything yet. All I know is that the professional forecasters are looking ahead and seeing a lot of precipitation chances. The European Model, which is one of the highly regarded forecasting models, shows several inches of precipitation over parts of Minnesota over the next 9, 10 days. Again, is that really what's going to happen, or is it just going to hit Rochester again? That right now, I can't tell you, but it does look like a warmer pattern, you know, so another chance of showers and thunderstorms on Thursday. And then again over the weekend. And then again, we get into a really warm pattern by the end of the weekend where we could have some 90s creeping back into Minnesota, if things hold up for Sunday.

 

Jim du Bois  16:43

Well, it may be meteorological fall, but it sounds like summer-like weather is going to persist for a while.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  16:50

Yeah, I mean, you'll like it, Jim. I'll like it too, I think, you know, it'll still be relatively humid. So, we're not yet to that hot, dry type of fall weather that sometimes you get. So we'll have to see. It's not quite the same as what you get in July. But you know, it could be an interesting time. So starting with today, thunderstorms very likely over parts of southern and central Minnesota. Almost guaranteed somewhere in that region this evening with severe weather most likely south of the Twin Cities. And then other chances late in the week and over the weekend.

 

Jim du Bois  17:27

Well, keep an eye on the sky and an ear or an eye to your favorite source of weather information. And Kenny, great chatting with you as always. Enjoy and we'll check in with you again next week.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  17:39

Great, thanks. Good talking with you too. Jim.

 

Jim du Bois  17:41

This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll catch you next time.

James du Bois