Enjoy The Beautiful Weekend...Cooler Weather Is Ahead
Way Over Our Heads 5-1-2021
SPEAKERS
Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld
Jim du Bois 00:00
After all that...April was...normal? This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, I imagine you are disappointed that we did not have an April snowstorm this year.
Kenny Blumenfeld 00:16
I was kind of hoping for one, Jim. I was really excited about the idea of having, you know, having it be four in a row. That would have been something else, four years in a row with a big snowstorm. And I was actually starting to have, I was wondering when is it going to be? So yeah, I'm a little a little bummed out. But you know, April gave us enough.
Jim du Bois 00:37
Well, Kenny, let's talk about the month of April. We know the temperatures were above normal in March, but April, kind of a return to a semblance of normalcy, correct?
Kenny Blumenfeld 00:47
Yeah. I mean, you know, if you forgive the week to week variations, it was...do you remember the beginning of April when it was, you know, 85 degrees in southern Minnesota, and that was unusual? So really, we did get to kind of normal, we didn't do it normally. And this is kind of the beauty of our climate, right? I mean, even an average month will contain moments that weren't at all average. So gonna end up looking kind of like a typical April by most of our statistics. The average temperature is going to be really close to the historical averages. And the total precipitation averaged around the state is going to be, when you balance out the dry Northwest with the wet east and northeast part of the state, it's going to come out to be pretty close to normal. But we you know, we were really cool for the last few weeks, last couple weeks, but it was not a huge departure, it was just noticeable, just enough to put you in a foul mood. I don't know if you were in a foul mood, but there were days, you know, in the last couple of weeks, where it's like , oh man, cloudy, sprinkling again. I can't tell you how many times I rode my bike, disgusted. Come on. But you have to remember that at the beginning of the month, we were almost 30 degrees above normal. And when it was super hot, and those two different forces definitely balance each other out. And you know, we didn't get our big snowstorm, but I'm sure Mr. du Bois noticed the snow falling as recently as what the 20...25th, 26th?
Jim du Bois 02:23
Oh yes, I did see that, Kenny.
Kenny Blumenfeld 02:26
And you know, I think that we're in kind of a cool pattern, still. I don't think the snowflakes are done in Minnesota yet. They might be done in the Twin Cities, but I don't think northern Minnesota has seen the last of snowflakes this season. But I also think, and this is it's just my non-scientific feeling. What do you think? What's May going to bring for us?
Jim du Bois 02:48
Well, Kenny, I am cautiously optimistic that May is going to be a nice warm, perhaps even hot month. You know, I like hot weather. So that would be something I'd be very happy about. But I have a good feeling about May. I really do. And you're right, Kenny, there were times in April, where I looked out the window and said this is really dismal. I mean, am I living in Portland or Seattle? This doesn't seem like Minnesota. It just was a really, really dismal month. And I have high expectations for May, Kenny.
Kenny Blumenfeld 03:21
Oh, good. Yeah, I mean, you know, May usually delivers in some way, it's historically a pretty nice month, because you're turning that corner one way or the other, even if you don't get the really hot weather. Probably the biggest news for April for me was that we eroded a lot of Minnesota's drought. The entire state had been in some form of pre- drought or drought condition at the beginning of April, and now, only about a third of the state is in some kind of drought, or pre drought condition. So that was some big news. We got a lot of precipitation in the, from southwest to northeast, basically. And now it's kind of the southeast and northwest corners that are still running a bit dry. But yeah, I think if you just think of how it's been for the last eight months or so, we've been predominantly warm, and we've had these cool interludes. And I think the next spike of warmth is probably going to come in May. And I think it's going to get our attention. That's just my, just my sense that, you know, probably not the next, you know, we got phenomenal first part of the weekend for much of Minnesota. Friday and Saturday are going to be outstanding, talking about temperatures well into the 80s on Saturday in southern and central Minnesota, this is Saturday, May 1, and then Sunday will be pretty warm in southern Minnesota. It's going to turn the muck though, over the northern and northeastern parts of the state as more clouds and cool air move in. And I think we're gonna spend the majority of the next 8-10 days probably cool. I think it's after that, sometime in the second part of May, where we're gonna, we're gonna get some du Bois weather going.
Jim du Bois 05:07
Well, before we leave the month of April behind, how did April shape up for us in terms of severe weather? Was it a normal month? Abnormal? How did it stack up?
Kenny Blumenfeld 05:18
Well, it was normal in that there wasn't that much going on. We had a couple reports of, you know, hail kind of in the early part of the month, when we had those thunderstorms. There's kind of a barrage of thunderstorms that we received gosh, what was it was like April, whoo, it was kind of prolonged period of rain went from April 5 through the 14th, where it started out with a bunch of thunderstorms. And then, but they were really small and isolated. And then they, and then it kind of turned into this sort of steady, cool rain. And that's what broke all of the heat. And that's also what broke our drought for the most part, or at least temporarily broke the drought. But you know, April is usually at the kind of front front front end of severe weather. So, you know, it's one of those months where if we don't get any real severe weather, we're not surprised. And if we do get some, we're also not surprised. It wouldn't be unusual to see a tornado in April. And it's totally normal to not have any severe weather at all in April. So April was pretty well behaved. There were no blockbuster severe weather events. We do look nervously to May for that. As you know, Jim, we got may 6th coming up. That's... someone I know has, I think, a birthday right around then. But it also is an anniversary of a major tornado outbreak in the Twin Cities area. So we do know, from history that, you know, tornadoes can happen as early as March and into April. And we've had major tornadoes in April and May. And we never know. You know, if I'm, if I'm saying Well, we're going to go from cool to warm. Yeah, I don't know, what's that transition going to look like? Is there going to be severe weather? Are we going to have a major severe weather event in May? It has...it has been a while now, Jim, since we've had kind of a, a good, significant statewide, or at least regional to Minnesota, severe weather event during May. The last one that I can really think of where we got hit hard across the state would have been in, you know, 2008. I can think of that one. We had a kind of Memorial Day tornado outbreak, Memorial Day weekend tornado event. But it's been a while. We haven't had that much of note in May in a while. Maybe we had one or two, you know, big events that I'm forgetting during the 2010s. But so we look ahead, and we wonder.
Jim du Bois 07:50
Well, and one more time before we totally leave April behind, we just observed the anniversary of the St. Anthony tornado back in 1984, which came toward the end of April. And if I recall correctly, Kenny wasn't there still some snow on the ground when that tornado occurred? It was, that stuck out in my mind is being kind of unusual.
Kenny Blumenfeld 08:13
Yeah, so basically, you know, the 1983-84 winter set records across Minnesota as the snowiest winter on record. It was actually one of the most meteorologically significant winters on record, not just for snowfall, but there was a brutal blizzard. Just one of these kind of major ground blizzard things that that killed a number of people in Minnesota. I think we had, I think we had double digit fatalities. It was called the wall of white. That was in February, early February of 1984. But even before that, we'd had record and near record cold in the period leading right up to Christmas during December, there were transportation, pre Christmas transportation had been halted. And we were already at 50 inches by the time that happened. At the time, we had a record number of kind of official snow days and significant snowfall events that winter. Some of those records have been eclipsed since then, but so that was a major event, major winter. And then we started kind of turning around in April, and we ended up with a little regional, well, we were actually part of a larger tornado outbreak that stretched all the way down to Kansas, and went up into Minnesota. And one of the tornadoes occurred just after dark down in Northeast Minneapolis and then moved into St. Anthony, and it was a killer tornado. It produced some F3 or EF3-level damage. And, you're right. There wasn't snow on the ground at the time. You might be kind of confusing that for is two days later, 10 inches of snow across most of the area.
Jim du Bois 09:59
Okay, yes, yes.
Kenny Blumenfeld 10:00
Yeah, there was some iconic footage. Yeah. Yeah. So a broadcasting person, like you would remember the kind of memorable footage of people clearing damage out still, you know, on April 29th, and 30th with snow, piles of snow on top of it. So yeah, that was, and that was, you know, so we had a very late final snowstorm of the year. I think was 9.9 inches at the Twin Cities airport, which is an awful lot to get at the very end of the month, at the very end of April. So yeah, that was, that was some time and then the 1984 severe weather season was very active after that. We had a major severe weather event in June that produced a devastating tornado in Barneveld, Wisconsin outside of Madison.
Jim du Bois 10:51
Oh, yes.
Kenny Blumenfeld 10:51
An F5 tornado that struck in the middle of the night. So it was a busy, ah, pretty busy summer after that.
Jim du Bois 10:59
Well, Kenny, you said you kind of have a feeling that at least maybe the latter two thirds of May will be quite warm. Any feel for what May may look like in terms of potential severe weather? Or should we dodge that one all together knowing your reluctance to put much credence in long range forecasting?
Kenny Blumenfeld 11:21
Yeah, I mean, I certainly don't see any real smoking gun chances for severe weather during the first 8, 10 days of May. We could be surprised, but it's just the pattern isn't that conducive to it. Again, after the pattern changes, assuming it does, I mean, I could be wrong, but assuming the pattern does change, I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in the transition, we had a two to four day period where we got some, you know, at least some big booming thunderstorms that were, you know, noisy and producing, you know, hail. But in terms of, in terms of having a crystal ball, tell us yeah, we got a major tornado or severe weather outbreak coming, I just don't trust myself or any of the forecast tools, the things that we use enough. I think, you know, it's gonna be a severe weather season. I guarantee that Minnesota will take some damage during the summer from winds, hail and tornadoes. The question is, how early does it start? How significant are the big events? How widespread are they? And does anything happened that we kind of collectively remember? That I don't have any clue about.
Jim du Bois 12:31
So Kenny, we have a terrific weekend on tap. A little bit of a change on Sunday, though. Correct? A little cooler temperatures, some precipitation on tap. And then how does next week look?
Kenny Blumenfeld 12:42
I think next week is going to be pretty cool. I think that, you know, the good news is as we get into May, cool means something very different from what it means in April, and especially March. So we're talking about, even with some clouds, and a mix of clouds and sun and predominantly northwest winds during the week, wouldn't be surprised still, if temperatures hit 60 degrees in southern Minnesota, and you know, maybe 45 to 50 in parts of northern Minnesota, but it will be a cooler week, I think. Don't get your hopes up about what Saturday means because Saturday is going to be spectacular. It's going to even feel hot in some places. And don't, don't confuse that for the rest of, you know, the next six or seven days because you're not gonna, you can kiss it goodbye by Saturday night, you're gonna be done with the hot weather in Minnesota for at least a week. Next week, doesn't look terrible and doesn't look particularly wet. It just looks cooler than the weekend.
Jim du Bois 13:43
Well, let's embrace the beautiful weather we have on tap on Saturday, and Kenny enjoy the weekend, and we'll look forward to talking to you again next week.
Kenny Blumenfeld 13:53
You enjoy the weekend too, Jim. Thanks, and I'll talk to you next week.
Jim du Bois 13:57
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.