50 F. high yesterday in the Twin Cities.
40 F. average high on March 13.
33 F. high on March 13, 2013.
10" snow on the ground as of Thursday evening.
Wintry Perspective
By
any objective measure meteorological winter was extraordinary. It was
the 9th coldest for the Twin Cities, but NOAA NCDC reports the 6th
coldest winter for Minnesota, 5th coldest for Wisconsin. 18 mornings
with Windchill Advisories, the most since 1996.
The Minnesota DNR
has an update on the WMI, the Winter Misery Index, factoring extreme
cold and snow. This winter rates a 198 score, just 4 points away from
qualifying as "Very Severe"; the harshest winter since 1983-84. Details
below. Have a nice day.
Yeah, we're REALLY earning our spring this year.
We
cool off later today, a chilly weekend on tap with temperatures 10-15F
colder than average. Milder air returns Monday; the lowest mile of the
atmosphere may be warm enough for a rain/snow mix by Tuesday. You
remember rain, right?
Other than that our pattern looks fairly quiet - a cool, dry bias looking out 10 days.
In
today's blog (below) NOAA reports 20 storms in the North Atlantic with
hurricane-force winds since January 1, a total of 43 super-storms since
October 25, 2013.
NOAA's 45 day CFS (Climate Forecast System)
model shows consistent 60s by the third week of April here in the MSP
metro, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Not yet.
Personally I suspect spring will come on a Thursday.
Almost A "Very Severe" Winter In The Twin Cities.
Almost? For most of us it was, in fact, very severe. If you examine
cold and snow (together) you can make a strong case that this past
meteorological winter was the toughest since 1983-1984.
The Minnesota DNR has a good summary of the WMI, the Winter Misery Index, and how this winter ranks: "
The
Winter Misery Index (WMI) is an attempt to weigh the relative severity
of winters. The index assigns points for daily counts of maximum
temperatures 10 degrees or colder and daily minimums of 0 or colder. If
the minimum temperature is -20 or colder greater weight is assigned to
the value times 8. For snowfall, one inch is assigned a point per
calendar day. A four inch snowfall is times 4, and an 8 inch snowfall is
times 16. The duration of a winter is noted by the number of days the
snow depth is 12 inches or greater. All current measurements are at the
Twin Cities International Airport. So far as of March 10, 2014 the WMI
for the winter of 2013-14 in Twin Cities is 198 points, or in the
"severe winter" category. The lowest WMI score was the winter of
2011-2012 with 16 points. The most severe winter is 1916-1917 with 305
WMI points..."
6th Coldest Meteorological Winter For Minnesota. Here are the standings, based on data from
NOAA NCDC,
for meteorological winter (December 1 through February 28). Wisconsin
saw the 5th coldest winter in 119 years, while California experienced
the warmest winter on record. The lower 48 states experienced an average
temperature of 31.3F, 1F colder than average.
45-Day Wish-Cast. Here is the latest
CFS
(Climate Forecast System) model output showing temperature trends for
MSP into late April; hinting at 60s after April 22-23. Uh huh. Place
your bets. Graphic: Ham Weather.
Flirting With 60.
There's no (significant) snow on the ground over far western and
southwestern Minnesota; and the mercury took off Thursday, brushing 60F
from Pipestone to Canby and Morris. Thursday highs: MesoWest.
ECMWF Guidance.
Next week won't win any awards for beauty and splendor, but I don't see
anything Arctic either. After a chilly weekend temperatures moderate
Monday and Tuesday, when a storm may push in with a rain/snow mix. It's
too early to speculate on amounts, but I don't think this next system
will have moisture to work with from the Gulf of Mexico. With
temperatures above freezing any snow would be wet and slushy, maybe a
few inches of mush for central Minnesota. Graphic: Weatherspark.
A Fickle Thaw.
Much of America east of the Rockies will see a warming trend into
Friday, but Canadian air leaks south of the border again over the
weekend from the Upper Mississippi Valley into the Great Lakes and New
England. Spring is always two steps forward, one step back. Or is it the
other way around? 2 meter NAM temperature forecast: NOAA and Ham
Weather.
Winter of 2013-14 Already Tops 2012-13 For Number of Hurricane-Force Storms in North Atlantic. Tell that to residents of Britain, where they just had the wettest winter in at least 250 years of record-keeping. NOAA's
climate.gov has the story; here's an excerpt: "...
According
to NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center, 20 separate hurricane-force wind
events occurred during January through February alone, and 14 of them
had low-pressure centers that underwent the rapid intensification that
meteorologists call bombogenesis, in which the storm’s central pressure
drops by at least 24 hPa
in a 24-hour period. In addition, 8 of the low centers had a central
pressure below 950 hPa. Between October 25, 2013, when the first
hurricane-force event of the season occurred, and March 8, when the most
recent one to date occurred, 43 unique hurricane-force events have
blasted their way across the North Atlantic. Thirty of them underwent
rapid intensification. The most intense system occurred on December 24,
2013; pressure in the heart of the storm dropped to 929 hPa as the storm
lurked north and northwest of the British Isles..."
More Whiplash: Ice Storm To Severe Storms In Less Than A Week.
Not a great year to be a tree in the Carolinas, where the atmosphere
can't quite make up its mind whether it's winter or spring. Many cities
from St. Louis to Philadelphia reported near-record 30-45 degree
temperature drops in less than 24 hours earlier this week; the subject
of today's
Climate Matters: "
WeatherNationTV
Chief Meteorologist Paul Douglas goes over the huge temp swings
associated with this latest winter storm. High winds and multiple ice
storms led to power outages in Washington DC and downed trees in North
Carolina. And all the snow! More places are creeping near their snowiest
winters on record. Here's to hoping we don't miss Spring!"
Drought Blamed For Rising Food Prices.
Will the symptoms of a deepening drought in California show up soon in
Minnesota grocery stores? Here's a video and article excerpt from
KGO-TV, ABC 7 in the San Francisco Bay Area: "
Some
of the first effects of the drought in California are starting to be
seen in grocery stores as prices at Bay Area market begin to rise. In
many cases, consumers are only getting half the food for the same price
they paid before the drought. The price of beef alone has doubled ever
since ranchers began selling off their herds because of the lack of
grass..."
Hurricane Rainwater Samples Map Sandy's Evolution.
No, all rains are not created equal. Here's a unique example of
crowd-sourcing and how rain with slightly different isotopes was used to
track Sandy's arrival in late October of 2012; an excerpt from
Claims Journal: "...
Sandy
left a distinctive isotopic signature in rain collected from the
mid-Atlantic up into in New England that shows how a dry cold front
originating out of the Midwest joined with Sandy – which developed from a
tropical wave over warm water in the Caribbean – and likely prolonged
and expanded the storm,” says Bowen. The sampling technique provides a
new way of studying how these “extra-tropical” hurricanes interact with
the weather systems of the northern latitudes, and thereby aids in
hurricane forecasting and analysis..."
Image credit above: "
Snapshot
of rainfall and oxygen-18 isotope values using crowdsourced rainwater
samples collected during landfall of Superstorm Sandy." Chart: Gabe Bowen, University of Utah.
Here are a few not-so-fun scenarios to consider. Remember, it's the unknown unknowns that often come back to bite you:
A Cascadia Quake Could Devastate.
The Los Angeles Times
has an interesting article and infographic that explains the nagging
risk of earthquakes and resulting tsunamis, and not from the San Andreas
fault; here's an excerpt: "...
The Cascadia zone extends 700 miles
along the coast from near Eureka, Calif., to Vancouver, Canada, and is
capable of producing a catastrophic 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, as
happened Jan. 26, 1700. A graphic below shows the tsunami that likely
was produced by the large-magnitude quake more than 300 years ago and
caused damage as far away as Japan. Shown here is how this subduction
zone creates such large quakes and tsunamis..."
Image credit: USGS and University of Washington Press.
Power Grid Preparedness Falls Short, Report Says.
With a little luck we won't soon experience a G4 or GF geomagentic
storm, triggered by a CME, a mass coronal ejection of charged particles
from the sun. It happens on a fairly routine basis, we've just been
relatively lucky here on Earth since the mid 1800s. How long will our
luck hold out? Here's an excerpt of a recent
New York Times story: "
Nearly
all the utilities that participated in two-day exercise last November
to test the preparedness of the power grid for online and physical
attacks said that their planning was not good enough, according to a
report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which
organized the drill. But the participants, more than 2,000 of them from
across the United States, Canada and Mexico, said the exercise taught
them lessons about whom they would need to communicate with in an
attack, and where their vulnerabilities were..."
File photo above: Associated Press.
How To Survive A Nuclear Bomb: An Update On "Duck And Cover".
Some of you may be old enough to remember the Duck and Cover drills in
schools back in the 50s and 60s, at the height of the Cold War. This is a
subject none of us want to consider, but in the unlikely event you're
ever confronted with a small, thermonuclear explosion, there are steps
you can take you increase the odds of survival. Here's an excerpt from a
long, vaguely horrific article at
Gizmag: "
If
it would take you less than five minutes to reach adequate shelter, go
there immediately following the immediate blast effects. In the end, the
better shelter will offset your brief exposure to higher levels of
radiation. If adequate shelter is less than 15 minutes away, shelter in
place for no more than 30 minutes, then transfer to the better shelter.
Again, the combination of a short period of immediate shelter combined
with a move to better shelter will offset your exposure during the move
(at least statistically)..."
Image credit above: "
US Atomic Energy Commission 14 kT Bunker Charlie test - October 30, 1951." (Photo: USAEC).
Minnesota Becomes First State To Set "Value Of Solar" Tariff.
Do you have solar panels on your rooftop yet? Odds are, over the next
few years, as solar prices continue to drop, many of us will consider
tapping free energy from the sun.
Midwest Energy News has an article that caught my eye - here's the introduction: "
Minnesota
utility regulators on Wednesday approved the nation’s first statewide
formula for calculating the value of customer-generated solar power. The
Minnesota Public Utilities Commission voted 3-2 in favor of a proposal
aimed at settling the perennial debate over how much solar power is worth to a utility and its ratepayers, as well as society and the environment..."
Photo credit above: "
A rooftop solar installation in Minneapolis." (Photo by Minnesota Solar Challenge via Creative Commons).
Here's What The Future Of Car Navigation Looks Like. Digital distractions, or helpful visual aids? We'll see.
Quartz has a good article on the future of man-vehicle interfaces; here's a clip: "...
Carmakers have been experimenting with head-up displays (HUD) in cars since the late 1990s.
But early efforts have been cautious, displaying only speed and other
basic information near the bottom of the windscreen. New technologies
allow them to be bolder: the authors see HUD, long used by fighter
pilots, as becoming a natural part of looking through the windshield,
and, in some cases, being embedded on real-world objects such as the
road or buildings. It is Borges’s 1:1 map come to life. Indeed, BMW
already has a prototype AR windshield that overlays information onto the
road surface to indicate upcoming turns..."
Image credit above: "
How on-screen or wearable augmented reality can work in either “screen-fixed” or “world-fixed” modes, compared to in-car devices." Proceedings of the IEEE.
The Unhealthy Meat Market. I have no plans of going vegan anytime soon, but this Op-Ed from Nicholas Kristof at
The New York Times made me stop and think; here's an excerpt: "...
Leonard’s
book argues that a handful of companies, led by Tyson, control our meat
industry in ways that raise concerns about the impact on animals and
humans alike, while tearing at the fabric of rural America. Many chicken
farmers don’t even own the chickens they raise or know what’s in the
feed. They just raise the poultry on contract for Tyson, and many
struggle to make a living..."
TODAY: More cloud than sun, cooler breeze. Winds: NW 10-20+ High: 40 (falling through the 30s)
FRIDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy and colder. Low: 19
SATURDAY: Clipper potential. Coating of flakes. Few inches southeastern MN? High: 29
SUNDAY: Partly sunny, still chilly. Wake-up: 4. High: 25
MONDAY: Patchy clouds, a bit milder. Wake-up: 21. High: 39
TUESDAY: Rain/snow mix MSP. Snow north. Wake-up: 30. High: 42
WEDNESDAY: Damp start, slow clearing. Cooler. Wake-up: 25. High: 34
THURSDAY: Cloud-cluttered. No tulips yet. Wake-up: 17. High: 38
Climate Stories....
Don't Get Used To The Idea Of A Global Warming "Slowdown".
The Atlantic Cities has the latest findings on climate sensitivity; here's a clip: "...
But "too warm" is a concept we need to wrap our soon-to-be-baked brains around, according to new research
from NASA's Drew Shindell. After performing a region-specific analysis
of the things that affect the global climate, Shindell has come to the
conclusion that, slowdown be damned, we are still looking at a vast leap
in the earth's heat levels. In fact, there could be a warming increase
about 20 percent greater than indicated by surface-temperature
observations from the last 150 years, according to his new study in Nature Climate Change..." (Image: NASA).
Earth To Get Hotter Despite Global Warming Slowdown.
It seems like a contradiction at first blush, but 90% of the additional
heat is going into the world's oceans - how that warmth and energy will
ultimately manifest itself is a big unknown. Here's an excerpt from
The Economic Times: "...
Drew
Shindell, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
in New York, found Earth is likely to experience roughly 20 per cent
more warming than estimates that were largely based on surface
temperature observations during the last 150 years. Global temperatures
have increased at a rate of .12 degrees Celsius per decade since 1951,
researchers said..." (Image: NASA).
Snow Trax: Climate Change Puts Snow Sports In Jeopardy. Here's an excerpt from a story at the
Sante Fe New Mexican: "...
In
a new book by veteran ski journalist Porter Fox, DEEP: The Story of
Skiing and the Future of Snow, he reports, “The snowpack in British
Columbia has declined by half overall and the ski season in some regions
is four to five months shorter than it was 50 years ago. Eastern Canada
is even warmer … Computer models show the Northeast ski season
shrinking to less than 100 days by 2039. Under other models, the mean
snow depth for the Rocky Mountains is predicted to drop to zero by
2100.” In the Alps, where “temperatures are rising three times faster
than the global average,” he notes, the infrastructures of the high
alpine (refuges, chairlifts, antennas, etc.) are built on permafrost and
without reinforcements are likely to crumble as permafrost melts..." (File photo: Star Tribune).
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