Temperature Correction - Mild Bias into Mid November?

67 F. high in the Twin Cities Monday.

53 F. average high on October 27.

58 F. high on October 27, 2013.

2.6" snow fell on the Twin Cities on October 27, 1919.

Risk of October

Be afraid. When the weather is supernaturally nice for an extended period of time my nervous twitch returns. When will the other shoe (or boot) drop? Patterns usually pivot between pleasure & pain, unless storms stall for extended periods of time (Halloween Blizzard of 1991), or an upper level block interrupts the normal ebb and flow of cold and warm (last winter's persistent vortex of polar pollution).

One step out the door and you'll realize - quickly - that it's still late October. No more 60s until possibly next week as the cool correction we all knew was inevitable arrives. Minnesota only sees a glancing blow of cold air; the real thrust of wind chill and lake effect snow bands will set up from the Great Lakes into New England in time for Halloween.

And nothing too terrifying from a meteorological perspective for Friday: mostly clear skies, light winds and Trick or Treat temperatures near 40F. A hard freeze Saturday morning gives way to strong weekend winds, the result of big temperature swings across the Midwest. A taste of Indian Summer returns next week with more 50s, maybe a day or two above 60F.

Old Man Winter continues to pull his punch into at least mid-November.

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An Inevitable Correction. I wouldn't exactly call it arctic, but it will be more cold front than cool front in the coming days; temperatures stuck in the 40s much of today, Thursday and Halloween before recovering next weekend. I still think we may see another 60-degree high or two next week; a sharp rebound in temperature will turn on 15-25 mph sustained winds by Sunday and Monday.

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60-Hour Accumulated Precipitation. The arrival of much colder air sets off showers from the Great Lakes, with a trailing cold front whipping up a few hours of rain from St. Louis and Chicago to Indianapolis and Memphis. Another surge of heavy rain pushes into the Paciic Northwest. 4 km NAM guidance: NOAA and HAMweather.

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60-Hour Snowfall Potential. A plowable snowfall is predicted just north of Lake Superior as the next surge of cold air takes aim at New England; a little wet snow mixing in over the Minnesota Arrowhead.

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Taxi GPS Data Helps Researchers Study Hurricane Sandy's Effect on New York City Traffic. Here's a snippet of an interesting article at phys.org: "...The largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Hurricane Sandy offered a chance for researchers at the Unversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to try out a new computational method they developed that promises to help municipalities quantify the resilience of their transportation systems to extreme events using on GPS data from taxis...

Image credit above: "A visualization comparing GPS data from New York City taxis in the days surrounding Hurricane Sandy with the same data under normal traffic conditions."

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A visualization comparing GPS data from New York City taxis in the days surrounding Hurricane Sandy with the same data under normal traffic conditions

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-taxi-gps-hurricane-sandy-effect.html#jCp

A visualization comparing GPS data from New York City taxis in the days surrounding Hurricane Sandy with the same data under normal traffic conditions

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-taxi-gps-hurricane-sandy-effect.html#jCp

The largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Hurricane Sandy offered a chance for researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to try out a new computational method they developed that promises to help municipalities quantify the resilience of their transportation systems to extreme events using only GPS data from taxis.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-taxi-gps-hurricane-sandy-effect.html#jCp

Colder Winters in Asia, Europe Linked to Sea Ice Decline. Climate Central examines how reduced sea ice from rapid arctic warming might impact the frequency of cold weather blocking patterns; here's a clip: "..The model simulations suggest that the reduced sea ice leads to greater absorption of incoming solar heat by open ocean waters, which leads to pressure changes in the atmosphere. Specifically, it seems to intensify a feature called the Siberian High over Europe and Asia, and leads to more of what are called blocking patterns, where the atmosphere effectively gets stuck in a particular pattern for days or even weeks. In the case of the study, the feature leads to more breakouts of Arctic air over the combined Europe-Asia landmass..."

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ER Doctor: What Scares Me Even More Than Ebola. Will nurses, care-givers and front-line doctors even show up if things get really bad? Dr. Louis Profeta has an Op-Ed at LinkedIn; here's an excerpt that caught my eye: "...We’ve had years to prepare for this, we’ve hung all our hopes on a vaccine and not nearly enough thought on containment should a vaccine fail. Today’s Ebola is tomorrow’s Spanish flu. We’ve had nearly a hundred years to get ready and the best we can come up with is plastic suits, double gloves, respirators, and masks. The battleground of this problem can’t be in the hospital. It is unwinnable in our emergency rooms..."

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To Improve a Memory, Consider Chocolate. This edict will not be hard to implement for most of us. Life is better with (more) chocolate, but this gives you another excuse; here's an excerpt from The New York Times: "Science edged closer on Sunday to showing that an antioxidant in chocolate appears to improve some memory skills that people lose with age. In a small study in the journal Nature Neuroscience, healthy people, ages 50 to 69, who drank a mixture high in antioxidants called cocoa flavanols for three months performed better on a memory test than people who drank a low-flavanol mixture..."

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TODAY: Windy and colder with clouds, showers north. Winds: NW 20. High: 49
TUESDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy and chilly. Low: 34
WEDNESDAY: Plenty of sun, less wind. High: 48
THURSDAY: Mostly cloudy, risk of a sprinkle. Wake-up: 38. High: 53
FRIDAY: Clear. Chilling. Giant spiders. Wake-up: 31. High: 44
SATURDAY: Hard freeze early. Partly sunny, stiff south wind. Wake-up: 25. High: 48
SUNDAY: Very windy, a bit milder. Wake-up: 37. High: 56
MONDAY: Showers, then clearing. Wake-up: 50. High: 58

* photo credit: Heidi Rusch, Minnetonka.

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Climate Stories...

2014 Setting Up As Warmest Year, Worldwide, Since 1880? We started the year in a cold phase (La Nina) and the much-hyped El Nino of 2014 is taking it's sweet old time ramping up in the Pacific. In spite of that, 2014 is on track to become the warmest year, globally, on record. Here's an excerpt from desmog.uk: "...These records tie 2014 with 1998 and 2010 for the warmest first nine months on record. The United Nations has pointed out that 13 out of the 14 hottest years recorded have taken place since the turn of the 21st century. In a statement, NOAA said: “If the surface temperature remains elevated at the same level for the remainder of the year, then 2014 will set a new record for the warmest annual average temperature since records began in 1880...”

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Boston is Rethinking It's relationship With The Sea. Canals similar to Amsterdam to let the water IN? It may not be as crazy as it sounds, according to a story at the BBC; here's an excerpt: "...This is why Boston's city planners and architects are contemplating the radical idea of turning its most historic district - the elegant 19th Century terraced houses of the Back Bay - into a network of canals. "Much of the model has been how do we keep the water out? Everybody's afraid of the water," says Dennis Carlberg, sustainability director at Boston University and co-chair of Boston's sea-level rise committee. "So we wanted to turn that conversation on its head and say, well what if we let water in? How can we make life better in Boston by bringing water in?...."

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Study Provides Deeper Understanding of Climate Change. Much of the excess heat energy from fossil fuel emissions is going into the deep oceans, and we're not precisely sure how a warming trend in the Pacific will manifest itself in the future: more hurricanes and typhoons, shifts in rainfall patterns and a higher risk of extreme summer heat? Here's an excerpt of an article at mycentraljersey.com: "...The study shows that changes in heat distribution between the ocean basins is important for understanding future climate change. However, scientists can't predict precisely what effect the carbon dioxide currently being pulled into the ocean from the atmosphere will have on climate. Still, they argue that since more carbon dioxide has been released in the past 200 years than any recent period in geological history, interactions between carbon dioxide, temperature changes and precipitation, and ocean circulation will result in profound changes..."