59 F. maximum temperature Sunday afternoon in the Twin Cities.
36 F. average high on March 5.
39 F. high temperature on March 5, 2016.
March 6, 1836: Unusual cold for March lasts for 12 days at Ft. Snelling. During this time, 7 nights were in the double-digits below zero.
Perfectly Average Weather - For April 28I went ahead and issued a Toupee Alert and High Wig Warning for gusts as high as 50 mph tonight and Tuesday, maybe 60 mph for western Minnesota.
The
bigger the differential in temperature, the wider the range over a
given spot, the faster winds have to blow to keep the atmosphere in a
state of equilibrium.
We'll go from mid-60s today (with a few strong thunderstorms) to low 20s Wednesday morning. The result: gale-force wind gusts.
Temperatures
cool off close to average by late week with a series of slushy
clippers, but nothing that will rock your world or mess up travel plans.
This chilling Canadian Correction lingers into much of next week before
the mercury recovers into the 40s and 50s later in March.
Mud
season comes early this year but look at the bright side: a supernatural
lack of snow means a reduced risk of river flooding. Oddly enough the
risk of brush fires will be high until we green up (which may come 2-3
weeks ahead of schedule).
Nationwide this is the most active year
for tornadoes since 2012. I doubt Minnesota will see 144 tornadoes like
2010, but I'm expecting a busier severe storm season.
Enhanced Severe Risk.
A few large and violent tornadoes are likely across the Mid South later
today, with the best chance from Springfield and Joplin, Missouri
toward Fort Smith and Fayetteville, Arkansas. A few strong T-storms are
possible as far north as the Twin Cities and Madison. Map: NOAA SPC.
Winter Camps Out Over Pacific Northwest - While Spring is in Full Swing East of Mississippi.
It's odd to be seeing rain for Maine and even the U.P. of Michigan
during the first week of March. A powerful storm pushes across the
Dakotas toward Winnipeg, a tight pressure gradient whipping up sustained
winds of 30 mph with gusts to 50 from the northern Plains into the
Upper Midwest. More rain and snow torments the west coast as a
remarkably persistent pattern hangs on. 84-hour NAM Future Radar: NOAA
and Tropicaltidbits.com.
Clash of Seasons.
Tie down garbage cans, pets and small, imported cars over the next 36
hours because the wind will be wailing away, especially Tuesday when
sustained winds may be in the 30-35 mph range with gusts over 50 mph. I
could even see minor wind damage, downed tree limbs, possibly a few
power outages. Meteogram: AerisWeather.
Spring Today - Feels Like Winter by Friday.
Enjoy the warmth and humidity because we'll all be donning heavy
jackets and coats by the end of the week. ECMWF guidance shows a
correction lasting into the middle o f next week before temperatures
moderate again the latter half of March. Graphic: WeatherBell.
Snowfall Potential Through Thursday Morning.
As has been the case all winter the most prolific snows will be found
from the Cascades to the Rockies; a couple inches of snow spreading
across the Dakotas into northern Minnesota.
Moderating Temperatures Within 2 Weeks.
After an inevitable temperature correction over northern states and New
England specificially, GFS guidance shows a west-to-east wind flow
aloft returning after mid-month. Just about the time we spring forward
with our clocks the atmosphere should as well.
Early Spring Warmth Wreaks Havoc on Plants, Allergies, Bugs.
USA TODAY talks about the implications of another early spring for much of the USA: "...
In Memphis,
many of the city's trees and plants are about a month ahead of
schedule, Rick Pudwell, director of horticulture at Memphis Botanic
Garden, said recently. And in New Jersey, the
recent warmth has caused tree and shrub buds to start swelling
early. However, any extended cold could still affect early-spring
flowering trees, said Bill Zipse, regional forester for the state forest
service. Changes in the timing of spring can affect human health,
bringing early-season disease-carriers such as ticks and mosquitoes, and
an earlier, longer and more vigorous pollen season, the National
Phenology Network warned. While a longer growing season can result in
increased yields for some crops, it is risky because of the higher
likelihood of plant damage caused by late frosts or summer drought..."
The Southeast Just Had One of Its Warmest Winters. Here's an excerpt from
WXshift: "...
More
than 120 weather stations, mostly in the Southeastern United States,
notched their warmest winter on record, and 84 percent of over 1,500
stations recorded a warmer than average winter. Only the Pacific
Northwest saw cooler than average temperatures. Perhaps the most
remarkable warmth came over the weekend of Feb. 11-12, when locations in
Northern Texas, Western Kansas and Oklahoma, as well as Eastern
Colorado set all-time February records for warmest temperatures. Beaver,
Okla. hit 93°F on Feb. 11. The previous monthly record at that site was
90°F set on Feb. 28, 1904..." (Map credit: Climate Central).
NOAA Cuts Could Stymie Research, Put Lives at Risk. Climate Central takes a deep dive into proposed cuts at NOAA: "...
The
OAR and satellite divisions are critical for maintaining and advancing
forecasting and modeling capabilities in both the weather and climate
spheres, experts said, and any cuts will curtail those capabilities well
into the future.
Polar orbiting satellites, which aide in longer-term forecasting, are
already facing problematic gaps, as funding shortfalls and planning
delays have resulted in a delay in the launch of replacement satellites. The Government Accountability Office included the polar satellite program and a potential coverage gap on its 2017 high risk list
due to the challenges it already faces. The new budget zeroes out
funding for the Polar Follow On program, which is developing the next
polar satellites.
Modeling capabilities could also be impacted. For several years, some
meteorologists and climate researchers have remarked that the U.S. is
already behind European weather and climate modelling efforts, run by
the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which is investing more than $50 million in a new building to house a new, next-generation supercomputer..."
Large Cuts Proposed for U.S. Weather Prediction. Here is an excerpt of a
must-read post from Cliff Mass, outlining the implications of proposed NOAA budget cuts: "...
The proposed cuts (described here)
are huge and would cripple the ability of the National Weather Service
to improve the quality of weather predictions provided to the American
peopleCuts include:
1. A half-billion dollar
reduction in NOAA's satellite program run by National Environmental
Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS). Weather
satellite's provide 95% of the information used to initialize weather
prediction models and such a large cut would result in the loss of major
satellite observing systems. Weather prediction skill would decline.
2. A 26% (126 million) cut in the Office of Atmospheric Research (OAR)
OAR is responsible for the development of the next generation of
weather prediction models and the technologies underlying U.S.
operational weather forecasting. Such a large cut would greatly
undermine current activities to replace the problematic current
generation of U.S. global models. It would undermine the development of
new approaches to data assimilation of observational data. And much
more..."
Four Ways NOAA Benefits Your Life Today. Dr. Marshall Shepherd takes a look at how NOAA data fuels our everyday lives at
Forbes: "...
According
to figures in the Washington Post, the White House proposal eliminates
$513 million, or 22 percent of NOAA's satellite division or National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service. This division also houses critical climate data at the National Center for Environmental Indicators. This data is vital for understanding how our weather and climate are changing. Numerous reports have cautioned about looming gaps in weather satellite coverage
as our fleet of low-earth and geosynchronous orbiting satellites age.
Weather satellites provide a critical service for the public, the
military, industry, and other stakeholders. They are like smoke
detectors in our homes. You know they are there but really do not pay
them any attention until your house is on fire. For the safety of our
families, we replace the batteries when they age. This is pretty simple
to do for a smoke detector, but large satellite programs are different.
They require sustained and consistent funding for research and
development, industry contracts, and support..."
Surprising Facts About NOAA. Roughly
a third
of America's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is dependent on the weather:
agriculture, retail, energy, transportation, leisure, it's a long list.
Here's an excerpt from a post at
The Union of Concerned Scientists: "...
Anyone
who eats seafood benefits from NOAA’s stewardship of sustainable
fisheries and healthy ecosystems in ways that support jobs and helps
keep our seafood safe. NOAA has improved forecasts for harmful algal blooms. Scientists at the agency and cooperative institutes conduct research and monitoring for changes in fisheries and marine ecosystems from ocean acidification
and temperature changes. Businesses, farmers, homeowners and nearly
everyone living in the US at some point makes important decisions based
on weather forecasts. No matter your source of weather, all forecasts
are underpinned by observations and models provided by NOAA through its
National Weather Service (NWS) and National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)..."
ECMWF Heading to Italy by 2020? The
BBC has an update: "
The
next-generation supercomputer that will drive Europe’s medium-range
weather forecasts looks set to be housed in Bologna, Italy, from 2020.
It would succeed the current system based in Reading, UK. Member states
of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) made
the indicative decision to relocate the facility on Wednesday. Detailed
negotiations will now be held with Italian authorities. The intention is
to confirm the choice in June. That is the date of the next full
Council meeting of the ECMWF..."
Weather Service: Perryville (Missouri) Tornado Was Rare EF-4.
FOX2now.com has details on an especially violent, long-lasting tornado: "
The
National Weather Service has reclassified a tornado that killed one
person and destroyed dozens of homes in the Perryville area as an EF-4
twister. The weather service’s preliminary finding classified Tuesday
night’s tornado as an EF-3. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports (http://bit.ly/2mnK8KG )
the new information was released Saturday by the Perryville Police
Department, which was briefed by the weather service Friday.
Meteorologist Rick Shankland says the tornado carried winds up to 180
mph. Shankland told police the tornado was six-tenths of a mile wide and
traveled 50.4 miles, the longest track in 25 years..."
Photo credit: "
Perryville tornado damage in a neighborhood near Moore Drive off Hwy 61." (Source: Katie Kormann)
Overuse of Severe Thunderstorm Warnings? Should we tighten up criteria for issuance of severe thunderstorm warnings to make them less common?
The Weather Social makes a case: "...
So
what would happen IF we changed the minimum criteria? How many of these
warnings would drop off if we went to 70mph winds and/or 1.5″ hail
minimums? The warnings issued are represented by the orange bars.
Also note, as I mentioned at the IWT, the actual number of initial
warnings issued based on the minimum criteria that then intensified into
a 70mph and/or 1.5″ hail tag was pretty small–mostly under 10 per year.
We’re talking about 20 to 25 percent of these warnings would have been issued! In other words, even being a bit generous, 60 to 70 percent of the warnings would have been reduced. That’s pretty significant!
My thought is that IF we don’t issue so many SVRs, when one is issued,
our consumers would pay more attention to what is happening. A topic discussed thoroughly on thewxsocial.com, are people fatigued by the sheer volume of warnings?..."
What Causes Rainbow Colors in Clouds? EarthSky has a good explanation and some wonderful examples of one of my favorite optical illusions: iridescent clouds: "
Sky
watchers sometimes report seeing rainbow colors within clouds. These
colorful clouds are called iridescent clouds. When you see a cloud like
this, you know there are especially tiny ice crystals or water droplets
in the air. Larger ice crystals produce solar or lunar halos,
but tiny ice crystals or water droplets cause light to be diffracted –
spread out – creating this rainbow-like effect in the clouds. The
phenomenon is called cloud iridescence or irisation. The term comes from
Iris, the Greek personification of the rainbow..."
Photo credit: "
Bird-shaped iridescent cloud over Mutare, Zimbabwe – February 13, 2017 – from Peter Lowenstein. Seeing shapes in clouds is an example of pareidolia."
Wettest and Driest Months of the Year? Brian Brettschneider does a terrific job visualizing data; here's another example from his
prolific blog: "
What
are the wettest and driest months of the year? Using published normal
values, we can answer that question. These maps were generated using the
1981-2010 NCEI climate normals for monthly precipitation within the
U.S. In Canada and Mexico (and the rest of the globe [not shown]), the
GHCN v.2 monthly precipitation was used. To standardize the months due
to differences in the number of days, I used an average daily
precipitation value. In a few instances, this will cause discrepancies.
For example, if February averages 3.00" of precipitation and March
averages 3.10", I show February as having more precipitation – since
their per-day value is higher..."
Coal Industry Casts Itself as a Clean Energy Player. The New York Times has the story; here's a clip: "...
Seeking
to shore up their struggling industry, the coal producers are voicing
greater concern about greenhouse gas emissions. Their goal is to frame a
new image for coal as a contributor, not an obstacle, to a clean-energy
future — an image intended to foster their legislative agenda.
Executives of the three companies — Cloud Peak Energy, Peabody Energy
and Arch Coal — are going so far as to make common cause with some of
their harshest critics, including the Natural Resources Defense Council
and the Clean Air Task Force. Together, they are lobbying for a tax bill
to expand government subsidies to reduce the environmental impact of
coal burning. The technology they are promoting is carbon capture and
sequestration — an expensive and, up to now, unwieldy method of trapping
carbon dioxide emitted from coal-fired power plants before the gas can
blanket the atmosphere and warm the planet..."
Photo credit: "Carbon capture equipment at NRG’s power generating station southwest of Houston." Michael Stravato for The New York Times.
An Evolutionary Psychologist Explains Why You Will Always Be Haunted by High School. Quartz has the story; here's a clip: "...
My
research experience as an evolutionary psychologist leads me to believe
that many factors interact to make our teenage memories so vivid. But
the main driver is the collision between the hardwiring of our brains
that took place across several million of years of evolution and the odd
social bubble created by high school, which poses an unprecedented
social challenge to our prehistoric minds. In other words, the world
that we evolved to be successful in (a small, stable group of
interrelated people of various ages) is very different from the holding
pen full of teenagers brimming with hormones that populate our world
during the high school years..."
This Man Planned the Most Efficient U.S. Road Trip of All Time.
Travel + Leisure shows us how to do it right: "...
Randy
Olson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania,
mapped out a super-efficient — and super-ambitious — way to see the
contiguous United States. He devised his cross-country road trip,
combining algorithms and Google Maps, so he could visit 48 capitol
buildings. “For this road trip, there is one goal: to take a picture at
as many U.S. state capitols as possible,” Olson wrote on his blog. “We
will travel only by car, so that rules out Alaska (too far away) and
Hawaii (requires a plane flight) and leaves us with the 48 contiguous
states (excluding D.C.).”
“Whenever possible, we will avoid routes that require us to travel
through foreign countries, as entering/leaving the country requires a
passport and border control tends to slow things down...”
Why Sid Hartman Isn't Slowing Down. Just in case you missed the segment on Star Tribune's sports journalist and living legend on
Sunday TODAY: "
Sid
Hartman, the 96-year-old sports writer working for the Star Tribune in
Minneapolis, says he has no plans to retire, adding that “this isn’t a
job. This is fun for me.” NBC’s Harry Smith reports for Sunday TODAY."
Let's. Play. Hockey!
As I said at Sunday evening's wild game in St. Paul the only thing
better than Spring Fever is Wild Fever. It's positively contagious. My
thanks to the Minnesota Wild and Star Tribune, now celebrating it's
150th birthday serving up news in Minnesota.
TODAY: Humid, few showers and T-storms. Winds: S 15-35. High: 64
MONDAY NIGHT: Showers taper, turning blustery and colder. Low: 35
TUESDAY: Mostly cloudy, gusts close to 50 mph. Winds: W 25-50. High: 46
WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny, less wind. Winds: NW 10-15. Wake-up: 22. High: 38
THURSDAY: Lot's of clouds, turning colder. Winds: N 8-13. Wake-up: 24. High: 39
FRIDAY: Clipper, period of slushy snow? Winds: NE 8-13. Wake-up: 18. High: 33
SATURDAY: Intervals of sun, seasonably cool. Winds: NW 5-10. Wake-up: 17. High: 36
SUNDAY: Next clipper, few flakes? Winds: NE 5-10. Wake-up: 22. High: 37
Climate Stories....
Inside the Quest to Monitor Countries' CO2 Emissions. From commercial aircraft to satellites, we need cost-effective ways to measure greenhouse gas emissions. Here's a clip from
Scientific American: "...
While
some space satellites can measure greenhouse gas emissions, they are
expensive, depend on computer models and “have all kinds of biases” that
make it difficult to reach the precision needed to accurately measure
man-made emissions, explained NOAA’s Tans. NASA has recently selected a
more sophisticated satellite for a launch in 2022, however, that offers
some hope. It is called the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory
(GeoCARB), and would hover 22,000 miles in space, rotating with a
constant view of most of the Americas. It comes with a bargain basement
price (for a satellite) of $166 million over the next five years, partly
because it will hitchhike a ride into space sitting in an unused area
of a payload carrying a commercial communications satellite..."
Image credit: "
This
is an artist’s concept of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. The mission,
scheduled to launch in early 2009, will be the first spacecraft
dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide." Credit:
NASA, JPL
4 Ways Climate Change is Messing with our Brains. Here's an excerpt from a story at
Grist: "...
But
those brutal conditions also affect our mental health, changing how we
think and act. Mental health professionals are paying attention to the
link between climate change and emotional health — and health insurance companies are, too. Here are some of the impacts they’re concerned about. (Hat tip: CBS.)
- Disasters like floods, tornadoes, and drought have been found to trigger PTSD, anxiety, depression, and drug abuse.
- Slight increases in heat or rainfall have been found to raise the risk of riots and civil wars, as well as crimes like rape and murder.
- Babies
in the womb who are exposed to urban air pollutants from fossil fuels
are more likely to develop anxiety or depression later in life.
- Many people now experience “climate anxiety” — feeling depressed and overwhelmed by you-know-what — and support groups have emerged to help them..."
File photo credit:
Shutterstock
Latest in Climate Change Debate: Cost-Benefit Analysis. A domestic or global cost of carbon? Here's an excerpt of a post at
The Houston Chronicle: "...
The
Obama administration calculated a carbon cost for the entire planet,
not just the United States, said Ted Gayer, director of economic studies
at the nonpartisan think tank Brookings Institution. But that approach
only makes sense if one was considering a global regulation, one that
all the countries in the world would follow, Gayer testified at the
hearing. "Absent such an approach… a global measure deviates from
standard practice," he said. "The global measure is 4 to 14 times
greater than the estimated domestic measure." Republicans have taken
issue with other assumptions in the Obama administration's calculations.
For example, why didn't the old administration factor in potential
increases in crop yields from higher carbon dioxide levels - something
many scientists believe could be happening already? Where people come
down on these questions seems to largely depend on their views on
climate change..."
Public Criticized DNR, Scott Walker Over Climate Change Scrub. Maybe if we ignore it - it'll go away. Here's an update from
Wisconsin State Journal: "
Hundreds
of phone calls and emails voicing shock, outrage and ridicule flooded
state Department of Natural Resources offices in December after top
managers deleted language from the DNR website that had described the
urgency of addressing human activity that has accelerated climate
change. Some DNR employees handling the public reaction expressed
frustration as managers waited days before telling them how to respond,
and then provided a script that treated the altered web pages as a
routine update. Documents released to the Wisconsin State Journal under
the state open records law show how the DNR tried to manage the
outpouring that was unleashed after a blogger discovered the rewritten
climate change pages around Christmas and the word spread through other
news outlets..."
Past Disasters Reveal Terrifying Future of Climate Change. Here's an excerpt from
NatGeo: "..
.Two things are different. We’re on a track that’s going to be hard to turn away from. Carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas
that causes global warming, and it will be there for a long, long time.
It’s not like the ash in the atmosphere after Mount Tambora, which
settled out within 2-3 years. Man-made warming is putting a momentum
into climate change that wasn’t there in the past and is going to be
hard to move away from, the later we leave it. There’s another thing, too: that is, the rate of change. The world has warmed twice, by as much as 4-6 degrees, in last 60 million years,
as a consequence of natural cycles but these occurred over thousands of
years. Today, we are talking about a possible increase of 4-6 degree
over the next 100 years. It’s that rate of change that is testing when
it comes to adaptation for all species, humans as well..."
Was Our Snowless January and February a Sign of Climate Change? Here's an excerpt from
Chicago Magazine: "...
Just
two months of abnormal weather can’t prove anything on their own, the
climate experts say. However, the Earth is setting more record-high
temperatures than record-low temperatures lately, and that is a sign of
global warming. According to Horton, weather variability is natural in
Chicago due to its location in the mid-latitudes, “the middle segment of
the Earth where the weather is controlled by an oscillating jet
stream,” which are slim strips of wind. This means that naturally,
Chicago will have more irregularity in weather, as compared to the area
near the equator, where temperatures are steady and predictable..."
Photo credit: "
Shorts in February—should we be scared?" Photo: Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune.
Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Record Low, Providing Another Mystery for Scientists. Here's an excerpt from
InsideClimate News: "...
The
news came as sea ice around Antarctica is experiencing its lowest
extent ever. As of March 1, only 820,000 square miles of the ocean
around Antarctica was covered in ice, according to data
from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. The loss
of ice represents an all-time minimum for Antarctic sea ice cover since
satellite observations began in 1979. The current decline, however, may not be part of a larger climate change trend. The low point comes less than three years after Antarctic sea ice set a record high
in October 2014. "If you look at the long-term trend, Antarctic sea
ice is still increasing slightly, said Son Nghiem, a researcher with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory..."
Graphic:
National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Striking Photos Show People vs. Climate Change.
National Geographic has the photo essay: "
An incredibly complex web of cause and effect that’s global in scope, climate change is like light itself: enormously present, yet difficult to directly perceive. It’s just as likely to make its presence known in overly tough goat meat in Kenya as it is in a terrifying “gateway to hell” in Sibera.
But where do we, as individuals, come across the effects of climate
change? What does it actually look like to us? And what are we doing
about it?"
Photo credit: "Spread over 400 acres, Nevada Solar One
is a massive project built in the hot, dry desert just south of Las
Vegas. The plant uses 760 parabolic trough concentrators with more than
182,000 mirrors that concentrate the sun’s rays onto more than 18,240
receiver tubes. Every year, the projected amount of CO2 emissions this
plant avoids putting into the atmosphere is equivalent to taking
approximately 20,000 cars off the road. It is a refreshing site to look
at—I can't wait to fly a solar-powered aircraft one." Photograph by Jassen T., National Geographic Your Shot.
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