Sunday, September 11, 2016

Cooling Down By Midweek - Soggy Pattern Not Easing Anytime Soon

80 F. high temperature in St. Cloud Sunday.
72 F. average high on September 11.
66 F. high on September 11, 2015.

September 12, 1982: Two tornadoes touch down in Benton County. The F2 tornado causes $250,000 worth of damage, and an F0 tornado causes $25,000.
September 12, 1931: The fifth consecutive day of 90 degrees or above occurs in the Minneapolis area.
September 12, 1923: Winter weather pays an early visit to northern Minnesota. The cities of Roseau and Virginia receive flurries and sleet.
September 12, 1903: 4.96 inches of rain fall in the Minneapolis area.
September 12, 1869: A hail storm between 1 and 3 am breaks windows and causes considerable damage to late vegetables at Madilia in Watonwan County.



Making The Case To Extend Summer Into September

Please don't interrupt my sweet summer hangover.

September is perhaps the most underrated month of the year, but I'm lobbying Congress to lengthen summer to 4 months.

Think about it. Our growing season is almost a MONTH longer than it was for your parents. Boating season now extends into early October, when leaves finally ripen up here in the metro. Fewer severe storms in September - not as much obnoxious heat and humidity.

June often brings chilly days, flooding rains and washed out weddings, whereas September is...extraordinary. Let's lobby our representatives to shift summer back a month.

Then again I may have way too much free time on my hands.

After the 4th wettest meteorological summer we SHOULD dry out in the coming weeks, as cool fronts arrive with greater frequency. Enjoy 70s today, but showers push in by tonight, setting the stage for 60s Tuesday into Thursday. Models bring more rain into town Friday and Saturday.

Sunday looks sunny and Renaissance Festival or Parade of Homes-worthy with a streak of 80s the first half of next week. Yep, September may be the best month of the year.



4th Wettest Meteorological Summer on Record for Minnesota. Here's an excerpt of an explanation from NOAA NCEI: "One way to depict how a month or season compares to its history is to use a ranking system. NCEI has done this for many years for the climate divisions, states, etc. The maps below depict rankings based on the 5km gridded dataset, nClimGrid. Each grid point is ranked based on the other values in its own period of record. Ranking the grid cells provides a greater detail for the regional patterns across the CONUS and Alaska. For instance, several states were record warm in August. This record warmth is evident in both the percentile maps below and the climate division rank maps..."


5th Hottest U.S. Summer Saw Record Northeast Heat. Here's the intro to a recap at Climate Central: "The dog days of summer were especially scorching across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic last month, with eight states in those regions recording their hottest August in 122 years. Two of those — Connecticut and Rhode Island — also had record-warm summers, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. While ample rains kept temperatures closer to normal across much of the country last month, the contiguous U.S. still had its fifth-warmest summer on record and its third warmest year-to-date. Outside of the Lower 48, Alaska continued its streak of sweltering weather, with its third-hottest August and second-hottest summer in the past 92 years. So far, 2016 is far and away its hottest year on record..."

Map credit: "How the average temperature of each state in the Lower 48 ranked for August." Credit: NOAA


Showers Increase Later Today. A south breeze lures the mercury well into the 70s today, in spite of increasing clouds as the day goes on. Showers are possible by afternoon, likely this evening and tonight as cooler air pushes south. 60-hour Future Radar: NOAA 4km NAM and AerisWeather.

Frost for the Minnesota Arrowhead Wednesday Morning? Odds are you're hearing frosty rumors, and there may be a light coating of frost for portions of the Minnesota Arrowhead by midweek. But no, this does not look like a widespread frost event. Not yet. Embarrass temperature plot: Aeris Enterprise.

Hard To Imagine: More Heavy Rain by Late Week? Good grief. I keep waiting for us to transition out of a tropical, jungle-like pattern as cooler, drier Canadian pushes south with greater frequency. But models print out over 1" of rain Friday into Saturday. Sunday looks like the nicer day of the weekend right now.

Fleeting Glimpses of Autumn. Yes, it will feel like fall out there by Tuesday and Wednesday with highs holding in the 60s (south) with 50s up north. ECMWF guidance hints at 80s one week from today. Source: WeatherBell.

A Robot May Be Training To Do Your Job. Don't Panic. Looking over the horizon we will (all) have to relearn how to learn - and do thinks robots cannot. Here's an excerpt from The New York Times: "...The widespread adoption of social robotics in the workplace faces a host of potential problems, including a lack of infrastructure and power requirements, deficient awareness of surroundings, and public resistance. Eventually, though, the moment will come when machines possess empathy, the ability to innovate and other traits we perceive as uniquely human. What then? How will we sustain our own career relevance? I think the only way forward is to look at artificial intelligence developments as an opportunity rather than a threat. We need the mind-set that success is no longer about our level of knowledge but about our level of creative intelligence. If we accept the process of lifelong learning, in which we adapt to new ways of working as technology improves, we’ll always find roles that take advantage of our best qualities..."
Image credit: Amy Su.

iPhone 7 Plus Photos From The Titans-Vikings Game. Here's an excerpt of a photo essay from Sports Illustrated: "On Wednesday, Apple unveiled the brand new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, both of which feature an entirely new camera system. Now some of the first photos taken by the new iPhone 7 Plus camera are being unveiled exclusively on SI.com. On Sunday, Sports Illustrated photographer David E. Klutho took photos with the new iPhone 7 Plus camera at the Titans-Vikings game. The iPhone 7 Plus has a 12–megapixel telephoto camera that offers new zooming capabilities. Each new model also features a wider aperture and a lens that allows the camera to capture brighter and more vibrant colors in photos and videos..."

How To Become a CEO? The Quickest Path is a Winding One. Here's an excerpt of an interesting post at The New York Times: "...In effect, the increased ability to collect and analyze such troves of data raises the possibility that in the future we’ll be able to better understand what types of education the workers of the future most need, how companies can best recruit future star performers and how individuals can position themselves to benefit from shifts in what skills the modern economy most rewards. There is a lot of work to be done to get to that point. But this early evidence suggests that success in the business world isn’t just about brainpower or climbing a linear path to the top, but about accumulating diverse skills and showing an ability to learn about fields outside one’s comfort zone..."

In 20 Short Years, We've Wiped Out 10 Percent of Earth's Wilderness. Progress? Here's the intro to a story at Huffington Post: "Over the past 20 years, a mere blink of an eye in our species’ 200,000-year existence, humans have managed to eliminate 10 percent of the world’s wilderness, a new analysis has found. Globally, the authors write, the “catastrophic declines” in wilderness area over the last two decades add up to about 1.27 million square miles ― an area twice the size of Alaska. Hardest hit was the Amazon, which has lost 30 percent of its wilderness area since the early 1990s. In Central Africa, 14 percent of the total wilderness area has vanished..." (Map credit: Wildlife Conservation Society).

This Guy Traveled To Every Country on Earth - Here Are The Ones He Thinks You Should Visit. My new hero - but did he visit North Korea, Iraq and Syria? Here's an excerpt from The Independent: "Gunnar Garfors visited all 198 countries in the world by the time he turned 37. So when people ask him which country was his favorite, he has a hard time picking just one. But there are 12 countries he thinks everyone should visit at some point in their lives. Keep scrolling to see what those countries are, and why he thinks they're worth visiting..."




TODAY: Mild as clouds increase, PM showers. Winds: S 8-13. High: 76

MONDAY NIGHT: Showery rains likely, cooling off. Low: 57

TUESDAY: Mostly cloudy, cooler breeze. Winds: N 10-15. High: 68

WEDNESDAY: Sunny, cool and comfortable. Winds: NW 3-8. Wake-up: 48. High: 67

THURSDAY: Sunny start, showers arrive late. Winds: S 8-13. Wake-up: 51. High: 72

FRIDAY: Showers likely, possible T-storms. Winds: S 10-20. Wake-up: 59. High: 70

SATURDAY: Drying out a bit, leftover shower. Winds: NW 8-13. Wake-up: 57. High: 71

SUNDAY: Sunnier, milder, nicer day of weekend. Winds: S 8-13. Wake-up: 54. High: 76


Climate Stories...
Our Best Shot at Cooling the Planet Might Be Right Under Our Feet. The Guardian reports: "...But while engineers are scrambling to come up with grand geo-engineering schemes, they may be overlooking a simpler, less glamorous solution. It has to do with soil. Soil is the second biggest reservoir of carbon on the planet, next to the oceans. It holds four times more carbon than all the plants and trees in the world. But human activity like deforestation and industrial farming – with its intensive ploughing, monoculture and heavy use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides – is ruining our soils at breakneck speed, killing the organic materials that they contain. Now 40% of agricultural soil is classed as “degraded” or “seriously degraded”. In fact, industrial farming has so damaged our soils that a third of the world’s farmland has been destroyed in the past four decades..." (Image credit: NASA ISS).


No comments:

Post a Comment