Back to the 90s (first half of 2013 - 3rd wettest in recorded Minnesota history)

  

July Sizzle

I have a hunch Minnesota's amazing constellation of lakes will look even better in the years ahead. You may laugh - but as temperatures warm and winters mellow (a bit) more Americans may consider a move to The Gopher State.

I often get asked what I would and would not do, with climate change in mind. Investing in desalination and battery storage technology is a no-brainer. And snowbirds might want to reconsider buying that retirement home on the ocean. Buy something 5 blocks inland... and be patient.

In today's weather blog (below) I include a story about NASA's Grace climate satellite. Data shows that Greenland & Antarctica are losing 300 billion tons of ice every year; water pouring into the world's oceans. Sea level rise may accelerate beyond what models are predicting. Pardon the bad pun, but we really are in uncharted waters.

Welcome to one of the hotter weeks of summer. Highs top 90F into Friday. Late week T-storms give way to some relief by Saturday; models hinting at 95-100F heat again next week.

Take it easy out there the next 48 hours. Mid-90s, coupled with a dew point near 70F, will make it feel like 100F later today & during Wednesday's Torchlight Parade.

Rainfall Since Mid-June. More crazy extremes in the weather department; the equivalent of two month's worth of rain from Glenwood to much of the Twin Cities and south central Minnesota. Up north the rainfall pattern has been much different, less than 1-2" for much of the northern third of Minnesota over the last 30 days. Map: High Plains Regional Climate Center.


3rd Wettest January - June Period On Record. I was a little surprised to see the reality of the first half of 2013: the third wettest (first 6 months of a year) going back 119 years, according to NOAA NCDC. It was the wettest January thru June period on record for Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, while California saw the driest first half of the year ever recorded. All or nothing.



Hot Enough For Me. Expect highs above 90F the next 3 days, with some relief likely by the end of the week. ECMWF guidance suggests Saturday will be the nicer (drier) day of the weekend with highs in the upper 70s and low 80s, a few T-storms possible Sunday, then a rerun of steamy 90s by Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.


Even Hotter Next Week? For anyone who doubted we would have a "real summer" I present Exhibit A. Granted, it's a forecast, not reality. And yesterday the very same model (ECMWF) was suggesting a significant cool frontal passage for next week over the Upper Midwest. The latest model run shows blast-furnace hat pushing across the Plains, possible 100+ F heat from Denver to Kansas City, Des Moines and Sioux Falls. If (and it's a big if) this forecast verifies 100F is not out of the question by the middle of next week as far north as the Twin Cities and Madison. Forecast map above is valid next Wednesday evening, July 24, courtesy of WSI.

87 F. high in St. Cloud Monday.
83 F. average high on July 15.
93 F. high on July 15, 2012.

TODAY: Hot sun. Winds: South 10. Dew point: 70. High: 90

TUESDAY NIGHT: Clear and warm. Low: 73

WEDNESDAY: Sunny. Feels like 100F by late afternoon. Dew point: 70. High: 93

THURSDAY: Hot & sticky, chance of T-storms. Wake-up: 75. High: 91

FRIDAY: Leftover T-shower early, slight relief with a dip in heat and humidity. Wake-up: 71. High: 84

SATURDAY: Nicer day of the weekend? Partly sunny, less humid. DP: 64. Wake-up: 63. High: 80

SUNDAY: Sunny stat, PM T-storms. Wake-up: 60. High: 82

MONDAY: Early storms, muggy PM sun. Wake-up: 64. High: 88

Climate Stories...

"The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks."  - Wally Broecker

"...But to state the obvious, we cannot solve a problem we will not face. Gregory Bateson said, “The unit of survival is the organism and its environment.” Our survival depends on our ability to acknowledge, discuss and deal with reality. Once we face our situation, we can progress through a healing cycle that moves from awareness to action. And action, especially in collaboration with others, can be an antidote to despair..." - from an Op-Ed at Time Magazine below.

 

Massive Ice Sheets Melting At A Rate Of 300 Billion Tons A Year", Climate Satellite Shows. The Independent has the story - here's the introduction: "A satellite that measures gravity fluctuations on Earth due to changes in the massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica has detected a rapid acceleration in the melting of glacier ice over the past decade, which could have a dramatic impact on sea levels around the world. The sheets are losing around 300 billion tonnes of ice a year, the research indicates. However, scientists have warned that the measurements gathered since 2002 by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) flying in space are still too short-term for accurate predictions of how much ice will be lost in the coming decades, and therefore how rapidly sea levels will rise..."

We Are All Climate Change Deniers. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed at Time Magazine: "...Our denial is understandable. Our species is not equipped to respond to the threats posed by global warming. Humans are built to find food and shelter, reproduce, and enjoy each other. We are genetically programmed to react to threats by fleeing or fighting, and at first, our environmental crisis does not seem to allow us to do either. We’re better at dealing with problems that are concrete, close-at-hand, familiar and require skills and tools that we already possess. Our global storm is invisible, unprecedented, drawn out, and caused by all of us. We have Paleolithic arousal systems, Neolithic brains, medieval institutions and 21st century technology—not a good mix for solving our climate problems. And so we feel paralyzed and our belief that we are powerless can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a crisis that seems impossible to confront and but too scary to ignore, many people live in a state that psychologist Stanley Cohen calls “willful ignorance.” We both know and don’t know what is going on..."