82 F. high in St. Cloud Friday.
80 F. average high on June 26.
84 F. high on June 26, 2014.
.02" rain fell at St. Cloud yesterday.
June 26, 1982: Cold spell. Kulger Township dips to 31 degrees. Duluth registers 36.
Fog-nado!Just when I thought I had seen everything.
Thursday
evening, in Duluth to give a speech on climate change, sustainability
and resilience to the League of Minnesota Cities, I witnessed a freakish
phenomenon. Returning from Fitgers along the Lakewalk winds suddenly
shifted as a high-velocity fog bank swept in. Sustained winds were 40-50
mph. In seconds the temperature dropped 20 degrees, the visibility
plummeted to zero, as people scurried to find shelter. No thunder or
lightning, just an instantaneous tsunami of swirling gray. It was one of
the fastest shifts in weather I've witnessed, anytime, anywhere. A few
locals were even shaking their heads in disbelief. Never a dull moment
huh?
(After giving this a little more thought all I can think is
that this was an outflow boundary from a dying/collapsing thundershower
northeast of Duluth, interacting with chilly lake water to create the
strong winds and sudden drop in temperature and visibility. I can't come
up with a better explanation than that).
We salvage a sunscreen-worthy
Saturday with low 80s. Watch for T-storms
tonight with instability showers and T-showers lingering into
Sunday.
Once
again the pattern is stalling: a bloated heat-pump high pressure ridge
treats the western USA to record heat and wildfires, while cool fronts
push into Minnesota, one after another, keeping the heat wave from
expanding into our zip code.
In fact ECMWF (European) model hints at blue sky, low humidity and low 70s for the
4th of July.
Yes please!
"Hail Angels"?
This takes love of (wild) weather to an entirely new level. Thanks to
AerisWeather meteorologist Todd Nelson and his friend, Emily
Schwamberger out in Minnetrista, for sending in this photo from Friday's
late afternoon hail showers. Looks refreshing!
An Irritable Atmosphere.
1 KM visible imagery from the late afternoon hours Friday shows showers
and T-storms sprouting over central Minnesota, about to push into the
Twin Cities metro. Note the lack of clouds over larger northern lakes,
including Lake Superior, the result of cooler water inhibiting cumulus
and cumulonimbus formation. Source: NOAA and AerisWeather.
A Nagging Upper Air Disturbance.
A pool of relatively cold air in the upper atmosphere will keep showers
and T-storms in the forecast from tonight into Monday. The best chance
of bumping into a storm: late afternoon and evening hours, right after
the high temperature for the day, when skies are most unstable.
Meanwhile a major, almost April-like storm pushes a shield of heavy rain
and T-storms across the Ohio Valley and Mid Atlantic Region into New
England. Flash flooding and widespread 30-40 mph winds are likely with
this unusually strong system for late June. Meanwhile the west continues
to fry.
Heat Optional.
No hot fronts in sight until (possibly) the second week of July, but
the pattern is amazingly persistent with a hot ridge in the west guiding
a series of cool fronts into the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes,
limiting just how hot it can get. I think the European guidance above is
a bit too cool for today and Sunday; low 80s early in the week before
cooling down midweek with a more significant rain event possible
Thursday. It's early but guidance hints at a cool front just in time for
the 4th of July. Source: Weatherspark.
Heat Wave Setting Up South of Minnesota.
July looks like a brutally hot month for much of the USA, but I'm not
(yet) convinced that persistent 90s will sweep into Minnesota. The core
of the jet is forecast to be well south of its normal position at 500 mb
(18,000 feet) on July 10, guiding a parade of cooler, drier, less humid
fronts south of the border, taking the edge off the heat from Montana
to Minnesota to Maine.
Preliminary June Climate Summary.
Dr. Mark Seeley takes a look at June, to date, on a statewide level -
trending near normal temperatures and wetter than average for most of
Minnesota. Here's a snippet related to ag at this week's
Minnesota WeatherTalk: "...
Overall,
it was a good month for Minnesota crops, with 89 percent of the state
reporting adequate to surplus soil moisture conditions. Harvest
conditions were generally good for the 1st crop of alfalfa and reports
from the field showed 80 percent of the state's corn crop in good to
excellent condition, and 76 percent of the soybean crop in good to
excellent condition..."
Winners of NOAA's Weather In Focus Photo Contest. Some of these images are amazing; check out the details from
NOAA: "
Remember
safety first, but sometimes weather can develop in the blink of an eye
supplying amazing photographic opportunities. Images depict both the
subtle and extreme power of weather and climate, including images of
extreme drought, floods, thunderstorms, tornadoes as well as snowscapes
and landscapes."
Photo credit above: "
Proton arc over Lake Superior by Ken William, Clio, MI."
The End of Death? Fortune Magazine
has an intriguing article about life and death, and how a Silicon
Valley tech leader (Peter Thiel) is contemplating a day when traditional
death may be optional. It's more of a moral challenge than a technical
challenge in the minds off many - I'm not so sure we'll ever cheat
death, but it's a fascinating read; here's a clip: "...
For Thiel,
life is a self-evident good and death is the opposite of life. Therefore
death is a problem, and as he says there are three main ways of
approaching it. “You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it.
I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or
acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.” Whether we can successfully fight
death is a question about the nature of nature and about our ability to
understand it. Whether we should try to fight death is a question of
our philosophy and our theology..."
Is Taylor Swift a Hypocrite?
I'm not sure I really care, but in the spirit of equal time here's a
story looking at how the superstar treats photographers and why there
may be a little double-standard here.
The Daily Dot has the story - here's an excerpt: "...
This
is about how people—hired by someone else—are being forced (if they
sign the contract) to release all images worldwide and forever over to
her company, management, and label so that they may use those images for
free for her publicity when she didn't hire them or PAY THEM for
it—which is her exact gripe with Apple...” (File photo: Ben Sklar/The New York Times).
Rent A Mourner.
If you're a little unsure of how turn-out will be at your funeral you
can always turn to this ingenious company, based in the U.K. Not sure if
they're up and running in the USA yet, but with our vast, seemingly
endless supply of jerks, buttheads and ex-significant others, I'm sure
there's a market here as well. Details: "
RENT A MOURNER
are based in Essex. We are available for funerals and wakes by
appointment. We work with agents throughtout the United Kingdom and will
supply a co-ordinator in your area to manage your needs. We are
typically invited to help increase visitors to funerals where there may
be a low turnout expected..."
You May Want To Stay Home Saturday. I'm all for a heat wave in Redding, California, but 704F is just ridiculous. Hey, what's 600 degrees among friends?
TODAY: Warm sun, probably the nicer day of the weekend. Winds: W 5-10. High: 83
SATURDAY NIGHT: T-storms likely, locally heavy rain. Low: 63
SUNDAY: Unsettled, few showers and T-showers, mainly PM hours. High: near 80
MONDAY: Sunny start, another late-day thunder risk. Wake-up: 65. High: 83
TUESDAY: Warm sun, storms may stay south. Wake-up: 62. High: 79
WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny, late-day T-storm. Wake-up: 61. High: 81
THURSDAY: More numerous showers, T-storms. Wake-up: 60. High: 76
FRIDAY: Blue sky returns, lukewarm. Wake-up: 64. High: 80
Climate Stories...
What's Really Warming The World?
Eric Roston has a terrific interactive graphic that explains the impact
of solar, volcanoes, aerosols and other factors in relation to CO2 and
greenhouse gases. Check it out at
Bloomberg Business . File photo: NASA.
Extreme Weather In A Changing World: Asking The Right Questions.
Extreme weather attribution is an emerging science (how much of a
storm's intensity is "natural" vs. impacted by warmer air and ocean
water and higher levels of water vapor?). Here's an excerpt from a
recent story at
UCAR that caught my attention: "...
The
refrain that the science community has mostly had is that we can't
blame any one event on climate change," said NCAR scientist Kevin
Trenberth, lead author of the paper. "We want to change that refrain.
While you can't blame the whole event on climate change, many times
there are aspects of what happened that were magnified by climate
change. Even with the same weather event, the rain may be harder, the
drought more intense, or the heat waves more severe....”
Giant Earthquakes Are Shaking Greenland - And Scientists Just Figured Out The Disturbing Reasons Why. Here's an excerpt of a story from Chris Mooney at
The Washington Post: "...
Granted,
these earthquakes aren’t caused by faults – they’re caused by massive
movements of ice and how those impact the ground beneath. Compared with
the early 1990s, Nettles says, scientists are now measuring seven times
as many of these glacial earthquakes coming from Greenland — the rate
has shot up as the ice sheet has begun to lose more mass from the
calving of icebergs at the front end of glaciers..."
Photo credit above: "
The surface of Helheim Glacier is incredibly rough and large." (Credit: Nick Selmes, Swansea University)
It's Time For Conservatives To End The Denial on Climate Change. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed at
The Washington Post: "...
In a recent National Affairs essay,
Jim Manzi and Peter Wehner provide an explanation: “The Republican
position — either avowed ignorance or conspiracy theorizing — is
ultimately unsustainable, but some still cling to it because they
believe that accepting the premise that some climate change is occurring
as a result of human action means accepting the conclusions of the most
rabid left-wing climate activists. They fear, at least implicitly, that
the politics of climate change is just a twisted road with a known
destination . . . ceding yet another key economic sector to government control...”
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