Meteorological Shocker: More Rain Tonight. In Search of "Weather Perfection"
66 F. high yesterday in St. Cloud. 71 F. average high on September 14. 81 F. high on September 14, 2015.
Where else on Earth can you experience 98 degrees and flurries on the same day? September 15, 1939: Minneapolis experiences a daily record high of 98. September 15, 1916: St. Paul receives their earliest recorded snowfall.
In Search of Weather Perfection? Good Luck.
You should see the e-mails I get: "Sunday was one of those glorious Minnesota days. My wife asked me, what location has weather like Sunday
for the longest period? We are packing & calling Max Zinn to sell
our condo. We will determine our destination upon your reply."
Sincerely, Judd Anderson.
Judd, I'm a little partial to North Korea, but Delta doesn't fly there yet, so let's move on to other options.
Southern
California and Arizona come to mind for consistent sunshine &
warmth, but between traffic, water shortages and brush fires I'd
seriously consider New Mexico. Santa Fe might work.
Maui is a weather-dream but all tropical destinations are prone to hurricanes, which make Minnesota winters look tolerable.
Frost was reported early Wednesday from the Brainerd Lakes to the Arrowhead. A surge of rain arrives tonight and early Friday - a stray instability shower Saturday gives way to warm sunshine Sunday. 70s and 80s return next week; ECMWF guidance hinting at more heavy T-storms late next week.
Hey Judd, I still like Florida, but I wouldn't dream of buying a home on or near the water.
Another Round.
When in doubt - predict rain. Odds are you'll be right, at least this
year. 4km NAM guidance shows the best chance of showers and T-storms
this evening and tonight; a few straggling instability T-showers
possible into Friday. 60-hour Future Radar: AerisWeather.
Heaviest Rains Fall Tonight.
Models print out anywhere from .39" to .96" additional rain by
Saturday. The 00z NAM model forecasts .75" of rain for the Twin Cities.
Graphic: Aeris Enterprise.
August Hangs On.
ECMWF (European) model data shows temperatures trending above average
into the end of next week with a few days above 80F. No frost in or near
the metro looking out 10 days or so. Meteogram for MSP: WeatherBell.
We Just Had Five 1,000 Year Floods In Less Than a Year. What's Going On? Here's a clip from Environmental Defense Fund: "...So
how do we explain that in the span of just five months, the United
States logged no fewer than four deadly 1,000-year floods in states as
widespread as Texas, West Virginia, Maryland and Louisiana – following a
1,000-year-flood that ravaged South Carolina last October. It appears
that the calculation of a 1,000-year event may no longer be the most
accurate statistic. It was based, as are our increasingly common
100-year natural disaster events, on data from the past. We may, in
other words, already have shifted so far into a new climate regime that
probabilities have been turned on their head..."
Photo credit: Flickr. "Water
engulfs a home in a neighborhood in Minot, N.D., June 23. As many as
10,000 residents, about one-fourth of the city's population, have
evacuated as the fast-rising Souris River inundates thousands of homes
and businesses. The deluge from the Souris River is expected to exceed
that of the city's historical 1969 flood, making this the region's worst
flooding in four decades." 3rd Combat Camera Squadron. Photo by Staff Sgt. Sharida Jackson. Fasten Your Seat Belt - Turbulence Is On The Rise. I had no idea, but yes, it's probably a good idea to leave your seat belt fastened (all the time). Here's an excerpt at The Guardian: "...Williams
said that at heights of around 10 to 12km (6-7 miles), a typical
cruising altitude for a modern passenger jet plane, temperature changes
caused by increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have the
effect of making different layers of airflow move at increased speeds
relative to each other. When this unstable airflow produces clear-air
turbulence – and there are no visual clues to give a pilot warning of
what lies ahead – then the aircraft is thrown about with considerable
force. “If the effect is severe, it will overcome the force of gravity
and fling people out of their seats. Turbulence of this severity is
being encountered by planes thousands of times a year now,” Williams
added. In the United States alone, it is estimated that the damage,
delays and disruption from turbulence already cost more than $500m
(£374m) a year..."
File credit: Shutterstock.
NOAA: Expect More Extreme Floods In The Future. Gizmodo has details: "Extreme, catastrophic flood events like the one that swamped Louisiana last month are becoming more likely because of climate change, according to a hot-off-the-press analysis
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The
study found that the record rainfall responsible for last month's epic
floods-the worst natural disaster to hit the United States since superstorm Sandy-was
made at least 40 percent more likely by global warming. The researchers
arrived at that conclusion by applying a new but increasingly popular
statistical approach called "weather attribution." Details of the analysis, which is currently under peer review, can be found in the open-access journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences..."
File photo credit: Associated Press.
Birds Inside the Eye of Hurricane Hermine and 13 Other Weird Things That Have Shown Up on Radar. Here's a clip from The Weather Channel: "As
Hurricane Hermine made landfall along Florida's Gulf coast, radar
detected an interesting phenomenon: birds trapped flying inside the calm
eye of Hermine. The birds were detected using differential reflectivity
from NOAA's Dual-Polarization radar.
This particular radar feature can be used to detect non-meteorological
radar echoes such as birds and insects, in addition to its normal
precipitation detection function. We've seen this occur one other time
in recent years during another U.S. hurricane landfall. Birds were detected on radar in the eye of Arthur as it moved near the coast of North Carolina in 2014..."
Image credit: "Base
reflectivity (left) and Differential reflectivity (right) radar images
of Hermine at 10:38 p.m. EDT on Sept. 1. The red shaded area on the
image to the right shows the birds swirling inside Hermine's eye just
before landfall."
Data Is Better When It's Hyper-Local. Kudos to Hennepin West Mesonet
for a denser grid of data and some great visualizations. Unlike current
airport observations that update hourly, these observations update
every MINUTE. Check it out!
Debate Rises Over Real Source of Higher Methane Emissions. Here's the intro to a story at Scientific American: "The
jury is still out on the culprit behind the recent increase in global
methane emissions. A new study published yesterday found that fossil
fuel production has emitted significantly more of the potent greenhouse
gas since 2000 and could account for much of the unexplained uptick in
global atmospheric methane since 2007. That is an opposite finding from
other recent research, which has blamed sources like agriculture, animal
husbandry and wetlands instead..."
23 States To Rely on Geothermal, Solar or Wind Power as a Primary Source of Electric Generation in 2016. Here's a clip from Renewable Energy World that made me do a double-take: "...Iowa
may become the first state to generate a majority of its power from
wind. Iowa wind was 31.3 percent of the state’s electric generation in
2015 and 40 percent through the first half of 2016. Meanwhile,
coal-fired power in Iowa declined significantly through the first half
of 2016 and was 41.6 percent of electric generation during that time.
With Mid-American Energy planning another 2 GW of wind by the end of the
decade, Iowa could generate over half its energy from wind by 2020.
Kansas is also getting closer to catching coal for number one in that
state..."
Green Republican Sees Party "Evolving" on Clean Energy. It's happening - I've witnessed the transition first-hand. Here's an excerpt from TheHill: "Republicans
are increasingly “evolving” on climate change and green energy issues,
the founder of a GOP-supporting clean energy super-PAC said Tuesday.
ClearPath Action Founder and CEO Jay Faison said his group is looking
this fall to support Republicans who are going in the “right direction”
on energy issues, including supporting energy sources like nuclear and
technologies like carbon capture for fossil fuel power plants.
Republicans are slowly moving toward supporting the clean energy sector,
he said, even if climate change isn’t a major concern for them or their
base..."
Rifts Are Forming in the GOP on Climate and Clean Energy. Here's How They Could Be Exploited. Here are a couple of excepts from a post at Vox from Dave Roberts: "...What’s
needed above all are signals from conservative leaders in politics and
media that there’s a way to care about this stuff and still retain your
conservative identity. Most people care far more about their identity
than any particular issue; if leaders they respect start shifting on
climate, they will shift too...This November, citizens of Washington state will vote on I-732,
a ballot initiative that would impose a substantial and rising carbon
tax in the state, peaking at $100 a ton out through 2050. (It would be
the largest, longest-term carbon tax ever implemented.) The tax would be
"revenue neutral," which means that all the revenue raised would be
automatically returned — it would reduce the state sales tax, reduce
business taxes, and fund the working families tax rebate. The measure
wouldn’t raise any new discretionary funds for politicians to spend..."
How Do We Get Off Fossil Fuels When We've Always Feared Change?
How do we (or our kids) learn to embrace change and disruption,
building it into their products, services and careers? We're not as open
to change as we might like to think, according to an article at Grist: "...The
predictable slobbering over each new Apple gadget proves we’re
infatuated with technology, right? Not according to Calestous Juma, a
professor of international development at Harvard. In his new book, Innovation and its Enemies,
Juma argues that our infatuation is limited to new versions of
established technologies, and that people generally oppose anything that
feels too new. We may be addicted to our media-consumption devices now,
but even the birth of mass media was met with staggering resistance.
People scoffed at it as a low-brow corruption of the literary arts and
rulers banned it in several places..."
Does Renewable Energy Raise Electricity Prices? The answer may surprise you, according to Renewable Energy World: "...The
average increase in prices between the 20 states that had the most
investment in renewable energy was 4.3 percent, when comparing the
average from 2010 to 2015 with the average over the last 18 months.
However, for the 20 states that had the least investment in renewable
energy, the average increase was 4.6 percent.** Therefore, the impact of
renewable energy on the price of power appears to be statistically
insignificant. Sticking with fossil fuels has not been a pathway to
lower energy prices. And this result challenges critics’ assertions that
renewable energy is simply too expensive, while fossil fuels will
maintain reliable, inexpensive electricity prices..."
Meet New Glenn, The Blue Origin Rocket That May Someday Take You To Space. Sign me up! Details via The New York Times: "Blue Origin, the secretive space company created by Jeffrey P. Bezos,
offered a look at its newest rocket design on Monday — and, by
extension, its ambitions to make space travel more frequent and
inexpensive. Both the rocket and the ambitions appear to be big. The
rockets, named New Glenn after John Glenn, the first American to orbit
the Earth, are almost as large as the Saturn V rocket that NASA used
from 1966 to 1973, before rockets started being built smaller. The
two-stage version that could venture to low-Earth orbit will be 270 feet
tall, and the three-stage version, which could fly outside Earth’s
orbit, will be 313 feet tall..."
Image credit: "The
rockets, named New Glenn after John Glenn, the first American to orbit
the Earth, are almost as large as the Saturn V rocket that NASA used
from 1966 to 1973." Credit Blue Origin.
America's Trust in Media Hits All-Time Low. Dylan Byers reports at CNN Money: "In
a climate of bitter political partisanship, anti-media rhetoric and
diversified media options, just 32% of Americans now say they trust the
media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" -- the lowest
level since 1972, when Gallup began polling. "Now, only about a third of
the U.S. has any trust in the Fourth Estate, a stunning development for
an institution designed to inform the public," Gallup said in its press
release. While Americans' faith in media has been in decline for over a
decade, this year's findings represent a sharp drop from the previous
eight years, when between 40 and 45 percent of Americans expressed
trust..."
The Illustrated Map of America's Worst Utopias. It's Utopia Week at Atlas Obscura: "There
are many who want to believe that a utopia—a perfect society, an ideal
world—can exist. Even in America. Yet, as quickly as leaders eagerly
build utopias, they often crumble in a glorious heaping mess. Some fall
to sex scandals, others toil in hunger, while many are struck with bad
luck. From nudist colonies to bioterrorist cults, we map and explore six
of the most disappointing and unfortunate utopias in the United States..."
Map credit: Michelle Enemark.
TODAY: Dry start with early sun, then increasing clouds, late PM rain. Winds: SE 10-15. High: 73
THURSDAY NIGHT: Rain likely, heavy at times. Low: 63
FRIDAY: Humid with peeks of sun, stray T-shower risk. Winds: S 10-15. High: 77
Climate Change "Significant and Direct" Threat to U.S. More hype from the liberal media? Not this time. Here's an excerpt from Reuters: "The
effects of climate change endanger U.S. military operations and could
increase the danger of international conflict, according to three new
documents endorsed by retired top U.S. military officers and former
national security officials. "There are few easy answers, but one thing
is clear: the current trajectory of climatic change presents a
strategically-significant risk to U.S. national security, and inaction
is not a viable option," said a statement published on Wednesday by the
Center for Climate and Security, a Washington-based think tank. It was
signed by more than a dozen former senior military and national security
officials, including retired General Anthony Zinni, former commander of
the U.S. Central Command, and retired Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of
the Pacific Command until last year..."
Image credit: "Specialist
Marquise Bessellieu of the SC National Guard checks on residents along
flooded Long Avenue in Conway, South Carolina, Oct. 5, 2015." REUTERS/Randall Hill.
Arctic Sea Ice Cover Set To Be Second Lowest Ever Recorded, Data Suggests. Here's more information from The Guardian: "Arctic
sea ice cover could be confirmed within days as the second lowest ever
recorded, the latest data suggests. According to the US national snow
and ice data centre (NSIDC) the ice which forms and disperses annually
has been close to its minimum extent for the year for several days and
has begun to grow again as autumn sets in. It was measured by satellite
as 4.169m sq km on 12 September, a slight increase on the 4.139m sq km
on 11 September. As the Arctic winter closes in, the ice cover will
climb, reaching around 15m sq km by March..."
Image credit: "For
most of the year, the Northwest Passage is impassible but in this image
taken on 9 Aug 2016 a path of open water can be traced along most of
the distance from the Amundsen Gulf to Baffin Bay." Photograph: VIIRS/Suomi NPP/NASA.
We Have a Whole World of Evidence on Climate Change. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "...Every
month since last October has been the hottest such month ever recorded,
and once the data are final, August may become the 11th consecutive
month to join that list. The evidence doesn’t stop there. Last year,
2015, was the hottest year ever recorded globally. The previous champion
had been 2014. According to Gavin Schmidt, climatologist and director
of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, there’s a 99 percent
chance that 2016 will top both of them, producing three consecutive
years of record heat globally..."
Indians Are Rioting Over Water. Is This a Glimpse Into The Future? In all probability, yes. The battle for clean, reliable, freshwater supplies is just beginning. Here's an excerpt at The Washington Post: "...Disputes
over control of water supplies are not uncommon around the world.
Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have quarreled for years over dams and other
water-control measures along the Nile. In the United States, the
Colorado River is at the center of a tug-of-war between the needs of
agriculture and growing cities. India is now the latest flash point in
water-use battles, which some experts believe could become more acute
worldwide as climate change boosts temperatures and influences weather
patterns..."
Image credit: "The
Indian city of Bengaluru, in Karnataka state, is under curfew after
violent protests broke out in the area over the sharing of river water
with neighboring Tamil Nadu state." (Reuters).
Donald Trump's Newest Adviser Says Global Warming is a Huge Threat to National Security. Details via Mother Jones: "Former
CIA Director R. James Woolsey has signed on as a senior adviser to
Donald Trump—even though the two men's views are oceans apart on an
issue very close to Woolsey's heart: climate change. For years, the
former CIA director has been an advocate for cleaner energy and has
called for addressing global warming from a national security
perspective. He argues
that our current energy sources put us at "the whims of OPEC's despots"
and make us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. He wants the United
States to shift from its reliance on coal and oil to renewables and natural gas..."
Photo credit: Evan Vucci/AP.
See The Giant Crack That Could Collapse Part of an Antarctic Ice Shelf. Here's an excerpt of a worrisome post at TIME: "A
large crack in an Antarctic ice shelf has grown by 13 miles in the past
six months, threatening to detach an area of ice larger than Delaware. Images
of the Larsen C shelf captured by NASA’s Terra satellite show a fault
line that now stretches 80 miles in length, according to a report from
the U.S. space agency. A portion of the ice shelf—the continent’s fourth
largest—could disconnect Scientists are working to understand the
immediate changes that created the giant crack—and have led it to grow
so quickly. Project MIDAS,
a U.K. group dedicated to studying the Larsen C shelf, notes that a
warming climate has changed the structure of the ice, threatening the
possibility of collapse..."
Image credit: Jesse Allen—NASA Earth Observatory images. "The
rift is visible on the left in these images taken by the Multi-angle
Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) on NASA’s Terra satellite on Aug. 22,
2016, The ice shelf comprises the left half of the image, and thinner
sea ice appears on the right."
Wheat, One Of The World's Most Important Crops, Is Being Threatened by Climate Change. Here's an excerpt at The Washington Post: "One
of the biggest concerns about climate change is the effect it will have
on agriculture. Many studies have suggested that rising temperatures
could be harmful to farms around the world, although there’s plenty of
uncertainty about how bad things will get and which food supplies we
should worry about most. Now, a new study published Monday in Nature Climate Changereiterates
concerns that wheat — the most significant single crop in terms of
human consumption — might be in big trouble. After comparing multiple
studies used to predict the future of global crop production,
researchers have found that they all agree on one point: rising
temperatures are going to be really bad for wheat production..."
Climate Change Risk Is, Believe It Or Not, A Major Risk To Your Investments. So says Jesse Moore at Seeking Alpha: "...While
I don't believe that fossil fuels are going away anytime soon, and I am
a big proponent of natural gas, I also think that the carbon risk
priced into the market is barely visible. Investors need to take a
serious eye to the long-term political and economic risks and consider
deleveraging to fossil fuels, whether they believe it is a problem or
not. Every company on the market has some carbon footprint, and while
investing in green technology has historically been a poor performing
asset class, investing in green companies in a diversity of sectors has
not."
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