60 F. average high on October 9.
58 F. high on October 9, 2016.
October 10, 1977: A few locations receive early accumulating snow, including Minneapolis with 2.5 inches, Gaylord with 2 inches, and Jordan with 2 inches.
October 10, 1970: Early snowfall is recorded in west central Minnesota. Snow totals range from a trace to 4.2 inches in Benson. Other areas include Montevideo with 4 inches, Canby with 3.2 inches, Morris with 2.6 inches, and Willmar with 2.5 inches. New London, New Ulm, and Buffalo all recorded 2 inches of snowfall.
October 10, 1949: An incredibly strong low pressure system brings hurricane force winds across Minnesota. This was possibly the strongest non-thunderstorm wind event seen in Minnesota. Top winds are clocked at 100 mph at Rochester, with a gust of 89 mph at the Twin Cities International Airport. 4 deaths and 81 injuries are reported. Numerous store windows are broken, and large chimneys toppled. The top 10 floors of the Foshay building are evacuated with the tenants feeling seasick from the swaying building.
October 10, 1928: Record high temperatures are set across central Minnesota with highs in the upper 80s to lower 90s.
A Little Frost on the Pumpkin - Easing Into Fall
Comedian Carl Reiner finds snow to be "an unnecessary freezing of water". Does he feel the same way about frost? If you live outside the 494/694 freeway system, well away from the urban heat island, you may be waking up to an icy, crystalline carpet of white.
Comedian Carl Reiner finds snow to be "an unnecessary freezing of water". Does he feel the same way about frost? If you live outside the 494/694 freeway system, well away from the urban heat island, you may be waking up to an icy, crystalline carpet of white.
Data
from the Minnesota Climatology Office shows the mean date of the first
32-degree low at MSP International is October 8. In Chaska the first 32F
comes, on average, September 30; September 25 up in Cambridge.
If
you missed a frost overnight you may remain frost-free into next week.
Showers brush southeast Minnesota later today; another chance of rain
Friday - another soaker on Sunday. Sunday night the atmosphere may
ALMOST be chilly enough for a few wet snowflakes. Just trying to get you
in the holiday spirit!
Jackets
and sweatshirts will be required into Monday, but long-range weather
models show a nice warming trend next week with more 60s, even a few
70s.
There's
an upside to a frost or freeze: it kills off most bugs and ragweed, so
allergy-sufferers get a break. It's a vaguely chilling hint of what's to
come.
Frost Advisories + Flood Warnings. A strange juxtaposition on the weather maps, the result of 3-4"+ rains falling during the first week of October. Details via NOAA:
Flood Statement National Weather Service Twin Cities/Chanhassen MN 736 PM CDT Mon Oct 9 2017 ...The flood warning continues for the following rivers in Minnesota... Cottonwood River at New Ulm affecting Brown County South Fork Crow River below Mayer affecting Carver County South Fork Crow River at Delano affecting Wright County Minnesota River at Montevideo affecting Chippewa...Lac qui Parle and Yellow Medicine Counties Crow River at Rockford affecting Hennepin and Wright Counties Overview...The following forecast takes into account the rain that has already fallen across the basin...and predicted rainfall for the next 48 hours.
Map credit: NOAA NCDC.
"One of the Worst I've Seen". Hurricane Chaser Documents Maria's Punishing Attack on Puerto Rico. Here's an excerpt of an interview at Capital Weather Gang: "...My
barometer bottomed out at 929 millibars a little before dawn as
destructive winds were raking Palmas Del Mar. The air pressure was
rising when morning light came — a sign the hurricane was moving away —
and I expected the winds would start to lessen. But instead they got
worse. The trees lining the street waved in this crazy, wild way. Then
this wall of wind and rain swallowed everything up. The view off the
balcony turned pure white — you couldn’t see anything. The buildings
across the street, the trees, everything just disappeared into this
roaring white energy. We were in the violent inner core of a high-end
Category 4 hurricane..."
U.S. Numerical Weather Is Still Behind and Not Catching Up: What is Wrong and How Can It Be Fixed? Cliff Mass has an interesting post; here's a clip: "...The
reason for U.S. lagging performance? A dysfunctional, disorganized, and
fragmented organizational structure for U.S. operational numerical
weather prediction and associated research that makes it impossible for
NOAA's weather prediction to be world class. Things won't get better
until that structure is replaced with an intelligently designed,
rational organizational structure, that effectively uses both
governmental and non-governmental resources to give Americans
state-of-science weather forecasts. Ever since Hurricane Sandy in
2012, where the European Center model did far better in predicting
landfall than the U.S. GFS model, there has been a national recognition
that U.S. numerical weather prediction, the foundation of all U.S.
weather forecasting, had fallen behind. Story after story have appeared
in the national media. Congressional committees held hearings. And
Congress, wishing to address resource issues, provided substantial
funding in what is known as the "Sandy Supplement." Six years before,
after the devastating landfall of Hurricane Katrina, Congress had
provide similarly large amounts to improve hurricane forecasting and
warnings, creating the HFIP program (Hurricane Forecasting Improvement
Project)..."
ECMWF (European) model ensemble for Hurricane Nate: Weathernerds.org.
How Clouds Got Their Names. Brain Pickings has a link to a fascinating explainer: "...Since our words give shape to our thoughts, it wasn’t until a young amateur meteorologist named and classified the clouds in 1803 that we began to read the skies and glean meaning from their feathery motions. In this animated primer from TED-Ed, Richard Hamblyn, author of The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies (public library) — the same scintillating book that traced how Goethe shaped the destiny of clouds
— tells the story of how the clouds got their names, forever changing
our understanding of that most inescapable earthly companion, the
weather..."
I've Looked at Clouds From Both Sides Now. Are you a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society? A story at The Washington Post explains how clouds shape our moods and cognition: "...Psychologically speaking, clouds also have both positive and negative impact. Overcast weather turns us inward and helps us focus, the experts say. Sunny weather, by contrast, slows cognition. Researchers in Australia tested their theory with an experiment several years ago. They showed — for the first time in a real-life setting — weather-induced moods can significantly affect memory. On rainy, cloudy days, which caused a gloomy mood, the ability to recall objects was three times greater than on sunny days, despite all the positive vibes they triggered...The group, of course, has nothing good to say about lovers of cloudlessness — including beachgoers, most prominently. They call the worship of monotonous cloudlessness “blue sky thinking.” Pretor-Pinney rejects such a limited view of the heavens. “Cloudspotting is a conscious invitation to daydream, a sensitivity to your surroundings,” he said. “It’s a kind of sky geekiness, which is beautiful.”
File photo: NOAA.
The Coming Software Apocalypse. A story at The Atlantic has me longing for the days of analog. Here's an excerpt: "...The
problem is that software engineers don’t understand the problem they’re
trying to solve, and don’t care to,” says Leveson, the MIT
software-safety expert. The reason is that they’re too wrapped up in
getting their code to work. “Software engineers like to provide all
kinds of tools and stuff for coding errors,” she says, referring to
IDEs. “The serious problems that have happened with software have to do
with requirements, not coding errors.” When you’re writing code that
controls a car’s throttle, for instance, what’s important is the rules
about when and how and by how much to open it. But these systems have
become so complicated that hardly anyone can keep them straight in their
head. “There’s 100 million lines of code in cars now,” Leveson says.
“You just cannot anticipate all these things...”
Image credit: CUSEC / Vimeo
Cars Are Safer Than Ever - But Traffic Deaths Are Climbing. WIRED.com has the surprising details: "...Researchers
have long known that driving deaths rise and dive with the economy and
income growth. People with jobs have more reason to be on the road than
the unemployed. But this increase can't be pinned on the fact of more
driving, the stats indicate. Even adjusted for miles traveled,
fatalities have ticked up by 2.6 percent over 2015. You can still blame
the economy, because people aren't just driving more. They're driving
differently. Better economic condition give them the flexibility to
drive for social reasons. There might be more bar visits (and drinking)
and trips along unfamiliar roads (with extra time spent looking at a map
on a phone). The DOT numbers seem to confirm that drivers involved in
traffic deaths were doing different things behind the wheel last year.
The feds say the number people who died while not wearing seat belts
climbed 4.6 percent, and that drunk driving fatalities rose 1.7 percent..."
TODAY: Cool with increasing clouds, showers southeast MN. Winds: NE 5-10. High: 55
TUESDAY NIGHT: Risk of a shower or sprinkle, especially south/east of MSP. Low: 41
WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny, breezy and milder. Winds: SE 7-12. High: near 60
THURSDAY: Intervals of sun, a lukewarm daydream. Winds: S 10-15. Wake-up: 50. high: 71
FRIDAY: Clouds increase, showers develop. Winds: NE 7-12. Wake-up: 52. High: 61
SATURDAY: Some sun, better day of the weekend. Winds: NE 5-10. Wake-up: 44. High: 58
SUNDAY: A cold rain, windy and foul. Winds: NE 10-20. Wake-up: 42. High: 52
MONDAY: Clearing skies, rather brisk. Winds: W 8-13. Wake-up: 38. High: 56
Climate Stories...
The Most Powerful Evidence Climate Scientists Have of Global Warming. InsideClimate News has the details: "...More
than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions
has been absorbed into the oceans that cover two-thirds of the planet's
surface. Their temperature is rising, too, and it tells a story of how
humans are changing the planet. This accrued heat is "really the memory
of past climate change," said Kevin Trenberth, the head of climate
analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and co-author
of a new paper on ocean warming. It's not just the amount of warming that is significant—it's also the pace. The rate at which the oceans are heating up has nearly doubled since 1992, and that heat is reaching ever deeper waters, according to a recent study. At the same time, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been rising..."
Graphic: Paul Horn, InsideClimate News.
Climate Change and Harvey. Here's an excerpt from a story at The Battalion, from Texas A&M: "When Hurricane Harvey made landfall in August, the country watched as the storm dumped more than 60 inches of rain throughout South Texas. Now, experts like Andrew Dessler, atmospheric sciences professor at Texas A&M, are saying that climate change played a role in the size and intensity of Hurricane Harvey. According to Dessler, climate change doesn’t create storms, but it does strengthen preexisting storms. “The occurrence of a storm itself is largely [due to] chance and other environmental factors like El Niños and internal variability,” Dessler said. “The way humans have affected it is they have made the impacts of the storms a little bit worse.” Dessler said as humans continue to warm the ocean and climate, storm conditions intensify..."
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