Way Over Our Heads

Significant Rains and Potential Severe Weather On Tap for the Next Several Days

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

Well, somebody's about to get pounded. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, where you kind of roused from your sleep in the early morning hours of Tuesday, August 24 by rumbling and the sound of something we haven't heard very often this spring and summer...raindrops and, in my case, a NOAA Weather Radio awakened me before the storm actually got here.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:28

Yeah, I'm glad that you have that available. Everybody should have a NOAA Weather Radio, just like you have a smoke detector. Because, you know, when the storms come up in the middle of the night, how else are you going to know, and sometimes you need to get to safety. So yeah, Jim I, I woke up to the sound of thunder and rain. And then when I looked out the window, there was some wind too. It was quite a storm. You know, and it dropped some decent precipitation across parts of southern Minnesota, right around an inch in most of the Twin Cities area, but areas to the south got anywhere from an inch and a half to three inches of rain, not far from Northfield over towards Red Wing, and then out into parts of Sibley and Renville Counties. So, it was a nice rainfall event. And of course, there had been some, some other rains over the past week in parts in northwestern Minnesota. So, not a bad week--at least in the context of the dry conditions--has not so far been a bad week.

 

Jim du Bois  01:33

Well, here in the backyard rain gauge, we had 1.22 inches of rain on Tuesday morning. And probably the most dramatic indication of the power of that rainfall was the effect on Minnehaha Creek which happens to flow right behind our house. And I had taken a photo literally standing in the creek bed the day before, that'd be Monday, August 23, And it was virtually entirely dry. And I took another photo in the exact same location, although not standing in the creek bed because the creek bed now had water in it and water flowing at a pretty impressive rate. So, that to me was even beyond what I saw on my rain gauge that really drove home just how impactful that rain was.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:20

Yeah, you know, Minnehaha Falls had been basically shut off. I mean, it was reduced to just a trickle like a, you know, like a faucet leak essentially over the weekend. And so, to have it flowing and raging, I think the falls would probably be on the very low end of of what's kind of normal the day after that rain. But it's good to know that the creek came back to life a little bit anyway.

 

Jim du Bois  02:48

Yeah, it was pretty impressive. Well, Kenny, was that kind of the debut performance of a series of rainfall events and possibly severe weather events we will see over the next several days?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:00

Yeah, it's a, that's a good way of putting it. Jim, I would say that the, you know, so that was Tuesday, then we kind of took Wednesday off, didn't have much. And now on Thursday, when we're recording this, we're kind of looking ahead to a fairly intense rainfall event in parts of southern Minnesota. Don't know exactly where, there's all kinds of uncertainty, even just hours ahead of it. And then kind of a, you know, on and off fairly busy weekend covering a little bit more of the state. So yeah, I think that, you know, you could say that that was a Roman numeral one or I. And now, and then, and then the main event is right now, is going to happen Thursday afternoon and evening and overnight. And then there'll be other follow up events. I mean, these all have some potential for severe weather. But, you know, I think meteorologically, the most interesting aspect is the potential for the first system, the one on Thursday night, to produce some extraordinary rainfall amounts.

 

Jim du Bois  04:06

Are we talking the possibility of flash flooding in certain areas?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:12

I think that's accurate. You know, there's a little bit of a disconnect in some of the official products that we're seeing. And when we say products, of course, we're talking about basically, the way that the weather gets summarized by some official forecasting entity, usually part of the National Weather Service. And one of the products that we look at a lot that anybody who follows the weather looks at is this excessive rainfall risk. And it actually is very similar to the severe weather risk categories that the Storm Prediction Center uses. This is a different arm within NOAA. It's called the Weather Prediction Center. It used to be the Hydro Meteorological Prediction Center, but I think that, that wasn't very, that wasn't very friendly to lay populations so they changed it to the Weather Prediction Center. But they do most of the, the large area rainfall forecasting, and they have, they have much of Minnesota, southern half or so of Minnesota and then the northern half or so of Iowa and the western third or so of Wisconsin in a slight risk for excessive rainfall. When they say excessive rain, they mean rain that exceeds the current flash flood guidance. And what that means is that the rainfall rates, there's a slight chance that the rainfall rate, and that would be a 10 to 20% chance that rainfall rates would actually be high enough to exceed capacity and cause some flash flooding. The reason I said that there's a disconnect is I think that that slight risk area that they're using actually is also being used to express some uncertainty. We don't know exactly where the heaviest rains will be. But some of the, some of the models, Jim, have been showing very, very high rainfall totals up to, you know, eight, nine inches in narrow swaths. And of course, these swaths have been anywhere from entral Iowa up to central Minnesota. And so, that's the uncertainty is we don't know exactly where the heaviest rain will be. If I had to guess it would be somewhere along or south of that western arm of the Minnesota River into far southern Minnesota. And it might not be as high as, you know, some of those models might be getting a little bit carried away, but there's a lot of moisture in the atmosphere. And so, the conditions are at least supportive for some training thunderstorms. Those are the repeat thunderstorms that kind of form and move over the same areas, and also for very high rainfall rates during those thunderstorms. So, you know, we could be looking at a major flood event in at least a small area. And of course, this is inside one of the driest summers we've had in a long time. So, it's kind of surreal to be talking about it.

 

Jim du Bois  07:01

Now, when we're running a significant soil moisture deficit as we are this summer, what happens when it rains heavily? Now, we would tend to think that if the soil is dry, it might absorb the rain, like a sponge, but the reality may be something very different. Is it like the first inch of rain maybe will be absorbed like a sponge, and then any rainfall amount beyond that begins to run off? I mean, it seems almost counterintuitive because you would logically think if soil was saturated with moisture, then additional rains would run off. But it sounds like the contrary might be the case.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:40

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, honestly, there's going to be soil physicists and hydrologists, who who probably understand these processes better than I do, but I think the harder it rains, well first of all, when it's really dry, we've seen this before, too, when it's really dry, and you have dried dusty topsoil, which is certainly the case in some parts of Minnesota, then actually, the first thing that happens is the heavy rain doesn't even soak into that topsoil, it just washes it away. And that's definitely not great. That's something that you want. So, you actually get some erosion from the heavy rain because there's nothing kind of binding the topsoil down to the rest of the profile. But beyond that, it kind of depends on the rainfall rate. You know, if we were to get a really slow, you know, if we were to get several inches of additional rain but say distributed over a month, which is kind of what the DNR, that's sort of the DNR's message that if we made up five to eight inches over the course of a month, that would significantly alleviate drought conditions, because over the course of a month, there's probably enough time for the soils to absorb a lot of that moisture. I think another way you could look at it as you know, rather than getting it all at once, you'd prefer to have it over a prolonged period of weeks, or even months. So, when you get it all at once, I don't know what the exact quantity is that goes in, it's going to be determined by the rate but you're going to get some of the moisture into the soil but it can only go in so fast. And so then what doesn't make it into the soil while sort of waiting to percolate down, that is then going to start forming puddles and start running off, and that's when you get extra, and especially in urban areas where you have more pavement than soil, you're going to see a lot of runoff if, if it's raining really hard. So, I don't know the exact answer, Jim, but I would say you know, if you are getting several inches of rain in a 24 hour period, don't expect the majority of it to go into, you know, replenish your groundwater and and your soil moisture but expect a lot of it to run off instead.

 

Jim du Bois  09:51

So in other words, if we're thinking this great rainfall that's coming is going to pull us out of the drought situation, not going to happen, correct?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:59

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's certainly going to have the potential to undo, or at least, maybe start reducing some of those major deficits in whichever areas get hit the hardest. I think that the long term deficits numerically might get reduced or even in small areas, erased. But that wouldn't necessarily end the drought for those people. Because, again, those are just precipitation deficits. It doesn't account for the this, you know, we've had months and months and months to deplete soil moisture and to deplete the groundwater, the aquifers, those kind of underwater lakes, or underground lakes. And we've had months and months and months to drop the river stream and lake levels. And that's going to all take time to get back. And those are, of course, the major indicators of drought. So yeah, I wouldn't, you know, pin your hopes on getting out of drought with one event, even if the numbers in small areas do support, you know, the deficit being gone. Remember, if it rains really hard, somewhere, within a few days, all that water that fell, or a lot of that water that fell is going to be off in some stream or river 500 miles away. So. it's not entirely local.

 

Jim du Bois  11:19

Well, Kenny, we are recording this on the morning of Thursday, August 26. And it looks like for each of the next three days, we in parts of Minnesota are going to have the risk of severe weather. And it looks like from the forecast discussions from the National Weather Service that all modes of severe weather potentially might come into the mix. So, what do you think, is this going to be pretty isolated, popping up in very isolated areas? Or could it be something on a grander scale?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:52

Yeah, I think that, you know, for Thursday, the Storm Prediction Center definitely is looking at the Minnesota-Iowa border as having the highest risk. And that's the area that's going to be the warmest, have the most instability, and that's the area where I think the strong winds in particular, from the squall line would, would tend to be most likely. And that also seems to be the case as we get into Friday because there will be an additional round of storms. But there's, on both of those days, there's a marginal risk for severe weather that does extend up into the Twin Cities area roughly. And then we get into the weekend. And it appears that we have another risk for severe weather on Saturday afternoon, and that covers more of Minnesota. That, that covers the St. Cloud and Twin Cities area. And this, of course will change also, as we get more information, and as some of the forecast confidence increases on where the storms will be. But yeah, I think that in addition to heavy rains over the next three days, you're going to see the potential for some storms to produce hail, high winds, and and even isolated tornadoes. The winds aloft, especially in central and northern Minnesota, are actually pretty strong. And that would be conducive to organizing some of the thunderstorms so that they could either form really large, powerful storm complexes, or even in some cases become supercell thunderstorms. The only real limitation there is that where those strongest winds aloft occur, we might not see the most instability, might be a little cool, not quite humid enough. So, there's not a perfect match there. But it looks like a busy, kind of active weekend. I would say the biggest rainfall event looks like it would be Thursday into Friday morning where there is a potential for some flash flooding and very heavy rains, at least in narrow axes of southern Minnesota somewhere with maybe a more general one to two inch soaking rain type event surrounding that generally in the southern third, maybe southern half of Minnesota, but then additional rainfall chances as we get into Friday afternoon, and then again on Saturday afternoon. And we, you know, might take a couple days off and get back in business again on, as we get into next week. So it's a busy, active time.

 

Jim du Bois  14:17

Well, definitely keep an eye on the sky and an ear to your favorite source or an eye to your favorite source of weather information and be aware of the potential for severe weather. Let's hope we get some much needed rain but obviously not to the extreme point where we get flash flooding. So, hopefully it hits, it hits that sweet spot.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  14:37

Yeah, I wish I could promise that. One of the things that the storm has is a huge amount of what meteorologists called precipitable water. That's basically if you take all of the moisture in the atmosphere, if you were able to just turn that into rain, some of the precipitable water quantities coming off of these climate models will be approaching, you know, all time highs for the date. And so, there's a lot of moisture, it's kind of highly anomalous or unusual quantities of moisture. And because of the mechanisms with these storms, they will have the ability to stay in place. So, I do think that at least localized flash flooding is very likely somewhere in southern Minnesota. But, you know, let's hope that surrounding that there's just a kind of general widespread soaking rain that could be quite beneficial to at least start, you know, or help dent further the ongoing drought conditions.

 

Jim du Bois  15:38

Well, Kenny, always great chatting with you and look forward to talking with you again early next week.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  15:45

Very good. Thanks, Jim. You have a good rest of your day.

 

Jim du Bois  15:48

You as well, Kenny. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld is a climatologist. We'll see you next time.

Rain And Severe Weather Possible This Weekend

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

The hunt for meaningful rain continues. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's climatologist. Kenny, you're back in town after a little vacation in the northwestern part of the state. How does it feel to be back here in the Twin Cities and kind of anticipating the possibility that we're going to get some rain?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:23

It feels familiar. By now, Jim, I'm, you know, I think I've learned how to temper my expectations. I actually think some of the areas, I was West Central Minnesota, Northwest Minnesota, kind of Otter Tail County area, I think some of those areas are going to do pretty well, this weekend. Twin Cities it's iffy. So I'm excited at the prospect of rain and, you know, always sort of eager and cautiously anticipate potential for severe weather, which we have today. Also, and I'm also thinking about our friends up in northeast Minnesota with the Greenwood fire, which of course is not the only fire but it's the kind of biggest one in the state right now and thinking about their prospects for precipitation, which are not stellar. So, yeah. And how are you?

 

Jim du Bois  01:11

Kenny, I'm doing well. Interesting that you bring up the Greenwood fire because in an email you sent out today, you talked about a couple of scenarios with the Greenwood fire, one that would be good, and one that would be bad. And there was a person...I can't remember his exact title, but he's involved in the firefighting activities with the Greenwood fire. He was on Minnesota Public Radio this morning, and he had pretty much the same analysis that if they get some good rain up there, that will be wonderful. But if there is little to no rain, and there is a wind shift, and the winds increase, obviously from a fire control standpoint, that would be a bad case scenario. So, that seems to be what we're confronting. Either, we can get some great rains that can help extinguish the fire or get some winds that will increase the area the fire is covering.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:03

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, so, I guess one of the interesting things about this setup is that for the first time in months, we're actually talking about a real weather system, a low pressure system, you know, counterclockwise rotation with a strong cold front. And in a tight pressure gradient, and I think the savvy listeners probably remember that it's that pressure gradient, that change in pressure over a relatively short distance that actually drives the winds. So, you name two scenarios, one where you get wet, and one where you get the winds. Well, the second of those two is guaranteed. It's going to be windy on Saturday, especially in northern and northeastern Minnesota, you know, not not a howling, you know, driving gale or anything like that, but you know, 20, 25 mile an hour winds with some gusts up around 30, 35 miles an hour. So, that wind is all but guaranteed tomorrow, and the real wildcard is does it rain? And you know, I'm not sure exactly how much rain is required to extinguish a fire or even just to kind of slow it down. But I have poured water on bonfires before and know that, and anyone who's done that knows that, you know, the first part you pour just goes right back into the air. You hear sizzle and, you know, maybe the fire slows down a bit, but it takes quite a lot to put it out. So, I'm not sure if it's a quarter of an inch or a half an inch of rain or how much rain it would take to really notably affect this fire. But I don't think it's likely to happen. I think it's possible that they get enough rain up there, but it's just as likely that they, you know, end up with a 10th of an inch or less, and it's it's remotely possible that they get virtually nothing. And that all they really get out of this is a cooler air mass and that wind shift with stronger winds on Saturday.

 

Jim du Bois  03:59

So, Kenny, what you're saying is this could be another hit or miss scenario for large portions of Minnesota.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:07

Yeah, so the system is like I said, it's strong. It has a nice arcing cold front. So, what it has going for it, which I really like, it's actually really good ingredients, is it has this increasingly powerful cold front slamming into a warm and humid airmass. I mean we've had temperatures in the 80s and 90s across the entire state for the last few days. And that airmass is still in place today on Friday. And this cold front is going to plow into it, so that's good. Along that cold front thunderstorms will develop, and the low pressure system, the anchor of it, the middle of it, is kind of going to be pushing northeast word across North Dakota into far northwest Minnesota and in Manitoba. The problem is is when these systems start to really wind up after the cold front ignites the main round of thunderstorms, give it three to six hours or so, the storms start to migrate towards the low pressure area though, so they kind of, you'll see them sort of moving leftward towards that low pressure area. And so, initially, you might see a really impressive band or arc of intense thunderstorms but as it moves east across Minnesota, I would expect it to start to become more fragmented and fractured. And so, the eastern parts of Minnesota including Rochester, the Twin Cities and the Arrowhead region are definitely in a more of a hit or miss type of situation where they could get clocked with a good thunderstorm and maybe an inch of rain, or they could get shut out of this thing entirely. And in general, I'd say the best chances of heavy precipitation are in northwest Minnesota, which is good, because that's where the drought is most extreme, or it's actually in the exceptional category right now. But even in northwest Minnesota, the rainfall is not going to be complete, it's not going to cover everyone.

 

Jim du Bois  06:04

So, we are recording this on Friday morning, August 20. And we may have over the weekend here two rounds of potentially severe weather, the first of which happens late this afternoon, starting in western Minnesota, and then moves eastward. And then another round potentially on Sunday. So, which one do you think has the potential to pack the most punch?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  06:31

Honestly, to me, the one today it just has more going for it on a wider over a wider area. To me it looks like the Friday night, Friday afternoon, evening and early overnight storms will just be stronger and have more energy, in general. Mostly, it's because the airmass out ahead of it is stronger, the winds aloft are kind of the same today and Sunday. Sunday's system, I would imagine it's going to focus more to the southwest, maybe South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa. And I don't think there'll be much in the way of truly severe weather covering large areas of Minnesota. Whereas tonight, honestly, on Friday evening, I could see some wind damage and maybe even some tornadoes in parts of western Minnesota, especially in the first few hours as these thunderstorms really get going. There's a couple missing ingredients here. Usually with a good severe weather outbreak, you'd like to see the air mass kind of dry off quickly as you ascend through the atmosphere. And you also like to see it cool off kind of quickly. And in this particular case, there's a little too much summer left in this airmass. So, it stays a little warmer with height than it would be ideal. And it stays a little too moist with height compared to what would be ideal. And so, that leaves us just a little bit short. But if those ingredients were not missing, we would be actually looking at tonight a very high-end potential for a really powerhouse severe weather event. Instead, I think because we're short those two ingredients. It's more like a good old fashioned severe weather risk with, you know, some storms that are going to approach kind of almost get unhinged, but not quite make it all the way there, you know. Maybe they get uncorked for a half an hour or an hour. So, we're just sitting short of what would be required for a major, major outbreak. And I think on Sunday, we're even farther away from that because we lose not just those two ingredients, but we lose other ones too. So, I would say today's the more potent of the two days. There's also scattered precipitation chances across much of Minnesota on Sunday. But I wouldn't be surprised if by the time we get to Monday morning, more than half of the state did not receive a quarter of an inch total. I wouldn't be surprised of that at all. So, it's still...so it's still the precipitation lottery.

 

Jim du Bois  09:03

Well, as we look ahead to next week, any change in the pattern that becomes apparent?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:09

Yeah, that's a good question. Everything that I can see and what the forecasters have been talking about suggests that we at least have more and perhaps better opportunities for precipitation next week. We don't know how long that kind of pattern shift will last. And we don't know if it's a seasonally permanent one, or if it's a temporary one. But what it looks like is going to happen is the whole kind of summertime pattern that we've been in for not all of but most of the summer with a big ridge of high pressure out to the west and a big trough of low pressure to our east that that whole pattern is going to flatten and shift to the south a little bit and it's going to put Minnesota much closer to the transition zone where you've got cooler, more mild air to the north and then warm, humid summer like here to the south. And that transition zone looks like it'll be pretty active with disturbances kind of moving along it. So, we don't know exactly where the kind of a front separating the two air masses will be, but it looks like it'll be somewhere in the region. And so, it's possible that we'll see chances of precipitation Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week. And again, we don't know exactly how long this will last. I just like the idea that we have, you know, potentially several days in a row with precipitation chances, and these could be healthy thunderstorms, too. So, although there's no smoking gun signal that the state's gonna get, you know, widespread one-to-three-inch rainfall or anything like that, certainly, the chances are as good next week as they have been at any point since the beginning of May. So, I'm happy to be able to say that. What it means for the drought is that some areas might be able to at least stall the drought's progress. You might be able to slow down the development or the accel, you know, at least stop it from accelerating a bit. Halt its expansion, maybe even make up a little bit of lost ground. That would be good. And if we're lucky, then we could maybe even stay in that pattern for more than a week. And, you know, have say, a whole period of above normal precipitation. Oh, wow, that would, that would be nice if we had kind of two or three weeks of above normal precipitation. I think people would be really happy with that. But all of this is just speculation at this point. For all we know, this whole transition zone ends up in Iowa, and we end up high and dry here in Minnesota. Or on the other hand, maybe we do get lucky. Something we'll have to revisit as we, as we turn the corner into the beginning of next week.

 

Jim du Bois  11:45

Well, fingers crossed on the rain, and be sure and monitor your favorite media source to stay on top of any potential severe weather, especially this afternoon into this evening, this is Friday, the 20th of August. But also on Sunday, keep an eye out for any severe weather activity. And Kenny, we'll check in with you next week, and maybe there'll be some, some good news.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  12:09

Oh, we can hope so, Jim. I mean, at a minimum, you know, we're going to cool down this weekend, and that's going to be nice. I think people will welcome something that doesn't feel like the middle of summer. I think that'll be that'll be welcomed. We just hope that it's not fanning the flames too much in the, in the northeast parts of the state. And yeah, hopefully if you get rain, enjoy it, because it's been hard to find this summer.

 

Jim du Bois  12:33

Well, Kenny, enjoy the weekend. We'll keep our fingers crossed on the rain and stay safe.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  12:40

Yeah, thanks. You too, Jim.

 

Jim du Bois  12:41

This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll catch you next time.

Grab Your Ticket For The Precipitation Lottery!

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

Another rainfall lottery. Who will get the winning ticket? This is Way Over Our Heads. It's weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's climatologist. Kenny, as promised, we are back with a special edition because we heard something, well, some of us did, on our roofs last night that we hadn't heard for a while. The sound of rain drops.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:23

Yeah, you might have even heard those raindrops land in the garden or on the grass, or probably in many cases, right on the driveway into the sewer it went. But yeah, it was, we had some nice thunderstorms, you know, the pattern has been eastern Minnesota, and so whether it's northeastern, east central or southeastern Minnesota, the areas kind of hugging the boundary with Wisconsin and with Lake Superior. These are the areas that have been seeing precipitation, and on Thursday, August 5, that was no exception. We had scattered areas receiving a half an inch to in some cases over an inch of precipitation. But again, this, this was only a small percentage of the total area of the state of Minnesota. Most people saw a little or nothing. And so, if you're celebrating all the rainfall that you got, just know that your neighbor a few miles up the road might not have gotten that.

 

Jim du Bois  01:24

Well, that's a good point, Kenny. And you and I were talking right before we started recording about how sporadic and isolated these heavy rains can be. So last night, I got a little over half an inch here in south Minneapolis. You're in St. Paul, and you got considerably less.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:41

Yeah, I'm about four or five miles by the flight of the crow. And we got 14 hundreths of an inch. And yeah, so the airport got a little more. There will be areas in the northwest Metro and north Metro that got nothing out of this thing. So, whereas you know, Washington County did pretty well. Some areas to the south did reasonably well. But it's just been hit or miss all summer. You're right. You know, Duluth gets an inch, but nobody else does. Or St. Cloud gets an inch, and nobody else does. Or Rochester gets, you know, two inches, nobody else does. It's just been very hit or miss. And this event on Thursday was was no exception.

 

Jim du Bois  02:26

Well, Kenny, as you mentioned to me when we were chatting before we started recording, my half an inch is about three days worth of rainfall. And you had a great scenario as to how much rain I'm going to need to get the garden to where it should be, at this time of the year, in terms of overall rainfall.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:45

Yeah, I mean, honestly, you've probably heard people say, oh, well we're, you know, the state is six to 10 inches behind on precipitation. That's true. But obviously, you don't want it all comin' at once. Because you won't, you won't end up being able to use it, a lot of it'll run off and just feed the rivers and won't help out. So I think, you know, if you got three days of precipitation in one day, you got about a half an inch, you need that now, 'bout every three days for at least three months. That'll be a good way to start pulling out of this thing. So, get a steady diet of moderate to heavy precipitation. Because what, every three days, that would be about 10 times a month that you get half an inch. Okay, that gives us five inches per month. And if you did that into September and into October, we'd end up with surplus, big surpluses for those months, and we'd have taken a big bite out of these precipitation deficits. So yeah, I'm sticking with that.

 

Jim du Bois  03:45

Okay.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:46

Three days worth of precipitation every three days. For three months.

 

Jim du Bois  03:50

Right.

 

Jim du Bois  03:50

It won't get you out, but it'll certainly help. We won't see those all, we won't have as many reds and oranges all over the Minnesota drought map.

 

Jim du Bois  03:58

Well, we mentioned the rainfall lottery, and it looks like it's coming again. And perhaps this evening, actually more into early Saturday morning and then a second round potentially Saturday, late afternoon and night. Is that correct?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:16

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty because we don't know exactly how widespread the activity will be on Saturday morning. It does look like, though, we're gonna see some showers and thunderstorms over central and southern Minnesota, late tonight and into Saturday morning and possibly through the early afternoon on Saturday. And you know, some of these could produce again, if they line up over the right areas, you might get an inch, maybe even more precipitation. Then the atmosphere kind of reloads, and if we can get enough instability built up, then we get another round of thunderstorms on Saturday night. I would say of the two, the Saturday morning activity looks more likely, but the Saturday evening activity would be more potent, a higher potential to produce not just heavy rain, but also severe weather. Although I don't think the severe weather risk is all that great. The ingredients for rotating thunderstorms are all kind of marginal. So there would be no chances for some hail and some high winds and maybe isolated small tornadoes. But I would say the bigger story would be some areas could wind up with a couple inches of rain. And then the conditions sort of continue. This low pressure system is going to be winding itself up off in Wisconsin, and the cool easterly kind of moist flow coming out of that might keep the precipitation in Minnesota even into Sunday, so we could get another round of precipitation. I'd say that chances are the majority of the state, the majority of the listenership by area, will get less than a half an inch of precipitation over this period. However, and I would say they're going to be, they're going to be areas of the state that get virtually nothing. If I were to guess, I would say about, you know, the northern and northwestern parts of Minnesota stand the best chance of getting completely skunked on this from say International Falls over towards the Fargo-Moorhead area. But to the south and east of there, I guess I would say probably half of that area will get a half an inch of rain. And then maybe 20% of the state in total will see over an inch of rain. It's going to be some get it some don't. But there's a potential for some, you know, some enhanced precipitation where you get two or three inches of rain. That would be very helpful, although it's going to come down in buckets, this not going to be a gentle rain. So yeah, we might not get all of the rain. We might not be able to retain all of the rain that we get because some of its going to run off but I think people would will appreciate seeing some heavy rain falling.

 

Jim du Bois  07:05

Well, yesterday, that would be Thursday, August 5, we got an updated drought monitor. How are things looking now? I assumed the drought continues to worsen.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:15

Yeah, you're correct. You know, there's this little nugget of southeastern Minnesota that actually got removed from drought altogether isn't even abnormally dry. This is very small part of the state kind of near Winona, centered on Winona in Winona County, that area, kind of the eastern half of Winona County, they're not even abnormally dry. That's about, you know, a percent or so of the state of Minnesota. The rest of the state, almost the entirety of the rest of the state is in not just abnormally dry but drought conditions with severe drought taking up over three quarters of the state. And even extreme drought, accounting for about 35% of the state, that's the red if you see those, those drought monitor maps, the red, that's that extreme or D3. Fortunately, we don't have any of that exceptional D4 category drought in Minnesota at this point. But yeah, the dry July did not help things out, we got kind of lucky, actually, Jim, that we, the smoke in the sky kept the temperatures down. And with lower temperatures, we didn't lose as much water to evaporation. So, we actually did, as dry as it was, we did a little better than we would have done if there hadn't been all those fires off to the northwest. So you know, when you put the things together, we've got this long term drought, that's going to require a long time to get out of it. But in the short term, we have, you know, the promise of some precipitation that I think will keep some areas from having their drought categories worsen or expand as we get into next week. That's kind of, that's my takeaway from the, from the forecasts. I don't see a ton of improvement coming just yet in the drought, but at least a prevention of worsening.

 

Jim du Bois  09:07

Okay, well, fingers crossed that we will have the winning ticket in our backyards, and we have a chance obviously for some rain late tonight into Saturday morning, and then potentially round two late Saturday afternoon and Saturday night, so we'll watch for that. And then also the chance of severe weather you said not a great chance but still worth keeping an eye on the sky, correct?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:33

Yeah, of course, you know, especially if it gets really steamy on Saturday. That's when the chances for kind of a more significant thunderstorm event in the evening start, start popping up. I would say kind of a typical summertime severe weather risk. Nothing that in normal times we would call a special show for but the Storm Prediction Center is monitoring the risk for, you know, hail, high winds and isolated tornadoes. It's currently at a kind of slight risk, which is, you know, there's three categories of risk above that. So it's it's it's not a negligible risk, but it's also not a major risk.

 

Jim du Bois  10:15

Okay, well, we'll keep an eye on the sky and fingers crossed for some much needed rain. Kenny, enjoy. I will hope that the winning lottery ticket is held by you and you get some good rain in St. Paul.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:30

I mean, I hope the winning lottery ticket, because honestly, we don't care about our yard, we're trying to...

 

Jim du Bois  10:36

Good, point...good point.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:37

...we're trying to convert our yard from lawn to ground cover. So this is a great year for us to have these conditions. So I would say let's put the rainfall where it's needed most. So I'd be happy to give my ticket to some farmers in the, that are in the D3 areas of central Minnesota. Maybe, maybe out in southwestern Minnesota where you've been visiting.

 

Jim du Bois  11:00

Yeah, I think that would be great, Kenny. You bring up a very good point. That's where it's needed the most. All right, Kenny, good talking to you. As always, this is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist Kenny, we'll see in a week.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:17

See ya in n a week, Jim. Thanks.

No Surprise...July Was Hot And Dry

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

Will the carrot dangling in front of us be yanked back again? This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist Kenny, are you surviving this smoky air?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:18

I am. I mean, I'm here.

 

Jim du Bois  00:19

Yeah.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:20

I feel bad for people who have respiratory problems, because it's been, It's been tough. How about you? Are you, are you making it?

 

Jim du Bois  00:29

Yeah, I'm lucky. I don't have any conditions that would cause problems. However, I did notice on Thursday, my eyes were burning a little bit. So, that was a really, really bad day. Friday, we actually escaped to the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. And it was interesting with all the trees and the vegetation, the air quality there was a lot better. So, we put in about three miles of hiking, which was fun. But yeah, this has not been pleasant. And it's been downright dangerous for a lot of people.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:59

Yeah, yeah. You know, so we could just start there. On, I think it was Thursday, but at some point, last week, we actually had the lowest air quality ever measured in Minnesota. Now, the asterisk there is that, that we've, depending on which site, you know, there's only between several and a couple dozen years of record. So, it's not a super long record. And there must have been times before the, you know, Clean Air Act was passed, or think of the 1900s, when we were just burning coal, and just spitting it right into the air. And you know, everything was with coated with dust and coal dust. I'm sure we've had worse air quality. But in the modern era, and since there's been the kind of awesome surveillance that the Pollution Control Agency has, this was the lowest. It was measured up at, I believe it was Brainerd, and it was 422 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter of air. And that's a very high concentration that would be unhealthy for everyone. And especially, you know, of course, sensitive groups would be especially affected but, and on that day, we were hearing from people in northern Minnesota, because colleagues across the state, were saying, yeah, I just took my dog outside, and I had to come back in because the air was so acrid, and it was burning my eyes, and I couldn't catch my breath. My younger son, Jim, is one of those kind of bulletproof young teenagers who, you know, does everything and is super active, and he and his friend were biking on Thursday, and we're not aware of how bad the error was. And they had to take multiple breaks. I mean, you know, things are bad if, you know, vibrant, teenagers who are not generally attuned to their environment had to sort of stop and slow down and catch their breath. Again, I think there've probably been other seasons before we had the kind of surveillance that we had, where where there was so much smoke in the air. I think of, you know, the big fire seasons during other drought, particularly in the 1930s. There must have been lots of smoke in the air from fire at times. But in the modern era, we're pushing it now in terms of days with smoke. So, if listeners think it's been unusual, they're correct. You know, you can think back probably to your childhood, Jim. I mean, I remember a couple times during the 80s where a cold front would come through, and we'd get some smoke high in the air from Canadian Rocky Mountain forest fires, but I don't remember being able to smell it the way we have been recently. And having multiple days on end. And the Pollution Control Agency's relatively short record of stats does show that, you know, the last several years have had more than than kind of the typical number of smoke days. And I think this year is going to be close to off the charts.

 

Jim du Bois  04:03

Well, last week, we had some severe weather in Minnesota and Wisconsin as well. That was last Wednesday, which would have been July 28.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:15

Oh, yeah. We had with the biggest storms actually came on Monday. So...

 

Jim du Bois  04:20

We gotta go back, yeah, yeah.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:23

You don't have to worry.

 

Jim du Bois  04:24

It all becomes a blur after a while, Kenny.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:26

Yeah.

 

Jim du Bois  04:27

So let's talk about the severe weather last week.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:30

Yeah. So, so really, it was an interesting situation, I have to say, on Monday, so we're going way back Monday, July 26. Northern Minnesota in particular was in a first a slight risk and then an enhanced risk for severe weather. And it was kind of centered not too far from the Duluth area, that risk was, and it was really interesting because, you know, we've had this massive heat wave building this big ridge of high pressure and all this intense heat kind of building in from the southwest. And we're on the east side of that ridge. So I just need listeners to kind of close your eyes and picture a clock, right, because air flows around high pressure ridges in a clockwise manner. So, if you're on the right side, or the east side of a high pressure ridge, the air is basically starting to flow out of the north. It's kind of coming, you know, down, just like the hand of the clock would be sweeping downwards, the hand would be pointed horizontally, but its motion is downwards, and the air would be coming down or from the north, also. So we had this really interesting situation with very warm humid air building in from the southwest. But the winds aloft that steer thunderstorms were coming almost out of the north. This actually set up a very ripe environment for supercell thunderstorms. And you know, supercell thunderstorms are the ones that they're kind of the most intense class of thunderstorms, they rotate, they tend to self-isolate, and they tend to kind of hog the local meteorological environment. And so they they shield themselves from kind of normally destructive forces that that break thunderstorms apart. And so they can last a while. So they isolate, they rotate. And they often end up very large and producing, you know, large hail is, is something that you find with the majority of supercell thunderstorms. Some of them produce tornadoes, and a lot of them also, maybe a little bit later in their lives, start producing downburst and straight line winds. And this, this group of thunderstorms did all of those things. It produced...fortunately, nobody got hurt. That's good. It produced the tornado off of lower, that came off of Lower Red Lake, went into the Red Lake Community right there as part of the Red Lake Nation, and then continued moving southeasterly, another tornado off to its east. These both did EF-1 level damage. So they were kind of low, lower end tornadoes, winds estimated around 95 miles an hour, and then a slightly weaker one to the south of that, south and southeast of that near Tenstrike. There were also reports of baseball sized hail with these storms, again in Red Lake and Tenstrike and near Bena, and I think that's in Cass County that hill was almost three inches in diameter. So these things were producing large hail, tornadoes. And then there was also, there were also downburst winds reported not just in the area around Red Lake, but also to the east through Grand Rapids where there was a massive power outage, and into parts of St. Louis County. So, so far, this is the storm event of summer. You know, it hasn't been a very active summer, but lots of big trees went down. Lots of large hail and then also some structural damage from these thunderstorms. These storms ended up rolling into Duluth, and even produced some damage right along the North Shore. Parts of Two Harbors had trees down, and also areas in and around Duluth so, kind of a big event, Jim.

 

Jim du Bois  08:19

And Wednesday, July 28, some severe weather activity primarily in Wisconsin, correct?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  08:25

Yeah, that one was interesting. Anyone who paid attention might have noticed that the Storm Prediction Center issued an unusually worded to severe thunderstorm watch it was called a Particularly Dangerous Situation or PDS severe thunderstorm watch. The risk for severe weather was much higher this day, even than on Monday. And the real risk was for one of these derechos which is a long lasting straight line wind storm that is expected to track, you know, over a couple hundred miles. Fortunately, I mean, this storm, the storms did erupt and they did produce a lot of damage in Wisconsin. They didn't quite hit some of the thresholds that I think forecasters had been concerned about. But you know, tell that to people who are cleaning up trees from their property. Pretty widespread damage. Yeah, so pretty active week, you know, here in the, in the Twin Cities metro, you got between nothing, and you know, maybe a half inch rain if you were lucky, not a lot of really severe weather. There was a tornado warning in parts of Washington County, so that kept things interesting. But the confirmed tornadoes were off in Wisconsin from, from that storm event. So, kind of an exciting two day period. One of the things, Jim, that kind of jumped out about that Monday storm event too, was the storms formed pretty close to Bemidji, and this is going to probably bore some listeners ,but it's an important consideration. It's really hard to see storms on radar in the Bemidji area because the Grand Forks radar to the west is over 100 miles away, and the Duluth radar to the east is well over 100 miles away. So these storms are being sampled, you know, and the beam is elevated, it's at an angle. And then when you factor in the curvature of the earth, the beam is actually way off the ground, it's sampling a part of the storm that's, you know, maybe not even relevant to what people are experiencing. This matters because on Monday, as those storms were ravaging the area around Red Lake, the Duluth radar went out, and it went out of business for the entire event. And so the forecasters, it's like they were missing, you know, their dominant eye. I mean, so now you're, so you're trying to track severe thunderstorms that are moving into the area of your responsibility, your principal piece of technology is down. It's an area that's not particularly heavily populated, so there aren't a lot of spotters. The visibility's not great. You're coming up on dusk anyway, So it's kind of dangerous to spot. So, the Duluth Weather Service office was doing this while significantly impaired. And I think they're just thankful that the storms didn't have some really nasty tricks up their sleeves, because, you know, it would have been virtually impossible for them to detect a tornado on the ground, given that there was no radar capability within 150 miles of them.

 

Jim du Bois  11:32

Well, Kenny, we just wrapped up July, the second month of meteorological summer, and some pretty interesting stats. Not surprisingly, it was warm and dry.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:43

Yeah, I mean, we're still waiting for the final stats to come in from around the state. Those will come in probably early next week where we have the sort of statewide average for precipitation. But this is almost certain to be one of the 10 driest July's on record. Some stations, it's even higher up on the list. You know, the Twin Cities and St. Cloud didn't even get an inch of precipitation. And remember, normal, normally, you get an inch of precipitation in a week during the summer. And so if you can't even pull together an inch of precipitation for an entire month, that's a really dry month. So, it was dry. You know, people are gonna remember it as being hot. I mean, the Twin Cities had 90 degrees or higher ten times. But honestly, it wasn't that warm of a month. We only ended up, depending on the station, I think International Falls probably takes the cake for major stations was, you know, closer to three degrees warmer than normal. Twin Cities area was, came in at 1.7 degrees above normal. It's not a top 10 July for warmth at all, anywhere in the state. It's just a warm, generally warm July. And that's because we actually, though it's hard to remember, we had some mornings in the middle of the month, that were actually really cool, where, you know, temperatures fell into the 40s in parts of the state in the 50s. And central and southern Minnesota had a couple really kind of pleasant mornings and a couple of days that were cooler than the historical averages. So, once you factor that in to the kind of spate of above normal temperatures, we had, we just end up you know, a little bit above normal. One thing, Jim, you know, you talked about the smoke, is that smoke was also suppressing temperatures. So, it was keeping us from getting too hot. So, you know, there were times last week where we had widespread 90s in the state. And I think without the smoke, we would have been even hotter than that. So, you know, it's not anyone's favorite thing to have around. But the one benefit of the smoke, is it's been keeping us from being a lot hotter, I think July would have been, you know, potentially one to two degrees warmer, on average, if we hadn't had that smoke around, because instead of having 92 for a high, you know, some place would have had 97 or 98. I mean, it was really having an effect, especially on the high temperatures.

 

Jim du Bois  14:11

And Kenny, drought conditions continue to worsen Minnesota and no real relief in sight, correct?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  14:18

That is true, you know, because the drought is now so well established. Much of the state is, you know, closing in on ten inches behind normal precipitation for the year. Many areas are just five inches behind just in the last two months. So, it's going to take a lot to pull us out, so there isn't any one rainfall event that's going to pull the whole state out of drought. So, it's going to take some time, and we don't see anything that's showing signs of you know, big changes on the horizon. We are moving into a more active pattern. So you know, we do have some chances of at least parts of Minnesota kind of holding the drought at bay for, for a while beginning late in the weekend and into next week where we have the chance for some heavy rain at least in, in isolated to scattered parts of Minnesota.

 

Jim du Bois  15:11

Well, Kenny, at the beginning of the episode, we talked about the proverbial carrot being dangled in front of us. And that's happened more than a few times this spring and summer, where we see perhaps, you know, the, the oasis, the mirage on the horizon. It looks like we're going to go and we're going to get that much needed water. But then suddenly, the mirage just kind of vanishes. So, we do know there is some rain possible I believe on Wednesday, that would be Wednesday, the fourth of August, into the evening. Maybe going into Thursday, and then again, perhaps on Saturday. What do you think about our chances on those days? It's worth talking about at this point?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  15:57

Okay, yeah. I don't see much happening that's going to, you know, for the this week, there's, I don't think there's anything significant that's going to happen for most of Minnesota. The best chances looked like to me, kind of Wednesday evening in southern Minnesota, and then maybe Thursday, getting into Thursday evening, through a larger part of the state. It does look like some thunderstorms. So you know, those kind of, the nice thing about thunderstorms is they can make it rain pretty good. They can dump out on you, but they don't hit everyone is the problem. I don't see much until we get late into the weekend. That's when the pattern actually, I don't know if you ever, if anybody listening ever reads the technical discussions for the National Weather Service. So you can actually, if you're on their website, you can read the forecast. But then you can also read the thinking behind the forecast. And you know, it takes a little getting used to but it's kind of interesting. And you don't have to be a meteorologist to understand what they're saying. But it gives you a little of their rationale and tells you kind of what they're looking at. It's a deeper look. Again, there's a little bit of jargon in there, but you get used to it. In any case, they had talked on and off over the last couple of weeks about, over the last several weeks about waiting for the ridge to flatten. The ridge out west, it's northward poking area of high pressure, it's especially centered off the ground. And it's steering all of the weather systems around that big ridge, and many of them end up going over, you know, north of us off into Canada. And so, it's associated with that legendary heat dome, and most of the drought that we've experienced. So when that big ridge poking into Canada kind of flattens out, it signifies at least a temporary change in the flow. And what I like about this weekend is the ridge looks like it's going to at least temporarily flatten out, and as it flattens out, there's gonna be a couple of kind of humdinger weather systems that track right along that flattened kind of former ridge axis. And these look like the kind of systems that can produce severe weather and heavy rain. So, at least as we get into the weekend and into next week, I think the chances for meaningful precipitation will increase. I would be surprised if, you know, through Wednesday or Thursday, anyone, any, you know, area more than the size of a county gets over an inch or an inch and a half a rain. But once we get into the weekend and early next week, we could be looking at areas the size of multiple counties getting over an inch, inch and a half of rain. And that, that, you know again, it's not going to get us out of drought. But nobody's going to complain about getting an inch of rainfall in the middle of a hot dry summer.

 

Jim du Bois  18:50

Well, Kenny fingers crossed that this time, we might be able to at least nibble on the carrot if not consume the whole thing.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  18:58

Yeah.

 

Jim du Bois  18:58

Maybe a nibble.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  18:59

I don't think anyone's, yeah, I don't think anyone's getting a bag of carrots on this one. I think that, I think that, you know, we see the carrot on the stick, and we're hoping. But I am skeptical that, you know, we're going to get a statewide kind of wash out. I really think that we need a bigger weather system to do that. And it's not, I'm not seeing that just yet. But I tell you what, Jim, if it looks like we get into the weekend, and we've got a real major rainfall system coming, I think we could do a show about it. We may...it's gonna rain everybody and then and then we can get all the hate mail.

 

Jim du Bois  19:36

There you go.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  19:37

When it doesn't.

 

Jim du Bois  19:38

When it fizzles out.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  19:40

It would, it would, I mean if it looked like we were gonna get a widespread two inch rainfall that was gonna cover half of the state or more, that would be worth doing a separate show about because...

 

Jim du Bois  19:50

Absolutely.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  19:50

...it would be the most important two inches of rain psychologically that we've had in a long time.

 

Jim du Bois  19:58

Well, fingers crossed on that, Kenny. I look forward to talking with you later this week. Let's hope it comes to pass.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  20:04

All right, we'll be in touch, and until next time, you take care, Jim.

 

Jim du Bois  20:09

You too, Kenny. Always good talking to you. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll see you next time.

The Heat Is On...Again

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

We wish there was another way to say it, but it's dry. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, kind of a haze hanging over things today on Wednesday, July 21. How is that making you feel? I'm a little hazy myself today, I think because of that haze.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:24

Yeah It's ah, it's kind of an eerie feel out there, especially the odor because you're really smelling smoke from fires in Manitoba and Ontario that have drifted in on the winds aloft and then get mixed down. You know, I guess, today, as we're recording, it's not as hot as it's been, and it's not as hot as it's about to be. So, I guess I'll take that. That's fine. But yeah, I could do without the kind of apocalyptic feel of all that smoke in the air.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:57

You also?

 

Jim du Bois  00:58

Yes, exactly. And the haze is limiting temperatures a bit, too. It would be warmer today, wouldn't it, if not for that haze?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:06

Oh, yeah, we've actually had several days now where smoke and haze have probably limited the temperatures by up to five, five degrees Fahrenheit or so. So, you know, even over the previous weekend, there was a milky haze in the sky. That was a combination of actual haze, and the particulates drifting in from some of the farther afield fires that were burning. And those did conspire to keep the temperatures, you know, I don't know if you remember all the way back on the weekend, but we actually had been forecast to be at well above 90 degrees initially, and those didn't happen, and much of Minnesota ended up in the high 80s because of that haze. And then early this week too, temperatures were expected to be 90 or higher Monday and Tuesday, and we just barely got to 90 in the Twin Cities both days. So came in a few degrees shorter than what we would have expected without the haze. And it's doing it again today. And I assume as long as the winds are blowing from a region that's burning, we will see some cooling effect on our air masses. But it's not going to make it feel cool once the heat kind of kicks back in. It'll just cool it down a little from what it could have been if there hadn't been any haze or smoke present.

 

Jim du Bois  02:23

Well, let's talk about how dry it is, and we have another drought monitor update coming tomorrow, Thursday, July 22. But if anything, it's just going to get worse than the last drought outlook, isn't it?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:38

Yeah, I mean, you know, we did have a little bit of precipitation in parts of Minnesota last week. But the big story is Minnesota is not getting enough precipitation. You need at least an inch a week right now. You know, from now, right through August, you need an inch a week to keep pace, and we're not anywhere near that. Much of Minnesota is five inches short of precipitation just since the beginning of June. So, I think until we flip and start really getting precipitation in a widespread fashion, I would expect the drought conditions to continue expanding and degrading. That's kind of the term we use in the drought world, you know, where you basically move to worse categories of drought. So in my day job, I talked to the media a lot about, you know, current climate conditions or pervasive trends in our climate. And we've started to get questions about well, why, why has the posture changed? At the beginning of the summer, people were saying that it's not that significant of a drought, and now we're talking about it as a major drought. So it's kind of two points here, Jim. One is it is a major drought. At this point, there's no denying it. We have widespread impacts across Minnesota, everybody, I mean in pretty much every sector is feeling the effects of not having enough water available. Whether you're a farmer, and even we've seen instances of farmers that use irrigation still having crop stress because there's, there's really, they're not even enough moisture available from some of that groundwater that they're using. So, it is a major drought, but it's also an evolving and changing situation so early in the summer, even when we were talking about it a few weeks ago on this podcast, you know, we didn't know where we were going. But at that point, it was just dry. The impacts were starting to show up but they weren't really widespread. Well, now we're in what what many call the acceleration phase, right? This is a very hot time of year climatologically. The sun is still fairly bright. It's not quite as bright as it was a month ago in June. But this is where you would normally see drought really taking off, and our drought has really started taking off in the last couple of weeks. And I would imagine, you know, I can't game the system, and I don't have a crystal ball, but if we don't start getting meaningful precipitation, I would imagine that we're just gonna see the conditions deteriorate further through the summer. And I can't tell you, Jim, if this is going to be a historic drought that everybody talks about, but I think it's already become the kind of drought that you know, people who maybe are early in their careers, they're gonna remember this one, and kind of compare the next one to this. I think people with longer careers or who have been around longer as residents, you know, still recognize that 1988 was a much more severe drought than this one so far, but we don't know where this one is going. And it seems to have elbowed out the other couple of recent droughts from 2012, and even 2007. So, again, it's not yet as severe as 1988. But it is no joke. This is a major drought. We're seeing really low stream levels, lake levels, the moisture in the soils just been nose diving across Minnesota. And you got to go pretty deep, you got to go a couple feet down, and there you've still got some reservoirs of moisture leftover from the really wet period, you know, a few years back, but the topsoil in particular, quite dry. And, you know, we're seeing ponds drying up. Brown grass is everywhere, trees drying up, so it's just dry. And yeah, it's just a dry summer.

 

Jim du Bois  06:37

Well, and the drought isn't limited just to Minnesota, it really encompasses a large portion of the western United States and the southwestern United States. And you mentioned, of course, the haze holding down the temperatures which is the result of fires that are burning. And in Oregon, I'm sure a lot of folks have heard about the Bootleg fire. That fire is so massive, it is encompassing an area that is actually greater than the area of the city of New York. And the impact of this fire is such that it's actually creating its own weather. There's talk of pyrocumulonimbus clouds forming. What exactly are those, and how can a fire actually create weather?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:27

Yeah, I mean, this is, this is the thing. I mean, we do see this occasionally. It's not that unusual. But some of these fires have gotten really enormous. And they're being fueled by themselves at this point. And then they create their own weather, as you say, and you can actually search for Bootleg fire and you're gonna get lots and lots of analyses and resources about it. You'll even see a little map come up. It's in basically southwestern Oregon. And it's by no means the only fire, either, it just deserves its own attention because, well, you just said larger than New York City, that is a very big fire. And this thing is roaring. So, a pyrocumulus cloud is kind of what it sounds like. It's a cloud a cumuliformer, heapy, billowy cloud that's made out of smoke from large fires. You can actually picture this because whenever you, you know, you're driving down the road and you see someone's bonfire or you see a fire that's gotten a little out of hand, you see what looks to be like a big cloud of smoke forming. Well, with a large wildfire forest fire, that heat is so enormous that you get these billowing plumes that go up 15, 20, 25,000 feet, and they actually become their own kind of cloud with updrafts and downdrafts. And they tend to be very dry. And so when cool air at the top of those clouds starts to descend, it can cause the cloud to collapse. And then this descending and very dry wind gusts out from the middle of this cloud and just fans the flames even further and kind of produces a fire front, essentially, that just sort of moves like a, kind of like a bow wave out ahead of a boat, out ahead of the fire and ignites new fire, and you see all kinds of strange behaviors. But we've also seen on some days and with other fires, including some that have been in Minnesota in other years, where the pyrocumulus cloud becomes big enough that it forms an anvil top, produces a little bit of precipitation and produces static discharge in the form of lightning and thunder. And then it becomes a pyrocumulonimbus, or basically a fire-generated thunderstorm. And it doesn't stop there, Jim. You've probably heard of these fire whirls, these little...

 

Jim du Bois  09:51

Yes.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:52

...they're kind of tornado-like or waterspout-like whirls that form in some of these really intense fires. And some of these, in some instances, when the thunderstorm or the pyrocumulonimbus cloud gets big enough and mature enough, it can actually produce a legitimate fire bred tornado, which is, I mean, I like tornadoes and extreme weather. But I remember as a kid having a nightmare that there was a tornado made out of fire, and I never forgot it. And the fact that these things actually happened is somewhat terrifying. So, you get kind of a supercell thunderstorm forming out of fire, and it produces a supercell-like tornado. Woo, yeah, so the Bootleg fire is massive. And because there's no precipitation falling in this area, I mean, it is the dry season in Oregon, and so we wouldn't really expect much precipitation this time of year. So there's nothing to put the fire out. And as it gets bigger, and it produces these cloud and weather systems, it's just going to keep breeding more fire. So it grows and kind of fits and starts, and sometimes explosively with these, you know, outward gusts of wind that exceed 40 or 50 miles an hour and just fanning the flames all over the place. So yeah, quite an event up there.

 

Jim du Bois  11:18

Well, you mentioned, Kenny, that these pyrocumulonimbus clouds can generate what is essentially a fire tornado that actually was documented in Wisconsin back on the eighth of October, in 1871 in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. There was a large fire, and residents of the area reported seeing a fire tornado, and this was a very deadly fire. The death toll varies. Apparently, the records weren't kept very well back then. And I've heard anything from several 100 to over 1000 people perished in that blaze. So, I mean, fires, these are just amazing, the impact they can have on the weather as well. And and, you know, bring in these things that are the stuff of our nightmares.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  12:07

Yeah. And, you know, I think that we all kind of started waking up to the terror of fire in the last decade, when the footage started coming in from McMurray up in Canada. And from some of these towns that were just, you know, people trying to escape that were fleeing for their lives, as fire was engulfing towns. And now of course, we've seen more footage out of California in the last few years. And then what we have here, and what we had earlier this summer, in British Columbia. And now here we are in Oregon. Yeah, I mean, fire is an incredible mechanism once it gets big enough. And it is, it can be, you know, pretty unnerving and terrifying to see. And, you know, you mentioned the Peshtigo fire. And you know, we here in Minnesota, in the early 20th Century, we had the Cloquet and the Hinckley fires. And you know, some of it has to do with land management. But when you get into really dry conditions, it doesn't have to be a heatwave, if it's just too dry, and there's not enough water in the vegetation, and you have a lot of downed vegetation or fallen vegetation for whatever reason, you start developing a really good checklists for building some nasty fires. So, one of my concerns, and I'm, you know, certainly not trying to scare anybody, but you know, the DNR and the US Forest Service have been fighting fires pretty heavily all year. And you know, our main fire season is in the spring, and then again in the fall, but there's still fires burning in parts of northern Minnesota, northeastern Minnesota right now. So even though it's not really the wildfire, forest fire season, it's been so dry, and there's enough fuel, that the fires are going even through what's normally our wet season. So I am a little concerned that as we get into September, if we don't see meaningful precipitation across a wide area, then we would have, you know, as the relative humidities drop naturally during fall, you know, we could have an explosive fire season if the climate doesn't get some things under control here. So you know, nothing, nothing to alarm anyone about but just not something that we would like to see because it has been very dry, and we really would like to come out of it.

 

Jim du Bois  14:23

Well, we're recording this on Wednesday, July 21. And in the days ahead, it looks like the temperatures are going to move back into the 90s again in a good portion of Minnesota. And this heatwave. Kenny, is there a heat dome involved with what we're going to be seeing here very shortly?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  14:42

Yeah, that's a good question, Jim. So, I think you mentioned the heat dome because this has been a popular, popular term in the last few months, and a lot of times I kind of play a curmudgeon, it's like ah, this popular term, ah you're gonna have to clear things up. This one actually makes a good deal of sense. It's not a technical term. And I'm not sure what people picture, but I'll just put it real simply, is that hot air, warm air generally expands. And so, if you just take a given volume of air and you add a bunch of heat to it, that volume of air will grow. And the heat, the heat would sort of force the same mass of air to expand. And so, when you get a big hot air mass in place, the core of that air mass tends to be rather tall. And then as you move away from the core of the hot air mass, the height of that air mass starts to kind of shrink, or the thickness of it. So, if you were to look at it from the side, which would be super hard to do, but or if you could kind of color the temperature contours, you'd actually see a very subtle, wouldn't be steep, but you'd see a very subtle kind of dome shape, with the highest part of the dome corresponding roughly to where the highest temperatures are, on average, through that part of the atmosphere. So in that sense, anytime you have a good warm air mass moving in place, you kind of do have a heat dome. It's just that the one that we had in June was so well defined and had these very firm edges, it actually resembled a dome more than just about anything that we've seen in recent memory, for sure. So yes, there will be a heat dome associated with this hot air mass, it does look like it's going to be centered in the Dakotas. That's not great for them. But it's, I guess, merciful for Minnesotans. However, you know, this is basically an offshoot of the same mechanisms that have been driving the drought conditions for the entire western half of the US. It's the same mechanism that kind of ties our drought to the Western drought, and similar mechanisms that caused some of the extremes of heat in June in the Pacific Northwest. You know, even more recently in Montana, where temperatures rose into the 100 and low 100 teens. So yeah, I think that we're in for some really hot air, especially out to our west. But the one thing that kind of gives me a little pause is I wonder if we're ever going to really lose the smoky, milky veneer on the sky. And that might keep our temperatures from getting really out of hand. But you know, at least saving us from a couple extra degrees of heating. But yeah, it does look like a very hot air mass moving in, especially Thursday in western Minnesota, Friday over much of the state and then really into the weekend. And I would not be surprised if in many areas, the values that we record, top what we had observed during the June heat wave here, we might see some triple digit temperatures, possibly close to if not in the Twin Cities. I think it's more likely to see temperatures of 100 or higher out in parts of western Minnesota. But I wouldn't be surprised if Friday and maybe even into the weekend we have these really high temperatures. So Jim, I gotta ask you, you're a heat guy. You Like It Hot. But is there, is there a point, and I'm being serious, is there a point where kind of enough is enough and you'd like...I mean, are you are you kind of just eating this up? This is the summer of glory for Jim du Bois.

 

Jim du Bois  18:34

Kenny, that's an excellent question. And as much as I love the heat, I have to say that I'm starting to tire of it a little bit. Not so much because of the heat itself. But all the other things it brings. If we had heat punctuated with some nice rainfall, that would be great. If we had heat minus wildfires that are creating air quality alerts, I would much prefer that. So no, I I'm really kind of, I guess, less than enthusiastic now, just because I'm seeing the downside of all of the hot weather we've had so far this summer.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  19:10

Yeah, that makes sense, too. I mean, it's drying everything out, too. So you know, if you have a lawn or garden, it's making you work harder to maintain it. And at some point there's going to be restrictions where you're probably not supposed to do that   anymore. So...

 

Jim du Bois  19:24

Well, they're already here.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  19:26

Yeah, OK.

 

Jim du Bois  19:26

Got the city of Minneapolis, St. Paul, I believe New Hope, Golden Valley and some other cities have watering restrictions right now. So we're we're at that point. And what's amazing is here in Minneapolis, we actually get our water from the Mississippi River, and it used to be the cities that would be the most impacted by dry conditions would be those that depended upon wells for their water supply. But the level of the Mississippi right now I believe may be approaching some record lows if I'm not mistaken.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  19:57

It's, it's not quite at the historical benchmarks, but it's dropping below some critical values up at the Anoka guage site. It is low. I mean, you know, you don't want it below what is it, 1500 cubic feet per second? And I think it's dipped below that threshold already. And then maybe it might have recovered a little bit. But yeah, you start getting into record territory when that drops below about 1000 CFS, cubic feet per second. Yeah, here in St. Paul...so I live in St. Paul, and we agreed that we wouldn't water at all beginning in May. It just seemed dry, and it seemed pointless. And we were...figured we'd save water for other purposes. And we're kind of transitioning our lawn anyway, so it wouldn't be a priority use to take water that could be used elsewhere for other purposes for us. So, we've had our own kind of self-implemented watering ban all summer. But it is a, it's kind of hot and dry time. So the other thing that is probably worth pointing out is the heat. Heat has been a little bit hard to forecast the last couple of weeks because there's been these different forces. So you've had on one hand this big ridge or dome, kind of heat dome or ridge of high pressure out west. And when it has lurched into the region, we've gotten really hot. We've also had this kind of almost semi-permanent low pressure area off to the east and northeast that's been providing these bouts of much cooler air, even into Wisconsin and Minnesota. Did you notice, I think it was last week, some of those really cool nights? You wake up and as in the 50s in the morning...

 

Jim du Bois  21:39

Oh, very pleasant. Yes. Great sleeping weather.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  21:42

Yeah, kind of marvelous. And it was almost like in this summer of smoke and hot mayhem, where did that come from? And you know, parts of Wisconsin that have not, especially if you go in in the northeastern part of the state, they're kind of wondering what we're talking about because they they've had adequate moisture and precipitation, and it's been relatively cool, most of the time. So, it has been difficult to forecast the high temperatures, especially over Minnesota, which is kind of in this transition area between the very persistent and extreme heat out west, and the much cooler conditions off to the east. It does look like though, I mean, we've seen this now on all of the models that, you know, there might be these little breaks in here for a day or two, kind of like we're having today as we're recording, it's not super hot. But everything that we've seen suggests that the majority of the next two weeks will be warmer than normal, possibly hot. And you know, some of the longer range models that we use to kind of help us see out a week or more, they're indicating that the heat is going to hold on right through the end of the month and into August. So you know, again, with some breaks possible, but the bottom line is there isn't any, anything that's emerged come over the horizon yet that tells us this is all about to change. And we could be bracing now for the hottest period of summer so far.

 

Jim du Bois  23:11

Well, Kenny, we're seeing the dew point now starting to creep up a bit, and that will happen over the next few days. Does that bring any hope at all for any relief in the form of precipitation?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  23:22

Yeah, that's a good and optimistic question. And I think that, um, you know, one of the one of the things, Jim, we've now heard from a lot of people in agriculture, and I think we get it, I think that the picture is that crops are stressed across the state. Plants and gardens are stressed across the state. Lawns, of course, are stressed across the state. But there are pockets of even central Minnesota, and definitely parts of southern Minnesota, where there have been at least occasional beneficial rains. And you can see some difference where you can see some improvement where it's, you know, kind of apparent that things have fared at least a little bit better, or maybe they even look almost normal. But as we get more humid, we could hope that more of these precipitation events will affect more of the state. I don't see a real clear signal of anything widespread. But what I'm hoping for is that as we start to heat up, you get enough heat to drive, you know, individual isolated thunderstorms that then, you know, hit at least some small proportion of the area and drop a decent amount of precipitation. So, I think it would just kind of enhance or at least continue the kind of pattern that we're seeing where there's kind of drought and dryness-related problems visible pretty much everywhere. But you do see these small pockets where there's been at least almost enough precipitation in these very small pockets where things are doing okay. And I'm kind of thinking that that's going to continue. So through the heatwave, I wouldn't be surprised if we have thunderstorms in and around the state of Minnesota somewhere on most days, but on any given day, these thunderstorms or showers occupy, you know, only between one and 5% of the state and generally aren't providing more than a quarter to a half an inch in most of those places, and maybe some isolated amounts higher. So, kind of mixed news on that front. Like I do think there will be some thunderstorms and some, some much needed rains. But I think they're going to be very isolated and, you know, confined to relatively small areas until we get a, you know, a major weather system coming through that can actually produce widespread precipitation. Let's hope.

 

Jim du Bois  25:50

Well, fingers crossed on that, Kenny. And yes, over the next few days, if you suffer from any respiratory issues, you should be very, very cognizant of the fact that the air quality is not good. Also, as the temperatures and the dew point start to creep up, make sure you're well hydrated. Stay out of direct sunlight. Just take care of yourself, and listen to your body.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  26:15

Yeah, good, good reminders, Jim, for sure, because it's a, it's not going to be a real easy time. And I think that the, you know, I'm not a, I'm certainly not a psychologist or social worker. But my hunch, just based on some of the conversations that I've had, is that these tough weather conditions are also sort of taking a toll on people mentally. So going into a heatwave that feels almost unrelenting could produce some additional stress. I'm sure.

 

Jim du Bois  26:45

Exactly, and not that the last 16,17 months or so haven't been pretty tough for other reasons. So...

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  26:52

Yeah, that is true, Jim.

 

Jim du Bois  26:53

It's kind of pouring it on right now with the uh...

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  26:58

Yeah, so you're saying that this wild weather isn't happening in a vacuum.

 

Jim du Bois  27:03

Exactly. Exactly. Well, everyone stay safe. Kenny, as always, great chatting with you. And we'll check in with you again in about a week.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  27:12

Very good. Yeah. Good talking with you too. And hopefully we'll have some better news coming soon. But we are in a drought, and you should not expect big changes in something slow moving like a drought.

 

Jim du Bois  27:24

This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll catch you next time.

Heavy Rains and Potentially Severe Weather On Tap for Parts of Minnesota

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

It's a glass of water in the middle of a desert. Drink up, Minnesota. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, you had a little time away from the office. How was that?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:16

It's always good to get out, you know, especially after the pandemic. Get out, go somewhere else, see a different set of walls. So, we went, we went up to northwest Wisconsin. Spent a few days visiting friends and going to supper clubs, which is one thing Wisconsin does really well.

 

Jim du Bois  00:39

Yes, they do.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:40

Those kind of old supper clubs with the vintage signs. So we were in the Rice Lake area. It's good. How are you, Jim?

 

Jim du Bois  00:47

You know, Kenny, I am doing well. I'm looking forward again with fingers crossed, because we are used to disappointment this spring and summer. But it sounds like you know, you're kind of in the middle of the desert, you see the mirage of that water that looks so tempting. And then you, you round the little rise in the desert, and it disappears. So...

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:10

Oh, yeah, I see it. I see it.

 

Jim du Bois  01:12

I'm skeptical.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:14

I understand your,  your skepticism is totally justified. It's a really good metaphor, honestly, because, say we've been on a fairly long walk already, and we ran out of water several weeks ago. We're just, we're just thirsty. Or let's just say we ran out of water miles and miles ago. And we've got a long way to walk yet. There's really no sign, no indication, you know, that we have found the oasis. However, there appears to be sitting on a table, it's getting closer than the horizon. Now, there appears to be a fairly large glass of water. Now, if we go and find it, we are certainly not going to thoroughly hydrate ourselves such that we are completely safe for the rest of our journey through this desert. But you gotta admit, can't hurt, right?

 

Jim du Bois  02:15

Oh, you bet. Absolutely. So Kenny, are we seeing a change on the horizon here with what seems to be looming for perhaps later today? This is Tuesday, July 13. And tomorrow, Wednesday, July 14.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:31

Not a change on the horizon. No, I think that, I think the desert with a table and a glass of water on the table works quite well here.

 

Jim du Bois  02:39

Okay.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  02:40

It's still the desert. So, what Jim's referring to for our very patient listeners who've been trying to figure out what the heck is going on with these metaphors. We have a, you know, a nice, warm airmass. It's Tuesday, July 13. It's gonna get a little toasty, and there's a cold front dropping in through Minnesota. It's gonna fire off some scattered, maybe even just isolated thunderstorms. It kind of depends on how much of that smoke in the sky prevents the sunlight from really heating things up near the ground. So, today is kind of act one. Very isolated to scattered thunderstorms with some, you know, maybe some heavy rains, some hail, some gusty winds. Most people will not get anything, but those who do will be lucky, you might even get, you know, an inch of rain out of these storms. But the main event is really from Wednesday morning out in western and southwestern Minnesota into Wednesday evening in parts of eastern and southeastern Minnesota. There's a lot of uncertainty, but it's a fairly potent complex of thunderstorms. It's going to come out of South Dakota. And the question is, is it going to just March eastward out of South Dakota or maybe even dive southeastward into Iowa? Or is it going to take on a little bit of a spin and develop into its own little low pressure area? And it's that scenario that has forecasters at the Storm Prediction Center and locally, and even it has me, most kind of curious, concerned and excited because that kind of situation where thunderstorms breed their own little low pressure area, that can lead to more intense thunderstorms, often with heavy rain and even severe weather. And, you know, as we're recording this now, anyway, the southeastern third or so of Minnesota is included in an enhanced risk for severe weather on Wednesday. And there's also a slight risk for excessive rainfall over pretty much the same area. The best risk really is just south and east of the Twin Cities but it's close enough that we're kind of all, everyone from say St. Cloud on south and east is in play, but again, the greatest risk would be in my mind from somewhere around Owatonna, Northfield, maybe Albert Lea, you know, kind of then eastward through the remainder of southeastern Minnesota. So, it looks like a setup where you could have a northern swath of thunderstorms and just heavy rain, maybe no severe weather, where you see one to two or even three inches in a fairly narrow band. And then another area where the big thunderstorms line up in the afternoon, also producing heavy rain, possibly even isolated amounts above three inches. This is not going to be the kind of thing that drenches the whole state, but a fairly good swath of a half an inch to an inch of precipitation looks, looks likely over the southern third of Minnesota, and there is that severe weather risk where we could see some really strong winds, especially if that little low pressure system forms, Jim. But then, because you asked what's on the horizon, and I think the horizon is being multiple days away.

 

Jim du Bois  05:47

Yes.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  05:47

And this system for tomorrow is now well over the horizon and is approaching us. And I think it's very likely to produce thunderstorms and even heavy thunderstorms in southern Minnesota. It's just that after that I don't see much. And that's why I think I wouldn't call it a change, I would call it a, you know, a nice, potentially healthy distraction for us.

 

Jim du Bois  06:10

Well, last time, Kenny, you and I spoke, we asked whether or not the rains that had been in the forecast would make a dent in the drought. Did they?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  06:20

Probably in parts of southeastern Minnesota, there was enough rain and in southwestern Minnesota, there has been enough rain to at least stall, the progression of the drought. The drought has basically been advancing, expanding and intensifying over most of Minnesota for the last few to several weeks now. And there was enough precipitation last week in parts of western, southwestern and southern Minnesota, that a minority of the state, but you know, maybe equivalent to 10,000 square miles, at least, was able to hold the drought off from you know, further what we call degradation. However, nobody really, nobody came out of the drought. And a lot of areas hardly got any rainfall and in parts in northwestern Minnesota, it's not only been dry, but it's remained fairly hot. You know, this is a pattern where northern Minnesota is frequently hotter than southern Minnesota, and especially in the, in the northwestern part of the state. So, things have kind of deteriorated in that area. And so no, we didn't we didn't make the kind of progress, that was a real heartbreaker. I think I had mentioned it was consequential. And for people who don't know what I meant by that, I meant, you know, if we had gotten the rain that at the time was advertised by most if not all of the models was still a few days away, we would have had a fairly wide scale improvement in the drought conditions. It wouldn't have, it wouldn't have gotten us out. But I think it would have it would have stalled the, the drought progression and maybe even bumped us up a category in some places. And instead, the heavy precipitation went into Iowa and Missouri where they actually don't really need it the way we need it. And then we only had that scattered stuff in Minnesota. So no, it didn't, it didn't turn out, it didn't turn out the way we hoped. And therefore that left us kind of right where we were, which is not good when you move into the middle part of July, and you are approaching the peak heating, you know, the peak hot weather season. And so that's, that's one of the things we see off on the horizon is a potential anyway, for some more intense heat as we get into next week. I think we can cover that in another podcast because it's still several days away before the really intense heat would be building into Minnesota, maybe even a week away. But it, we're seeing hints, Jim, well, you'll be happy because you love it hot...

 

Jim du Bois  08:48

I do.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  08:48

...but we're seeing hints from some of the models actually show the dreaded heat dome, which we will have to define if we, if it actually moves in, moving over at least North Dakota and putting parts of Minnesota close enough to the center of the ridge to have some really intense heating. So, we will have to keep an eye on that. But it's too far away to, to, you know, at this point to bank on it. Enough could change. Maybe we'll, maybe we'll stay on the edge of it.

 

Jim du Bois  09:19

Well, Kenny, we've had a pretty quiet severe weather season so far in Minnesota this year. And actually, I think that's been the case pretty much nationwide. But tomorrow, July 14, we actually, according to the Storm Prediction Center, have an enhanced risk of severe weather. Are we looking at what could be, and maybe we should just say compared to what we haven't had so far, a rather substantial severe weather outbreak tomorrow?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  09:46

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I guess it's important for listeners to know that there's different risk categories, and enhanced does connote a fairly, you know, what I would think of as a fairly sizable risk of severe weather. Above it, you do have moderate risk and high risk. And I think we've talked with, on the podcast about kind of the silliness of some of these category descriptions. Because a high risk of severe weather is like, you know, kind of a lights out event is anticipated, but a moderate risk, which sounds kind of subdued, right? Like moderate...

Jim du Bois  10:18

Yes.

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:18

...is actually, you know, those are also tied with generally really substantial severe weather outbreaks and even the enhanced risk, which in my mind sounds more dire than moderate but is really meant to connote kind of a slightly lower level of risk, even those are associated with pretty significant severe weather outbreaks sometimes. And then you have the more common slight risk and marginal risks. So, we're in an enhanced risk, but listeners should probably know that that's as of this recording. That risk level has the potential to be updated kind of five times between when we're recording and when the storms are actually on top of our listenership. And so, we could end up in a higher risk of severe weather in some areas. It could actually be a moderate risk. I wouldn't be shocked if a small area went into a moderate risk. And we could have other areas downgraded. To answer your general question, though, yeah, I think that this, this has more potential than we have seen all year. You have to go back to early March...March! It was March 10...

 

Jim du Bois  11:23

Wow...

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:24

...and we had, we had a hailstorm, and we had a Tornado Watch that covered much of Minnesota. I don't know if we've been in a tornado watch since then. I'm sure I could find out. But in any case, it's been a very quiet severe weather season here. There's been much more activity in Wisconsin, but it's generally been quiet there, too. It's just been more active in Wisconsin than Minnesota. Yeah, I mean, I would say that, given the chance of this kind of low pressure type system forming from the thunderstorms and then being supported by pretty strong winds aloft. It's not going to be a powder keg of mugginess tomorrow. I don't think you'll really be able to feel it, it's just that there's going to be a lot of energy in the atmosphere, especially if that low pressure area forms. And I definitely could see, I could see a pretty intense severe weather outbreak. You know, when we talk about severe weather, Jim, of course, we're, we're talking about something that generally affects a very small proportion or small percentage of a given area. So, you wouldn't expect everyone listening to this to take damage. You would expect, you know, a small fraction of a percent of, of Minnesota maybe to have some wind damage. But the chances of strong winds and even some tornadoes tomorrow are noteworthy. So yeah, this could be, this could be so far anyway, the event of the summer.

 

Jim du Bois  12:52

Well, Kenny, in terms of timing, again, this is Tuesday, the 13th of July, when can we start seeing some rain...thunderstorm activity today?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  13:02

So for Tuesday, anytime, after about four o'clock and really into and even through the evening, I think there could be these kind of isolated to maybe scattered thunderstorms. The mechanism, there's kind of two pieces, we're going on here, one, we have a fairly weak cold front moving through, and there's really not that much instability associated with it. So however hot we get today, that's kind of the most energy that it'll be able to work with. But then as the sun is setting and the temperatures are starting to drop, the dewpoints, and the moisture actually will be on the increase, and that could prolong that window of activity till after, you know, after it turns dark. Again, I would expect isolated thunderstorms, some people are gonna have a real nice view off to the east as these storms move away, they might produce some nice lightning in otherwise clear skies. So, you'll see the, you'll see the thunderstorm clouds off to the east and lightning illuminating the back of it. So that's this afternoon and evening, I'd say four o'clock, to maybe eight...nine...ten o'clock, isolated coverage but potentially kind of surprisingly strong thunderstorms if you're not, if you're not ready for them. And then tomorrow, on Wednesday, the timing appears to be, you know, the thunderstorm complex comes out of South Dakota in the morning, say between seven and 10 am and moves into western and southwestern Minnesota, and there's going to be multiple bands have precipitation around this associated with it. Now some of those, even as you get into late morning and early afternoon, we could be looking at severe weather with those. But the main risk window appears to be 3pm to about 8pm in Minnesota. That's where, if we get enough instability, and if the orientation of that system is just so, we could see not just heavy rain of, you know, up to two, three inches in some places, but also severe weather including tornadoes and very strong winds, kind of hurricane force winds in some of the strongest parts of the storms. And then, I think if you happen to be in Wisconsin, the risk continues later into the evening and even into the overnight hours, I have to say that the overall risk appears to be centered in kind of the Eau Claire down to Black River Falls area. So, I think the risk is a little higher there for, you know, kind of a large complex of thunderstorms moving through, but it sort of begins here in Minnesota. And so even in the Twin Cities, we could be looking at severe weather sometime Wednesday afternoon after three or four o'clock.

 

Jim du Bois  15:43

So, keep an eye on the sky and fingers crossed that we get some much needed rain. And then Kenny, the next time you and I get together, we can talk about the much discussed heat dome, and whether or not it will make an appearance here in Minnesota.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  15:58

Right. I mean, that's, I think we can define the heat dome, talk about why it's called that and why it's sort of a good term and maybe a confusing one. It's kind of like the summer version of that polar vortex, right? There's there's some true scientific legitimacy to the name and to how we talk about it. But there's also obviously some confusion. Every time it's hot, doesn't mean that there's a heat dome. And every time it's cold, it doesn't mean you have a polar vortex. But yeah, so we could talk about that. And because at least one of the, one of the global climate or weather models is actually suggesting that it'll be moving into our neighborhood, we can look at what that would mean for our forecast and for our weather. But I know that Jim du Bois who, ladies and gentlemen and others, likes at hot would really appreciate it in ways that maybe other people don't.

 

Jim du Bois  16:50

Well, this is true, although I would like to see it tampered with some rain, that's for sure.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  16:55

Yeah. Well, hopefully you get a big drink of that glass of water. I mean...

 

Jim du Bois  16:59

Yes.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  16:59

...I won't be, I think that many listeners will have two to three inches of rain on Wednesday. It's just the question is exactly where is that going to line up? It could be fairly close to or even over the Twin Cities, then it could be in multiple parts of Minnesota, but it's not going to pull us out of the drought. It's just a nice drink of water.

 

Jim du Bois  17:21

Well, make sure, everyone, that you stay tuned to the skies, watch what's happening. Go to your local news source. Stay on top of the weather. And Kenny, we'll look forward to chatting with you later.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  17:33

Yeah, we'll talk maybe later this week or over the weekend. Thanks, Jim.

 

Jim du Bois  17:37

This is Way Over Our Heads. It's weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's climatologist. We'll catch you next time.

Rain Is On The Way, But Will It Put A Dent In The Drought?

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

Can we put a dent in this drought? This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld is a climatologist. Kenny, how was your Fourth of July?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:11

It was good. You know it was hot as a dog.

 

Jim du Bois  00:14

True.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:15

And how was yours?

 

Jim du Bois  00:17

It was fabulous. The only fireworks we saw, I guess you would say we're virtual. We heard plenty of fireworks last night actually going into the wee hours of this morning. This is Monday, July 5. But hey, I guess that's what the Fourth of July is all about. And hopefully, hopefully no one has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But...

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:39

Right, yeah, that would be pretty bad. It's tough on animals, too.

 

Jim du Bois  00:42

Yeah, no kidding. It is.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:43

I did see out and about in St. Paul yesterday some fireworks that had maybe drifted out... off course, started the grass on the side of the highway on fire off of 94, which I had not seen that in a while. But that's what happens. You get dry grass, there were firefighters there. It was interesting. It looked pretty well contained. And that might have even been, and for all I know, that was from a municipal fireworks show. But I...it's so dry that it doesn't take much right now, doesn't take much.

 

Jim du Bois  01:19

That is true.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:21

Yeah. So we promised our listeners, all 11 of them, that we would do a...that we would do a special episode if the potential for heavy rain showed its head. And because I'm going to be gone for about half of the coming week and into the weekend figured hey, there is a potential for some rains, some beneficial rains across Minnesota. We've got actually a couple different chances. So, we should talk about it.

 

Jim du Bois  01:48

Okay, well, Kenny, round one will be tomorrow, fingers crossed.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:56

Yeah, I think that, you know, this is a little bit better than anything we've had. We haven't dealt with very much this summer. But if you think of the precipitation that we have had, it's been generally pretty isolated. I think there was that one, there was that, what Sunday, couple weeks ago in June, where everyone got a pretty good dose of heavy rains and thunderstorms, got a half-inch to an inch over at least the eastern part of Minnesota. But we really have lacked the kind of weather systems that you know, hit broad areas of the state with meaningful precipitation. For the most part, everything we've had this summer has been forced into existence by heat and by humidity, and not necessarily by any kind of organization in the atmosphere. And so, you're left with sort of isolated to scattered thunderstorms. What we have on Tuesday, is, you know, pretty good area of lift. And of course, when we talk about lift, what we really mean is some mechanism that enables the atmosphere to rise, and of course, rising motions in the atmosphere are what lead to clouds and precipitation. And when you have sustained lift, then you can generate fairly heavy and/or widespread precipitation. So tonight, Monday night, thunderstorms are going to break out in parts of the Dakotas. And on Tuesday morning, they're going to be working their way into Minnesota. And it looks like, what it really looks like is we've got kind of a north and a south branch of this precipitation. I don't know exactly where they're going to part. But the northern branch is going to be mostly associated with whatever is leftover of those overnight thunderstorms. It actually looks like they're going to kind of congeal ,not necessarily into anything severe or anything super dangerous, just into a big blob of thundery rain that's going to work its way from west to east across mostly, mostly the northern two thirds or so of Minnesota on Tuesday morning and into Tuesday afternoon. And that batch of heavy rain, you know, moderate to heavy rain, could be prolonged enough that some areas get one to two inches. I would say you know, from that precipitation, I would expect at least a half an inch or so, in, you know, a good swath representing 30 or 40% of Minnesota, and maybe within that, half of that area getting over an inch. It looks like a good, a good soaking rain. Probably won't be you know, raining cats and dogs and just pouring down the entire time. But there'll be some, you know, some heavier bursts in there, but it's really going to be a few hours in the morning of, or in the morning or afternoon of kind of moderate to heavy precipitation, maybe some rumbles of thunder. That's the first thing, and then while that's happening to the southern part of Minnesota, it looks like it's gonna be just south of the Twin Cities but the southern part of Minnesota is going to bake pretty good. And some deep humidity is going to move in. So, basically think of kind of Redwood Falls to Red Wing, somewhere in that area. Now I could be off, if I'm off by 50 miles here, then and it shifts a little bit north, the Twin Cities certainly could be in play, it could also shift a little bit south. But it looks like somewhere between I-90 and the Twin Cities, round two is going to emerge in the afternoon. And this is going to be in response to the strong heating. And of course, with all of that lift that's already present in the atmosphere, some of that strong heating is also going to kind of bolster the other kind of cooler side of the warm front. And so, we might see intensification of some of that precipitation in the northern, that northern band, but then also really strong thunderstorms, possibly even severe thunderstorms in the southern band, and there could be actually training of thunderstorms, you remember that term.

 

Jim du Bois  05:57

Oh yes.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  05:59

Yeah, it's not that we're teaching thunderstorms how to do anything, it's not that kind of training, it's actually just the observation that meteorologists made some time ago that, that some thunderstorms kind of pass over the same location as the one before just like passing railway cars on a train would pass by the same location. And so, they call it training or cell training. It's one of the tip offs that you could have, you know, even some minor, in this case, flash flooding. I don't see a big flooding event coming out of this, Jim. But I do think that whoever gets under that afternoon band of thunderstorms has a chance of getting some, kind of hitting the jackpot getting, you know, maybe two or three inches of rain. Again, I'd say another, another maybe 20 to 30% of the state just from the afternoon is going to pick up a half an inch of rain or more. And within that area, maybe half of, half of that area also picks up an inch. So when it's all said and done, by the time we get through Tuesday, a good half of the state will have picked up at least a half an inch of rain, and maybe somewhere around a quarter to a third of the state will have picked up over an inch. And within that, those areas that get over an inch, there could be places that get two, three, maybe even four inches of rain. Again, I don't think we're looking at a major flooding event here on Tuesday. But, you know, these are going to be some delicious rains that you're gonna see. People are going to be very excited that it's, that it's raining. And you know, it's not going to hit everyone equally hard. So, if you're kind of sitting it out, you know, at least be happy for the neighbors or towns down the road that are getting it because we really need every drop right now.

 

Jim du Bois  07:47

Kenny, you mentioned there may be some severe thunderstorms on Tuesday. But this is not shaping up to be a major severe weather outbreak, is it?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  07:55

Not really. I mean, the one thing that it does have going for it tomorrow is there's a very strong boundary. I think you'll feel a big difference. If you were to start a drive, say north to south, through the Twin Cities, maybe in the afternoon, northern Twin Cities areas, you know, up in northern Anoka County maybe in the 60s, kind of cool, little bit moist, but cool. All that rain cooled air from the morning. And then on the southern end of the Twin Cities and especially a little farther south down towards Northfield and Owatonna, I think, you know, temperatures are easily going to sail into the mid and upper 80s. And it's going to be muggy. And along that boundary, you know, the Storm Prediction Center has outlooked basically a marginal risk for severe weather, that's the lowest severe weather risk that they have. But it's, it's more than nothing. So, you know, a few storms producing some hail or some gusty winds, nothing really out of hand. I don't see a major event. There could be some intense precipitation with those storms, especially where they repeat visit places. And so, the Weather Prediction Center, which used to be the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center, they're kind of like a Storm Prediction Center and that they're, they're this national center within NOAA that has kind of oversight for the entire country. They generally do the large area precipitation forecasts, and they actually have a risk, a slight risk for excessive rainfall in about the southern, southern half or so of Minnesota tomorrow. So, I don't think there's going to be a major event except that when you look at what's happened this year so far where we've had almost nothing of consequence in terms of precipitation events, this is going to be one of the, you know, has the potential anyway to be one of the better precipitation events we've had since spring began.So. it's kind of exciting.

 

Jim du Bois  09:52

So we see Wednesday and Thursday being very, very pleasant days, probably high temperatures below normal for this time of the year. But then we have another event coming up on Friday.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:04

Yeah, you're right about Wednesday and Thursday look spectacular. The Friday one is going to be iffy. We won't know until it gets a little bit closer in time, where it's actually going to hit. The last couple days of numerical forecast models have been quite bullish or quite suggestive that, that somewhere in Minnesota is going to be a major hit. And this would be because you kind of take all of Tuesday's lift and moisture and multiply it by two or three, it's just a longer event with more moving parts more moisture, more lift, got more going for it. And so actually, we you know, for all we know, we could be talking about something that ends up happening in Iowa, but people listening should kind of take note that over the weekend, especially on Friday, we are seeing the potential for some very heavy precipitation. Again, don't know where it would be. And of course, the heaviest precipitation would be in a fairly narrow axis. But, you know, a lot of the models have been showing 2, 3, 4 inches of rainfall over an area that's about a third the size of Minnesota, so, and then within that, little streaks and swaths that are even heavier. I don't know where it's going to be, it's a little bit, well, do we want it to hit Minnesota on the nose, because that means we're probably going to have some erosion of those dry top soils and some flooding if that does occur. Or is it going to pass off maybe to the south, and we get grazed by it or barely, or barely notice it at all. But I do think there's a pretty good chance that on Friday, there will be meaningful and heavy precipitation somewhere in or very close to Minnesota and it's worth, it's worth paying attention. Not a really strong severe weather signal with that system, either even though it's got a little more going for it. Just because wherever it's going to be raining the most and having the most thunderstorms, it's probably going to be pretty cool from all of that activity, and you're not going to be able to build up that instability. Farther south, where I don't think Minnesota is in play for this at all, it will be just warm and humid. And they'll have chances for some severe weather. You know, it looks like that could be Iowa or even Missouri. But yeah, just potential for major precipitation events. So I thought, you know, gosh, we haven't had a contender that looked like this yet this summer. I mean, even just the notion, Jim, that we could see, not one but two widespread soaking rains in Minnesota over the next several days. It's almost like we're in a different year all of a sudden, but of course it is 2021. And as we are speaking right now, the temperatures have soared into the mid and upper 90s on Monday afternoon. So yeah, I think you know, if we do get these rains, that would be a pretty big deal.

 

Jim du Bois  13:00

Well, the rains will be welcome relief, for sure. But we can't get overly excited because this is not going to break the drought, even the best case scenarios, correct?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  13:11

Yeah, I mean, I think we're kind of past the point. That's a really good point, Jim. We're sort of past that point where we could maybe bank on one, one good soaking rain kind of getting us out of this thing. I think that what we could hope for is that if we get some solid, heavy rains, you know, that really soak us, or some part of the area really gets soaked. Do I think those areas will at least be able to hold off, hold the drought back a bit while that moisture works through the system? I don't know exactly how long that would be. But you know, if you're in a place that gets four or five inches of rain, obviously your drought categories are not going to be worsening that week. And it might, might be able to put a little bit of a dent in the drought and in the drought's intensity and its expansiveness. But we, in order to come out of the drought, Jim, I think, I think we need, you know, they don't all have to be that big. They don't have to be major events. But we need regular precipitation, you know, so if we get this heavy one on, if we get heavy precipitation on Tuesday, and maybe, maybe even it delivers as advertised. And then the end of the week system indeed hits Minnesota, I think that could set us up for a better outcome if we then get kind of regularly scheduled precipitation. But I'm still not seeing anything on the charts that suggests the patterns are about to switch wholesale. In fact, if I look out, the next week and a half or so look pretty cool and kind of rainy on most of the models as we, as these systems work through. But then, everything from kind of mid-July onwards looks like we're just back into the hot, hot weather. So, so my concern is not so much if this precipitation happens, and we come out of the drought or can sort of reverse it or at least stall it. My bigger concern is if we don't get it, and we, then we go back into the soup, I mean, and into the steam bath or into the dry heat or whatever it is, without getting that beneficial precipitation. And you know, I think then things are going to really turn. Because if July is hot and dry at a time when you're already in a major precipitation deficit, that's only going to hurt things.

 

Jim du Bois  15:31

Well fingers crossed on rain this week. And, boy, we'll just really hope that it brings some relief to those drought stricken areas. But Kenny, we do have, I guess, the waning hours now of what has been a long weekend for many of us. So enjoy, I guess the the final hours of the Fourth of July weekend. And we'll look forward to chatting with you, Kenny, again soon.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  15:57

Yeah, definitely. You enjoy the remainder of the holiday weekend, Jim. And we'll talk to you kind of when I get back in town, assuming there's something to talk about which there always is because it's a weather and climate podcasts, and there's always weather.

 

Jim du Bois  16:12

This is Way Over Our Heads, and we'll catch you next time.

A Hot Holiday Weekend, But Parts Of Minnesota Could See Storms On The Fourth

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

Hey folks, it's not 1988. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist Kenny. The heat's back on, right?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:15

Yeah. Oh, you could queue up some Guns and Roses or some DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince and it'll feel just like 1988.

 

Jim du Bois  00:28

That's right.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:29

Yeah, the heat’s back on. Well, first, Jim, how are you?

 

Jim du Bois  00:34

Kenny, I'm doing well. I am, as you know, enjoying the hot weather. I just wish it were a little less dry. So I'm spending a lot of time watering the garden, watering the lawn, so rain would be most welcome.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:51

Yeah, it would be nice. It's, you know, the grasses are really brown. And I think, I think I've stumbled onto why people, because I, you know, my job, Jim, I've done a lot of interviews. And I don't mind. You know, I love talking with media and talking to people about, about how the, how the weather and climate are shaping up. But it's such a pervasive comparison. Oh, how much is this, like 1988? So I guess for the listeners benefit, I'll say it's Friday, July 2, 2021. It's been very dry. It's been very warm. And we have official drought designations across the vast majority of Minnesota. Over 80% of the state, I believe, is in moderate drought at this point. And we have about a little over 10% is designated as severe drought. So, as you get into this kind of situation, people want to make comparisons to other big events. And the most recent, really big drought was in 1988. And I think I understand why people want to make the comparison. And tell me if you think this is right, Jim. You notice, so here's my theory, because just to kind of spoil it for everybody, 1988 was massive, and much more severe than where we are so far, much more widespread. And the impacts were enormous. I mean, this was a an utter disaster through and through. But I think what the typical person remembers from it is the brown grass. You know, that's kind of the first thing you notice about really dry, you know that the grass is brown is that you remember the brown grass?

 

Jim du Bois  02:42

I do remember the brown grass. Yeah, I would say that would be probably what sticks in my mind the most because at that time, I was not a homeowner yet. So I was not worried about lawns and didn't have a garden. So really, that's about it, just remembering all the brown grass around.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:01

Yeah. And so what's interesting is when you have, I mean, this drought, the one we're in now has been pretty well behaved. It's not a sudden drought. It's been ramping up to this for almost a year and a half, two years in some places. But we're kind of at the early stages, or, you know, we, the drought might end, too. But I mean, we said if this is going to really ramp up, then then we're kind of at the early stages, but one of the first things to show signs of stress is grass. Because, you know, there's just not enough moisture in the soil. The persistent evaporation from having sunny days and warm conditions, and you just lose that moisture. And so, some of the some of the plants, especially grasses, kind of show the signs, first, though, it's kind of iconic imagery, because it's something that everyone can relate to. Almost all property owners have grass on their property. And so they, you know, either have to water it more or you know, like a lot of us do, just forget about it. And you know, wait till it rains, basically. And so you see the yellows and the browns, but 1988 had much, much more than yellow and brown grasses. I mean, there was very little water left in some of the aquifers. It was just dry, dry, dry. And I think that if you look at some of the numbers, you know, with the exception of where you live and where I used to live, Jim and kind of south Minneapolis and basically the center, the urban core of the Twin Cities area. With the exception of the urban and suburban core of the Twin Cities area, 1988 was the second year of a two-year drought and 1987 had been very hot and very dry across the entire state. And the reason I except the Twin City, you know say except the Twin Cities area is because we had that superstorm right in the middle of 1987, in July of 1987, that dumped, you know, a foot of rainfall over over parts of the Twin Cities. And that kind of, you know, added a lot of water back into the system in a very localized area, but the rest of the state stayed really dry. And I looked at some different stations and just kind of comparing, alright, what's the difference in, you know, kind of 18 months precipitation, that between, you know, what we have now, so going from January of 2020, through the end of June this year. How does that compare with where we were in 1988, when we looked at, if we looked at the 18 months, precipitation? And it's kind of, I wouldn't say night and day, but the precipitation deficits in 1988, were much, much larger. So, just as an example, looking at the Twin Cities area, the 18 month, precipitation isn't really all that bad at all. We're at basically 12 inches or so this year. And we're close to 30 inches last year. So there's really only a few inches of of deficit versus 1988 when we were in a much more dire position, we only received about six inches of precipitation through June at this time. And even with the big superstorm in 1987, it was still generally a dry year. And other towns that didn't have that superstorm in 1987, like out in western Minnesota, Jim, they only had between the two years, only about 25 to 30 inches of precipitation, and are already kind of at that point this year. So, it's it's just you can't really make the comparison. There were more hot days in 1987 than there was in 2020, and more hot days in 1988 than there have been in 2020. In fact, as hot as this year has been here in the Twin Cities, it's been hot. I mean, I'm not Pooh poohing that this has been a hot summer. And we have had, what have we had 12 days with temperatures at or above 90 degrees. By this time in 1988, we were already at 17. I mean, it's a substantial gap. Yeah. And July really, really, really picked it up. I mean that the number of oh gosh, what was it in July of 1988 in the Twin Cities, and the Twin Cities is just one example, you actually see more dramatic numbers in western Minnesota in July of 1988, we had 17 days in the Twin Cities that were at or above 90 degrees. So, by the end of July, we already had 34...34 90 degree days down and we were still going. August, you know, we picked up another 10. So, in western Minnesota, there were communities that had over 50 days where the temperature was 90 or higher. And I think in Madison, Minnesota was 60 days. So we're not, we're really not the same level of heat, not the same level of precipitation deficit. The best analogy I can come up with Jim is, you know, we were blindfolded. Now, we don't know where we're going with this. You never know the final outcome when you're in drought, because this could continue through the summer. And then by that point, if it's still been really dry, and really hot, then I think the comparisons to 1988 will be more appropriate because there will be some severe consequences. But we could also have what happened in 2007. Or, or in other years where the spigot kind of turns on and we start getting a lot of rain. But as long as we're blindfolded, making the comparison between now and 1988 is kind of like if you were climbing a random mountain blindfolded, you didn't know which one it was, and you got up a couple thousand feet and concluded that you were on Mount Everest. You can't. You can't really, I mean, I don't know if that works for you, but right now, we're kind of at the level if we keep the mountain analogy with our drought, we're kind of, we're somewhere in the Appalachians, right? And 1988 is a Himalayan drought. It's enormous. And so assuming that we're gonna end up at those same heights is a little bit premature at this point. So, that's what I have to say about 1988. But I mean, you know, we're in a pretty precarious position right now, for sure.

 

Jim du Bois  09:50

Well, speaking of precarious positions, parts of the western part of the United States and Canada had some record breaking temperatures over the last several days. I mean, you talk about the blowtorch on, there was a town, wasn't an in British Columbia? I can't remember the name of the town but that was an all-time record.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  10:12

Portland, Oregon hit 116 degrees. I think there was a town, and there were some 120 degree readings. We're talking Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. That is, yeah, blowtorch. And you, you kind of, you're such a professional Jim, you say like, oh, they broke some records, yeah they obliterated records. Yeah. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen and other folks. Jim du Bois is being a professional broadcaster. He doesn't want to, you know, blow things out of proportion. But the thing is, this heatwave blew itself out of proportion. I mean, you know, there were anecdotes, I don't know if you've read these from forecasters, professional forecasters, including those at the National Weather Service, who said, you know, when we saw this thing showing up on some of the weather models, we had to go back to the models assuming that they were tripped out on something and that they were, that there was something wrong with them, because the values were so anomalous, coming out of the forecast models, that the forecasters had to assume that they had made mistakes. And it was only until the heatwave got closer, and you started seeing confirmation on some of the weather charts that, oh, my gosh, this is an enormous, you know, I know, it's popular to call it a heat dome. But this is basically an enormous ridge of high pressure and high pressure heights that yeah, I guess it is kind of dome shaped that actually would be capable of producing extraordinary heat. I mean, we're talking about places that, you know, it's not like Portland doesn't ever get hot. I mean, they had previously had an all time record high temperature of 107 degrees, which is no joke. I mean, they can, this area can get hot, because it's relatively arid, and if the correct airmass is in place, but they had never gotten hot like this, they broke their records by nine degrees. And that's an all time record. In Portland, Oregon isn't a brand new city. I mean, it's been around for a while and has a long, long recorded weather history. So, that would be like, put it into Minnesota terms, the highest temperature ever recorded in Minneapolis was 108 degrees back in July of 1936. So, that would be like if we clocked in at 117. Yeah, right. Oh, and the record high temperature in Minnesota, depending on exactly, it's you know, 114 degrees in Beardsley, Minnesota. There's another older record from Moorhead, Minnesota, but Beardsley clocks in at 114 degrees. So, just imagine now we've got a heat wave where it's, you know, they're coming in at 123. Unreal, yeah. So that, yeah. And you know, and we, you know, in, in this business, even when you're not talking about climate change, you kind of never say never, because the truth is that, if the conditions are right, you can get whatever the maximum potential of those conditions is. So, you can get tornadoes in Alaska, you can get snow falling in Hawaii, if the conditions are right. You can get extraordinary 120 degree heat, presumably even in Minnesota, if the conditions are right, but we have never recorded that. And they had never recorded anything like this in Oregon, Washington, parts of northern California, western Idaho, and of course, southern Canada. Nobody thinks of, you know, Canada as a place where the cables melt. I mean, that's what's happening. And of course, these these locations also aren't really set up to deal with extreme heat because it even though it does happen, it's so rare. So you know, you have more air conditioning in Minnesota than you have in those areas.

 

Jim du Bois  14:13

Right.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  14:14

Yeah, it's just real hard to cope with that kind of heat.

 

Jim du Bois  14:18

Well, we just wrapped up the month of June and correct me if I'm wrong, Kenny but wasn't this past month the second warmest on record for the Twin Cities?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  14:29

Yeah, yeah, it was. The Twin Cities has a pretty long record too. We can push that back into the 1870s. So, the second warmest in the Twin Cities. It looks like it's the warmest on record in Duluth. Most of the major weather stations in Minnesota, so that's, you know, St. Cloud, Rochester, the Twin Cities and Duluth, were all top five for June warmth. International Falls was a little lower down, and then as we look into some of the other non, not the primary stations, we see that basically from the Iron Range up to the north central part of the state up around the Canadian border, it wasn't quite as exceptionally warm. But you know, I think once the final numbers are in for the state, this will be the second or third warmest June on record. Once all that's been kind of spatially averaged. Very warm June, no surprise, we were dry, only tiny slivers of the state, you know, constituting single-digit percentages of the state actually had above normal precipitation. And these would be areas that got under the favorable location for some of those heavy thunderstorms that we had only a few times during the entire month of June. But if he ended up under one of them, especially the ones that were kind of stationary, we had some a few days ago, and then, you know, a few different times earlier in the month, that's basically what you're seeing. Nobody, really, there weren't any large areas that got too much rain, it was just the very small areas benefited from from being under the big thunderstorms for you know, we didn't have any real flooding. There was no infrastructural damage from these. The other 90 some percent of the state came up really short for precipitation. So, summarizing June, it was very warm, and it was very dry. Most locations in the state came out with about half the precipitation they would normally get. That's not good. I mean, that's why you got brown grasses. And you know, with this kind of sunlight this strong this time of year, plus clear skies, that's kind of a recipe for losing more moisture out of your soil. We're, we haven't seen the thing where the lakes are now receding from the shore. We haven't seen that yet. That's another 1988 special, where, you know, you look at the old photographs and docks are just connecting the shore to more sand. We don't have that yet. We're not at that point. But we have now seen, you know, in some of the like wildlife management areas and some of the little wetlands where you've got little ponds and kind of marshy potholey areas, we have started to see some of those drying up. So, small bodies of water that aren't particularly deep, that, you know, sit out in parts of western Minnesota, central Minnesota, we have seen some of those showing signs of drying up. So, until we start getting more precipitation we'll see more of that.

 

Jim du Bois  17:31

Well, Kenny, we're recording this on Friday, July 2. We're going into a long, for a lot of folks, Fourth of July weekend. It looks like it's gonna be hot over the next several days. A cold front is coming in. So, any relief in sight, perhaps Sunday, Sunday night into Monday morning?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  17:53

Well, you know, so there's a there's an adage in forecasting that when you're when you're in drought, go dry. So, if you're in a drought situation and you see, you know, you see chances for precipitation coming, expect to be underwhelmed. We do on Sunday have a cold front coming through the region and I mean, if you believe the weather models anyway, it's gonna disrupt some Fourth of July's. I don't know, if I share the confidence that a lot of the public forecasters have that oh, this is going to be very small. There are folks in Minnesota who are going to be out on the Fourth of July, and it's going to be great, and they have nothing to worry about. But I'd say there are chances of some parts of central Minnesota, possibly near the Twin Cities having storms, thunderstorms, right around fireworks time. And you know, not even because of shortages, not everyone is doing fireworks. I think it would be kind of, I guess ironic, that you know, in a year where we're begging for rain and can't get it the one time we do would be when nobody wants it to rain because they want to, you know, be outside celebrating with their friends and families. I don't think it's gonna be a washout at all. But I think there will be some isolated thunderstorms on Sunday on and off different parts of Minnesota on Sunday and possibly in central Minnesota Sunday evening. I don't think that is going to constitute widespread relief. I think anybody who gets hit by a shower or thunderstorm is quite lucky. Maybe they'll get up to a half an inch or an inch if it's really if they really get under the core. But yeah, then allegedly, it's going to cool down. And so we have a hot weekend, you know really hot Saturday and Sunday. The only thing that might prevent it from getting out of hand for temperatures is that there've been a lot of fires up in Canada, and even though our winds at the surface where we all breathe and live are going to be coming out of the southwest, the winds aloft, go a few 1000 feet up, those winds are going to become and they're going to turn on Saturday, and they're going to start coming out of the west northwest, and there could be some of that smoke drifting in. And it might be thick enough by the time we get into Sunday, especially to filter some of that sunlight out and knock us back down a couple of degrees, which is good. It would actually be welcome because Jim, parts of Minnesota if they don't get smoke-filtered sunshine, if that smoke doesn't end up filtering, or they don't get some clouds, some of the charts show that show areas of central and western Minnesota going over 100 degrees this weekend, both days. And so even mid-90s here in central and southern Minnesota. And it would be okay, I think by most people, if you're knocked a couple or a few degrees off of that,

 

Jim du Bois  20:58

Right. Absolutely.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  20:59

I you know, yeah. So, it looks like a hot, Saturday, Sunday, Monday is becoming increasingly iffy. It has generally been looking like another hot day, but there's going to be this front coming through on Sunday. And depending on how far south of Minnesota that front gets, we might not be quite as warm on Monday as it had looked like. But temperatures will probably be in the 80s or 90s on Monday. And then things start to kind of cool down, cool in quotes, as we drop into the 80s mostly for high temperatures for the majority of the week. There have been signs of some actually legitimately cool conditions setting up as high pressure from Hudson Bay kind of possibly drifts over our region later in the coming week. But there still aren't any signs of really widespread heavy precipitation. There have been some signs that parts of southern Minnesota, generally south of the Twin Cities, could be quite wet on on Tuesday, and that would be welcome. I mean, we'll take anything, Jim, we'll take anything even if not everyone gets in on it, it'll be great to see some folks are doing better than then we've been doing. But we don't see yet any signs of a widespread, you know, one to two inch rainfall where, you know, where dozens of counties get in on the action. I think if we see one of those, we'll probably have to do a special recording.

 

Jim du Bois  22:23

Okay.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  22:25

Something so, something what's typically so mundane, as, you know, a low pressure system, producing some steady, steady, widespread rains. I think that would be almost breaking news if we could get that. And of course, it wouldn't take us out of drought, but it would certainly not hurt.

 

Jim du Bois  22:42

Well, enjoy Kenny this nice long weekend ahead. Be aware of the high temperatures. Make sure you hydrate well. Make sure if you feel any signs that your body is succumbing to the heat that you take appropriate actions. And I guess Happy Fourth of July to everyone.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  23:00

Yeah, Happy Independence Day. Drink that water. Also, be aware of thunderstorms, especially out on boats and whatnot Sunday. Lightning's a killer, so stay out of the way of those storms and enjoy the weekend.

 

Jim du Bois  23:13

All right.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  23:15

Good talking with you, Jim.

 

Jim du Bois  23:16

Kenny, good talking to you as always. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll see you next time.

Is There Any Drought Relief In Sight?

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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Abnormally dry and drought conditions expanded in Minnesota during the past week. Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld and Jim du Bois discuss the drought and the potential for some much needed rains this week.

Episode recorded on June 25, 2021. Check back for a transcript.

Forty Years Ago This Afternoon, A Tornado Swept Across Portions Of The Twin Cities

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld & Jim du Bois

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Note: This episode was recorded on Friday, June 11.

Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld and Jim du Bois discuss the June 14, 1981 tornado that struck Edina, Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Har Mar Mall in Roseville. Also, a look at the rapidly expanding drought conditions in Minnesota.

 SPEAKERS

Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld

 

Jim du Bois  00:00

Edina, Lake Harriet, HarMar? Whatever you call it, it's the 40th anniversary of a significant tornado event in this area. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld is a climatologist. Kenny, we'll get to the 40th anniversary discussion here momentarily, but, boy, just looking out the window at the garden in the yard, you can tell that something kind of turned the corner over the last few days.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  00:34

Well, we were super hot, right? I mean, newsflash, it was hot as hell. And yeah, and we didn't get any precipitation or, you know, some people got a little downpour here and there, but there wasn't anything widespread and substantial. And our gardens, our grasses. Everyone is feeling the effect of that. It's become really dry. So I know we're going to talk about the tornado, but we can really quickly recap the heatwave, shall we?

 

Jim du Bois  01:05

That sounds good, Kenny.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  01:06

All right. So we are speaking on Friday, June 11. This should be the last day of the consecutive run of 90 degree highs and 70 degree lows in the Twin Cities. So I think we can call it, the heat wave will break. today. Although if you look at the Weather Service forecast, it's not exactly cold next week. They've still got temperatures, you know, in the 80s and 90s in much of Minnesota through next week. It's just not as humid and not quite as persistent. I think there's going to be some ups and downs. But, so the main event heat wave will end at some point on Friday, probably before most people hear this. Maybe it'll end with a little pop, some thunder. But I think the strongest storms will be out in Wisconsin, and you know, before we recorded, overnight on Thursday night and into Friday morning there's monster thunderstorms in the Dakotas. I mean, just from eastern Montana, into especially North Dakota, but also parts of South Dakota, they had reports of wind driven tennis ball-sized hail. And the winds were were being clocked by I think it was one of the stations out of Williston, had a, a real weather station, had a 93 mile an hour wind gust. So there were some really strong winds. And these storms were producing pretty large hail. So, wind driven large hail can pack a punch and do a lot of damage. We don't have anything like that to worry about. It's just been hot. It's probably going to not rain very much until the next time we talk. And that's going to be over a week. And as we were talking about before we went on, yep, Minnesota has slipped or I should say lurched into drought. We've been kind of teetering on the edge of it. Now over 40% of the state is actually in an official drought designation of moderate drought. And the entire state is at least abnormally dry, which is kind of a pre-drought category. So, the majority of the state is either abnormally dry, or in that first level of drought, which is called moderate drought. And there's even some pockets of the next level, which is severe drought in parts of southern Minnesota. We've just, these precipitation deficits are catching up with us. We're spending too much time in between rainfall events, and when it rains is not enough to catch us up. And as we had happen, you know, then we have a scorching heat wave laying on top of that, and that just made it, it's been too much. So, we need to come out of this pattern or it's just going to escalate. But yeah, we're at the beginning of a drought officially now.

 

Jim du Bois  03:40

And Kenny, there's really no immediate relief in sight, correct? Even going out 6, 10 days.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  03:46

I mean, you know, the Weather Service mentioned in their discussions last night and this morning, in some of the recent discussions, that it's not the same heatwave, for sure. It looks like there's going to be a couple hot days next week. But this sort of day after day run does not look like it's making a return. But it's gonna be a while before we're, you know, down in the low 50s at night. I hope that happens in the next week or so. But it doesn't look very likely at this point. But yeah, I wouldn't say the kind of relief that you're thinking of. On the other hand, Jim, when it's 95 degrees every day, and and the nights don't get below 70, you know, maybe, maybe high of 88 feels like relief.

 

Jim du Bois  04:33

It's all relative, isn't it?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:35

Yeah, I think it is.

 

Jim du Bois  04:37

And I also assume no real relief in sight as well regarding precipitation.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  04:44

Yeah, this isn't super promising. I was on a radio show this morning speaking with a host from the Two Harbors area, and we were just talking about how the weather models right now are very up optimistic as they have been for months, that it's going to start raining hard in about seven days, but it just never gets much closer than that. And so, it's hard to have now that we've had this multi month pattern where it looks wet, it looks like you're gonna get into a wet pattern, but it doesn't really materialize, maybe one out of four times that actually materialize, and so you end up with, you know, one week per month, it's actually getting decent precipitation. It's hard to trust that prognosis. There's nothing really in the forecast for the next week or so showing significant precipitation in Minnesota. Certainly nothing to start pulling us out of this major deficit that's building. But you know, the weather is not that easy to predict, once you get into, you know, that two-to-five-week period. And so, maybe Jim, maybe there's a pattern change coming that we don't see, maybe we're going to get, you know, we're expecting a really active tropical weather season. And maybe, maybe a couple of these are going to come up the zipper just right up the Mississippi and dump a bunch of rain on us or at least help export some of their moisture into our region. And, you know, imbue the next systems that come by after that with extra moisture, and we end up getting dumped. It's hard to know. But right now, we're in a drought pattern, and I don't see any strong signals of that changing soon.

 

Jim du Bois  06:22

Well, let's certainly hope that we get a pattern shift and get some of that much needed precipitation. It sounds like dry conditions and drought are fairly common in the western parts of the United States right now, hearing about very serious drought conditions in Colorado, concerns about water in California, wildfires in California, potentially also Washington State and Oregon. So, just a real need for precipitation in a rather substantial part of the country, it sounds like.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  06:53

Yeah, yeah, basically, the western half or so of the country is running pretty dry, maybe the western 40%. And we're on the eastern edge of that. And then we're starting to get some signs of it. What's interesting is, you don't have to go too far to the east. You know, in the eastern US where I'm going to be next week. I mean, there've been Flash Flood Watches, and they've got precipitation surpluses. So, it's really, we're just on different sides of the same pattern where we're stuck in getting kind of dry air pulled into our region, there are other areas that are in that kind of non-stop conveyor belt moisture.

 

Jim du Bois  07:29

Well, as we had promised in the tease, we're going to talk about a tornado event that took place 40 years ago, this coming Monday, June 14, and it did depend where you were living in the Twin Cities at the time in terms of how you would probably describe the event. If you were in Minneapolis, it was the Lake Harriet tornado. If you were in Edina, the Edina tornado. It famously knocked down the marquee on the Edina Theater, which sadly has now apparently gone out of business in the wake of COVID. But then it could have been the HarMar tornado if you were in that area. And it was a rather significant event. Kenny, how did that particular event unfold?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  08:15

Yes, so it was Father's Day weekend, and I actually did a fun run with my dad and my brother that weekend and it poured, poured, poured, poured in the morning. And it was just, you know, we think of this event, and I've, you know, done research on severe weather, and we remember there's a tornado that went across the Twin Cities, and that was a big deal. But that whole weekend was very stormy and even in the morning, the morning of the tornado, a violent thunderstorm complex moved across the southern Twin Cities metro and into kind of the Rice County area, Northfield area, and it produced estimated winds of 80 to 120 miles an hour. This was a completely separate storm, Sunday morning, June 14, 1981. It was demolishing outbuildings in rural parts of the southern Twin Cities area. So, that was, we just had a, you know, meteorologically we had strong winds aloft, we had a moist, very humid airmass moving in, and a low-pressure area approaching from the west bringing in a cold front, and that's just a really good recipe for severe weather. And so, later that day as the air became quite muggy in the Twin Cities area, a thunderstorm blossomed over the southwestern Twin Cities metropolitan area, started producing hail in the Lake Minnetonka areas. There were a couple thunderstorm cells, but the main one moved into the Edina area in the late afternoon and produced a tornado not too far, just a little bit southwest of 50th and France, and that tornado tracked right over the Edina movie theater, twisted and then bent down, I don't know if you remember the old pictures, but it bent that marquee and then kind of twisted it to the ground, and then it tracked from that point over essentially western and northern Lake Harriet.  I mean it crossed about half of the lake and hit particularly hard the pavilion at Beard's Plaisance. It threw that, lifted it off its structure and threw it into the lake, picked up a bunch of water from the lake, picked up some fish from the lake, which is something that tornadoes like to do occasionally. Knocked down almost every tree in the Roberts Bird Sanctuary, pretty much every tree in the Rose Gardens and the old park commissioner house by Lyndale Farmstead was damaged pretty extensively. And then the tornado just tracked over the Chicago-Lake area past, went and damaged old Agassiz School. Mercifully, it actually appeared to briefly lift off the ground and miss the area between the University of Minnesota and downtown Minneapolis, and then it went back down near St. Anthony Park in St. Paul, tracked into the HarMar area where it actually deposited some of those fish from Lake Harriet into the parking lot.

 

Jim du Bois  11:05

Wow.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  11:06

Neat little sight. Did a lot of residential and tree damage at the time, and then moved into Roseville where it finally dissipated after doing extensive damage. I think officially it was 83 injuries and one fatality near Lake Harriet, was rated an F3 tornado, I guess retroactively, we would call it an EF3, pretty damaging winds probably in the, you know, it's always an estimate, in 50 mile an hour range. And it was not enormous, but it was a good size tornado occasionally up to a half a mile wide at the base. And yeah, I mean it was, and then we were a little slow to pick up on it. So, the original warnings, I lived not too far from Lake Harriet. That's where I grew up. So, we had the winds pass our house, I mean, big gusts of wind and you can see the trees kind of bending and, but we didn't know that there was a tornado, there was no warning yet. It was about three or four minutes after the wind subsided that the first report officially came in and the sirens went off. And so, there was a little bit of a catch-up game going on between the warnings and where the tornado actually was. And that led to some confusion. Initially, it was assumed that there were three separate tornadoes: one in Edina, and one in Minneapolis, and one in Roseville. And it wasn't until a couple days later that it was confirmed to be a single track. The former State Climatologist Earl Kuehnast walked the entire length of the tornado path and was able to confirm a pretty much continuous track.

 

Jim du Bois  12:43

Well, Kenny, we all have memories of that day. I remember I had worked an early shift, 5:30am at a radio station in the Twin Cities. I was living over by the University of Minnesota at the time, it was Father's Day, as you mentioned, and we were having dinner for my dad. So, I had gone home about 2:30 or so and caught a brief nap until I was roused by the Civil Defense sirens and walked down to our front porch where my mom and dad were sitting and my mom who grew up on a farm said oh, we already heard the tornado pass by. We were living, or my parents were living at that time by Bde, Bde Maka Ska. So, it crossed rather close to my childhood home. So that was my memory. But then of course, I went back to work and drove down to the site around, it would have been 38th and Bryant and phoned in from something quaint called a telephone booth to the radio station and described what had happened. Talked to a couple of people whose houses had been in the path. But what are your memories, Kenny, of that day?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  13:52

Oh, I mean, it was, I was you know, playing soccer in the backyard. The sky turned kind of green, and I was already, so I was already a huge weather fan even though I was seven, I was only seven years old. But I loved storms. I was terrified of them. I remember we were playing soccer outside, there was a brief kind of a sun shower, and then it got muggier and within about 15 minutes or a half an hour of that, you can see this much darker and more ominous clouds on the horizon. And our horizon, we're south Minneapolis, so we could basically see, you know, maybe 10 miles or something because it was, there's lots of trees and I was sort of looking up because of very dark clouds not too far away. And my mom told my friend he had to go home. And I went into the house and then kind of watched as the winds picked up. And you know, they were pushing the trees almost to the point of snapping and bending but you know, almost uprooting and almost snapping but they never did. But I did remember very distinctly that the trees were kind of pointed down the street to the north at the beginning of the storm, at the beginning of this gust, and then about a minute later, they were pointing kind of almost, not quite the opposite direction. I didn't know what that meant at the time. It was only years later I figured out oh, that was you know, we were about a mile away from the tornado that was the circulation of the tornado passing. The winds would have been, as it's to our northwest, the winds would have come, you know, essentially, kind of out of the west or southwest initially. And then as the tornado passed, they would have been basically coming out of the northeast. So, that sort of made sense. I would say 50 to 70 mile an hour winds, 50 to 60 mile an hour winds in our neighborhood. But you only had to go a few blocks to the north, and you can see trees down, trees down on houses, and then the more significant damage as you got into the area where you were 38th, you know, the Lyndale Farmstead area, Agassiz School I think it was 38th and Grand and then that whole area up into Chicago-Lake, they were hit very hard.

 

Jim du Bois  15:53

Well, Kenny, we will chat again in about two week’s time, you and your family are going to be riding roller coasters throughout the eastern and southeastern part of the country, correct?

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  16:04

That is correct. Guilty pleasure we have. We've always been roller coaster enthusiasts. It's something I've done with the kids for several years. So, got a little road trip planned to go visit some of the good ones.

 

Jim du Bois  16:18

Well, Kenny, make sure you enjoy, and everybody stay safe over the next 48 hours or so probably, especially the next 12 hours, it'll still be pretty hot. Stay hydrated. Don't work too hard outside. Pay attention to your body's signs. And Kenny, we'll look forward to checking in with you when you're back on terra firma, and not somewhere up on a roller coaster.

 

Kenny Blumenfeld  16:44

Yeah, losing my mind going down a big steep drop. Alright, well, thanks, Jim. You have a great weekend, and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.

 

Jim du Bois  16:52

This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld’s a climatologist. We'll talk to you soon.