Another Winter Storm on the Anniversary of the Domebuster!
SPEAKERS
Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld
Jim du Bois 00:00
Well, it's the first big one for the Twin Cities at least. 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 got to be excited. You did a documentary on this. After all, this is real winter, or at least sort of quasi real winter coming our way. Correct?
Kenny Blumenfeld 00:22
Yeah, either. Jim, I gotta say I like your teaser, you're more confident than I am. Maybe I'll have you handle the forecasting, take care of it. I'll ask you questions. Tell us, Jim. How much snow can we expect over the Twin Cities area? Go ahead.
Jim du Bois 00:39
Well, someone who is more educated in this area than I am, is saying we could see four to eight inches, at least in the Twin Cities area, and more, of course, down to the south of us or the southeast of us in particular.
Kenny Blumenfeld 00:54
Yeah, you know what, these storms are always a hotbed of uncertainty. And so we're recording it on Thursday evening. Most people will hear this hopefully before the snow starts, but there's probably going to be a lot that changes between when we're recording this and when the snow actually begins. And you are correct that as of, you know, Thursday afternoon, all of the signs have been pointing to a swath of very heavy snow, kind of oriented south, southwest or west southwest and east northeast, across basically an area from say, northwestern Iowa into south central and then southeastern Minnesota, just kind of nicking the Twin Cities with, you know, appreciable snow in the southern, southeastern parts of the Twin Cities, you know, several inches, as you alluded to, but maybe, maybe up to a foot or more than a foot. The models have all been really happy about, you know, 14, 15 inches of snow in these little isolated bull's eyes, seems like it's most likely to be just south and east of the Twin Cities. But I gotta tell you there, Jim, it would only take a 25 to 30 mile shift to bring that band southeast and leave the Twin Cities high and dry, with very little snow in the northwestern part of the metro and, you know, only a few inches, couple few inches in the center, and maybe you know, a little more in the southeast, or shifted the other way. And we're all of a sudden, you know, snow central. So, it'll be interesting to see. Actually, some of the models have hinted at the heaviest snow setting up over the Twin Cities, some of the recent models, but these things bob and weave and go up and down all the time. And you can't focus on any one model, because it'll drive you crazy, because the next one will come in and completely contradict it. But yeah, several inches at least. We have the potential for more, we also have the potential for less if things go the other way. But in any case, I'm real confident there's a 10 inch-plus, kind of a double digit snowstorm unfolding for a little narrow swath of southern, southeastern Minnesota somewhere in there.
Jim du Bois 03:13
So the culprit here is a Colorado low, not an Alberta Clipper. So, this is a classic setup for a winter storm in Minnesota, isn't it?
Kenny Blumenfeld 03:24
Yeah. So when I was back in my, finishing my undergrad, and listeners should know I did that really late. I was, you know, I was sort of take two or almost three of being a student but I finally finished it up, you know, late in my 20s and I did a really neat senior project where I actually looked at all the times that it snowed heavily in the Twin Cities. And then I went to the weather maps and I traced the track of the low pressure system because it's almost always a low pressure system that caused the heavy snow, and what's really interesting is we do get some heavy snow from Alberta Clippers, but generally heavy in terms of, you know, high accumulations, more than four inches, but that's usually a fairly light in terms of its character the snows kind of light and powdery but those can be somewhat blizzardy. And then we have the Colorado low, which is a storm system that forms in eastern Colorado. It often dips down into the panhandle region of Texas and Oklahoma and then hooks northeastward into the middle or, usually it's the middle Mississippi Valley or the upper Great Lakes region. That trajectory used to give the Col...has given the Colorado low, you, I'm gonna make you say it, Jim. What's the unfortunate name that also sometimes refers to these Colorado lows?
Jim du Bois 04:49
Is that the Panhandle hooker?
Kenny Blumenfeld 04:51
Yeah, say it again, say it again.
Jim du Bois 04:53
The Panhandle Hooker.
Kenny Blumenfeld 04:55
Yeah, I'm on state time here, so I can't really say that, but that's correct. That's because it hooked. Yeah, nobody's thinking of the other meaning for the Panhandle Hooker. But it's the same storm. They tend to be very strong because that path brings the low pressure area very close to the Gulf of Mexico. And as it's close to the Gulf of Mexico, it basically pulls in a lot of that moisture. And then as it travels north eastward, it brings that moisture with it into the much cooler air off to the north of the system. Those two factors help tighten the circulation, bringing in even more cold air on the backside. Some of our strongest winter storms have been that sort of Colorado low, Panhandle Hooker type of storm, you know, many of the big ones from history. There's another type that just comes out of the west, basically out of Wyoming. Some climatologists love those, they're very dependable. They don't necessarily produce huge snowfall amounts, but they're fairly reliable. So, if a low pressure area comes out of Wyoming marches, you know, kind of goes right through Iowa, and into northern Illinois, we usually are good for, you know, five to 10 inches of snow somewhere. And often they're they're a little bit colder than those Panhandle storms. So, they have a little less moisture, but a little more cold air. They tend to be kind of blizzardy when they're at their finest. And then you get the ones that are like the Halloween Blizzard where they kind of start out as Colorado lows, but they do their main intensification a bit farther to the east. And that storm actually came out of Houston, out of the Gulf of Mexico just right off the water and just shot up the Mississippi Valley. Yeah, so the Colorado low is one of the more common low pressure trajectories causing winter storms in the Upper Midwest, and they can produce some, it can produce some big snowfall totals. And this one is one of those types.
Jim du Bois 06:54
So, we've got a lot of moisture coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, and that's going to supply the moisture that will produce our snowfall. Now, this is not going to be a typical winter storm in the sense that we're not going to see a big drop off in temperatures once the snow is over, correct?
Kenny Blumenfeld 07:10
Yeah, that that actually, that's a really good observation. And that makes the storm kind of interesting too. Typically, following a low pressure system like this, where you've got strong winds coming out of the northwest, I mean, you know, as this thing starts drying down, coming to a close up late Friday night into early Saturday, winds won't be howling, but there'll be pretty strong. And the system's actually going to keep intensifying as it passes over, you know, somewhere between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, it's just going to keep intensifying. And those winds are going to get even stronger off to our east in eastern Wisconsin and in northern Michigan. But they're not going to be pulling in very much cold air. Usually, you get a big rush of cold air in those northerly winds, but you know what, the really cold air is so far away. Honestly, it's, you know, over 1000 miles away, before you get to the really cold air off to our north. And those northerly winds behind this storm, they won't be able to reach that far north to pull in that really cold air. So, they're just going to kind of mix in the same kind of general, you know, cooler airmass that's already in place. So, we don't see much of a temperature drop, even though, you know, you're gonna have a big blanket of snow on the ground, it's gonna reflect a lot of sunlight. So yeah, it's a little unusual. I wouldn't say it's unheard of. We've certainly had storms that end, you know, about as warm as they begin. But it's a little unusual for a storm of this intensity, you know, at this time of year. It's not April, and it's not, it's not October. It is a little unusual for a storm, you know, as you're getting towards the heart of winter that has strong winds on the backside to not have really cold air. And you know, we could take listeners back. One of the least favorite things for people to do is try and recall other people's weather memories. But Jim, do you remember the final Dome-Buster snowstorm? You remember that one?
Jim du Bois 09:11
That would have been back when in 2010, correct?
Kenny Blumenfeld 09:14
Yeah. And that was a, that was actually, in many regards, a very similar storm. The low pressure wasn't much stronger than this one. The moisture was probably a little bit higher than what we have with this one, but not, not by a lot. And but the big difference was that thing had some really cold air behind it. And so, as the storm was winding up, and this is perfect, because it's what, there'll be 11 years ago to the day, essentially because that was the same, yeah, it was the same, same date, so we're probably, it's gonna be hard to break snowfall, daily snowfall records in Minnesota with this thing because, because it's up against a beast, that thing, and we call it the Dome-Buster for listeners because the Metrodome broke from snowfall several times. And so, there was a number of different snowstorms in the 80s. And then the final one in, you know, that really made it an unsafe place to do anything in the winter time was December 2010. Storm, didn't the lights come crashing down?
Jim du Bois 10:23
Yeah, there's, there's actually, I'm sure it's still out there somewhere on YouTube. But there's a video of a grounds crew on a cart literally fleeing for their lives because the snow begins to plummet from the yorn hole in the roof.
Kenny Blumenfeld 10:39
You think about it. To rip, the Metrodome you've got, you've got tons, I mean literal tons of snow sitting up there exerting weight upon that roof. And then when the roof caves in, those tons of snow come down onto the football field. And mercifully, there wasn't a there wasn't a game or any big event happening at the time. But there were some folks there. In any case, that was a, you know, similar system, but it had that advantage, it had the cold air, and that just tends to kick these storms up a notch. So in a way, the storm is kind of getting penalized for not having the cold air with it. And what's interesting is, even with that penalty, it's, it's gonna produce very heavy snows, you know, double digit snowfall totals in at least a little narrow streak, and a pretty wide swath of six inches plus, so, it'll be a good system.
Jim du Bois 11:34
And not only are we not going to see intensely cold temperatures following the snowstorm, but next week, and it's early to talk about this, there is the prospect of record warm temperatures, like a, I guess, a December heatwave for want of a better term.
Kenny Blumenfeld 11:52
Yeah, so I mean, we're kind of on the edge here in Minnesota, and what we're watching, we've been watching this for a few days, now, there's a really strong signal in the models, that one or two days after the snowstorm leaves the region, there's just gonna be a long kind of persistent push of mild air into the region, you know, beginning as early as Sunday, and it's gonna peak sometime in the middle or end of next week, probably Wednesday and Thursday. And the indications are well, okay, we're gonna have a new snowpack, somewhere from the Twin Cities into northern Iowa and much of Wisconsin. And so, this airmass moving in, the warm air moving in is going to get stuck in place for a while, because it's going to have to spend its energy, you know, heat can only do so much. And it's first going to have to melt some of that snow or a lot of that snow before it can really change the temperature. So, I wouldn't look for massively warm conditions, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday of next week. But then, you know, after a few days of melting off that snow and decreasing the snowpack and keeping it pretty mild at night, I mean, temperatures will probably barely fall below freezing during that time, if they even fall below freezing at all. Then, then we start to see this push of really warm air come in, in association with both the melting snow, and also a strong low pressure system forming off to the west. Now we don't know exactly where that will go and exactly what time it's going to form, but there's a huge and really powerful trough of low pressure, kind of moving into the western United States early next week. And that thing is guaranteed to spin up a fairly strong low pressure system somewhere east of the Rockies, once that kind of front end of that trough gets out past the mountains. And once that low pressure area forms, it's probably just going to shoot almost due north or north-northeast. And that's going to take it off to our west and leave us in even warmer air than we started in. And as that low pressure system if it's really close, but off to our northwest, we could see temperatures soaring through the 50s. Even in the evening, next Wednesday, you know, and having temperatures even reaching the 60s is not not out of the question. And if we do get into the 60s, for example, in the Twin Cities, that would be the latest in the year we'd ever recorded that. So, it could be record-breaking. I think we're guaranteed to be mild. And then we're beyond that guaranteed to be mild. We're highly likely to be quite warm on Wednesday, and there's some question Wednesday, Thursday, there's some question about whether we actually break records. There's a lot that needs to be resolved yet, but looks like a very mild to warm pattern moving in. And even behind that, you know, as that large low pressure system comes through, there's still no signs of a really frigid air mass moving in. You know, a lot of times when you get warm, you know what do you think of as the other side of it in the winter, if you get 50 degrees 55 degrees in December, Jim, you know, we usually know what's on the other side of that. But in this case, we don't see, you know, any real sign of the, you know, massive subzero outbreak or anything like that just, you know, kind of a cool down. And maybe that's it for the really warm air for the year, for the calendar year anyway, but it's it certainly bears watching. So we got snow storm, and then we have this, we have this other system to watch where it gets mild and then potentially very warm in the middle of next week. And then also potentially very windy as the airmass transitions from the warmer to a cooler one.
Jim du Bois 15:42
Now, we've talked about previously on this podcast, Kenny, some trends that have been emerging in Minnesota, and those are warming minimum temperatures. And that is most pronounced during meteorological winter, which is December, January and February. Is the storm we are about to see unfold its wrath upon us on Friday and Saturday morning. Is this kind of typical of that pattern? And is this reflective of a change in kind of the nature of winter storms, compared to what those of us of a certain age may have remembered from their youth? Is this something we can connect to those changing climate patterns in Minnesota?
Kenny Blumenfeld 16:25
Yeah, that's a, that's a really good way of phrasing it, Jim. I would say kind of the answer is both yes and no. Yes, you know, we've had low pressure systems and storms before that didn't have much cold air behind them in the winter time. I mean, that, that's not new, necessarily. What is a little bit new about this, is that we've seen more of these, in recent years, where there's kind of a lackluster cold front behind the system, even though the system itself is pretty intense. The lack of cold air, the lack of access to cold air, again, we, I would never be able to prove that, you know, the fact that we're 1000 or more miles away from really cold air right now is because of climate change. Because these are patterns that have emerged before our climate was changing, and, you know, it happens in the winter. But we also know that as our climate has changed to, you know, especially enhance the warming of winters, we've seen these conditions with higher frequency, where there's just no cold air to be found in the region. And so, even though, we can't say, oh, this is because of climate change tomorrow, that we could say, this has become more common as the climate has changed. And that's kind of the link, that lack of cold air is sort of a disturbing, I mean, I like cold air. And I think, you know, we're pretty dependent on it, too. And it's not that we never get cold. We just did this past weekend, you know, we had a really strong storm system move through the northern part of Minnesota. Sunday was incredibly windy, and anybody who went outside Monday morning, well, that was a rude awakening. I mean, I, I spent a lot of time outside, I bike into work every day, and I bike home from work. And that was brutal. I mean, the winds were just screaming out of the north, garbage cans were being knocked over. And the temperature was really, you know, unpleasantly lows, like, you know, five degrees and windy, which is, you know, not unheard of in terms of cold, but we were tapped into some cold air at that point. So that still happens, it's just that these instances have more warm air around and less cold around are also becoming more common. It's kind of like a, you know, almost like a generational conflict here. You have the snowstorm, and it's, you know, just like olden days, it's gonna be an over the boots kind of snow, over the boot laces, it's gonna be a big one. And then that feels nice and old timey. But then you have this kind of newer thing that's happening more frequently, where there's, there's no cold air to come in behind that storm. And so, you get kind of a lackluster performance from the air mass behind it. Also, just another thing that's a little, I mean, as we've warmed, we've had more moisture in the air. So there's been more fuel for all of our passing and precipitating weather systems. And so even though our winters have warmed a lot, our snows have tended to be heavier, in much the same way that some of our rains have gotten heavier. It's not that every time it snows it's more than it's ever snowed, it's just that, you know, the heaviest snow of the year tends to be a bit heavier than it used to be. And we see a slightly higher frequency of those four, six and eight inch snowfalls than we used to see. And that's even as our winter is warming. And I think, you know, the fact that we're looking at a storm system that doesn't have you know, all of the ingredients perfectly aligned and is still going to produce probably over a foot of snow in some areas that maybe, you know, maybe that gets a little boost too from the extra moisture that's available.
Jim du Bois 20:08
So, what does the timing look like Kenny? I assume the snow starts on Friday morning to the south of us and progresses our way as the day unfolds.
Kenny Blumenfeld 20:20
Yeah, so those folks in far southern Minnesota, you're gonna wake up, it'll probably be snowing. And you know, one of the things my colleague and I were just talking about too, a lot of these storms, if you know, if the forecast is, wherever you are, that snow is going to start at, say, 10am. If it starts early, then you're probably getting bonus snow and you're probably going to over achieve that relative to the forecast, relative to the snowfall forecast. A lot of our big snowstorms kind of hit and started a little bit earlier and gave everything an extra boost. That just means that, you know, some of the extra moisture in the atmosphere gets wrung out and starts precipitating a little bit earlier. And that can be signs that a storm has kind of got its act together and is going to, is going to overachieve. But by and large by daybreak it'll be snowing pretty good at a pretty good clip in far southern Minnesota, and that is going to lift, you know, east northeast word into the rest of southern and southeastern Minnesota throughout the day, kind of the busiest snow time for the Twin Cities area. And again we still don't know exactly where the heaviest snow is gonna be so some of this is a little speculative, but, you know, looks like for the most part wherever the heaviest snow is going to be, we're going to be getting down to business probably, you know, during the afternoon and into the evening. And then, and then things will start tapering off as you get you know past 7, 8, 9 o'clock, things will start ,you know, slowing down but the winds will pick up, and then we'll see, you know, flurries and lighter snow through the night. But by the time you wake up on Saturday morning in Minnesota the snow should be over, but you know if the sun is shining it's going to be that blinding bright white light if the reflecting, all that sunlight reflecting...
Jim du Bois 22:10
Blinded By The Light, yes Blinded By The Light, cue Manfred Mann.
Kenny Blumenfeld 22:14
Yeah, cue Manfred Mann.
Jim du Bois 22:19
Well, Kenny, needless to say, enjoy the storm. Drive carefully. Certainly some road conditions could get hazardous. Now it doesn't sound like we're going to have any blizzard conditions out of this, at least at this point.
Kenny Blumenfeld 22:32
Yeah, I, I mean, that's true and officially there's no blizzard. There's been no mention of blizzard. But I think that if you're traveling eastward on I 94 into Wisconsin Friday evening, expect major major problems, that's going to be a difficult situation. The winds are going to be, they're going to be strong enough to, you know, with the amount of snow that's going to be falling, the winds certainly aren't going to help things. So while it's not going to reach blizzard criteria, you know, we're still looking at 25, 30, 35 mile an hour gusts in open areas. That will blow those snow around. Where it's snowing heavily, the visibilities will be already restricted. The winds will only restrict the visibility further, the snow piling up on the roads is going to make things tough. This is a kind of storm, I wouldn't be surprised to see, you know, sections of roads, especially the smaller ones shut down for you know, a few hours just to just to give crews a chance to clear some stuff out. Yeah, it'll be tough. I mean, I wouldn't be hitting the roads eastward into Wisconsin for sure. I would not be hitting the roads out of the Twin Cities after six o'clock. That's gonna be tough.
Jim du Bois 23:42
Alright, well, no unnecessary travel then. And everybody stay safe. Kenny, we’ll check in with you next week and see what may develop here with regard to our possible record- breaking temperatures and high winds.
Kenny Blumenfeld 23:57
Yeah, I mean, we'll see. If there's something to talk about, we'll make sure we talk about it.
Jim du Bois 24:00
Alright, Kenny, good to see ya.
Kenny Blumenfeld 24:02
Good talking with you, Jim. Thanks.
Jim du Bois 24:04
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.