The Top Five Weather Events of 2021
SPEAKERS
Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld
Jim du Bois 00:00
Goodbye, 2021. How did it go climatologically? This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's climatologist. Here we are at the cusp of the end of 2021, New Year's Eve. Kenny, how you doing? You got to be kind of excited about this as we look back over the top five weather events of this past year.
Kenny Blumenfeld 00:23
Yeah, I'm doing well. Thanks, Jim. Happy New Year to you. Happy Holidays, belated to everybody. And hey, may we all soar in 2020.
Jim du Bois 00:35
That's what we said about 2021. Didn't quite work that way.
Kenny Blumenfeld 00:40
Yeah. But you know, so now we're really due for a good year.
Jim du Bois 00:44
Yes, exactly.
Kenny Blumenfeld 00:47
I would say, if our number one event hadn't occurred in December, we would have been looking back at 2021 as the year of drought, heat, and smoke. And I think a lot of people are still going to remember it that way. It was a hot, dry, and smoky summer for sure. But as you know, it was unseated. And I think our memories are going to preserve the number one even longer than the rest of them. So yeah, it was a surprising year with a kind of surprise ending.
Jim du Bois 01:22
Well, without a doubt. And let's start with the number five top weather event of 2021.
Kenny Blumenfeld 01:31
Yeah, sure. So you know, and listeners are wondering where this arbitrary top five comes from, the state climatology office kind of rounds up a list of the greatest weather events that are summarizable. There are some kind of abstract things that are I think people will remember, but they're hard to summarize. And it's hard to make a story about some of those, but the things that, you know, are sort of stamped in time, one way or the other. And then what we do is one of my colleagues, Pete Boulay, sends the list out to, you know, basically publicizes it as much as possible, shares it through our Facebook page, sends it out to a list of people who interact with our office a lot, sends it to the National Weather Service and some of our contacts there some media partners, and then has a very simple voting scheme. If something ranks at number five, it gets one point and if it ranks it, number one, it gets five points. Real simple. And then just kind of adds up, totals it up. So, the number five was the June heatwave. This was the one, you have to get to stretch your memory now. Some of these are a little bit far back there. And maybe don't remember exactly what we're talking about. This was not, and we talked about this, Jim, June heatwave was not a phenomenal magnitude event. We didn't shatter any records for, you know, highest temperature recorded at any station for all time or anything like that. And so, there have definitely been worse heatwaves. What made this one interesting was it was the longest and most severe heatwave to occur so early in the season. So it wasn't the magnitude. This has actually become a kind of common theme. It wasn't the magnitude, so much as it was when we found it. And Jim, you and I have talked about this kind of thing. It seems like countless times in recent years where we're, you know, talking about some event that's the latest to be so warm, or the earliest to be so warm, or the most severe for how early or late it was. That kind of thing. So that's our number five. It's the June heatwave. We had a lot of records for the time of the year. It was the most 90 degree days so early in the season consecutively in the Twin Cities and at some other stations. It was legitimately hot in northwestern Minnesota, where several stations a number of times cracked 100 degrees, something we did not do in the southern part of the state. Yeah. So you know, the kind of weather that isn't unusual in July is somewhat unusual in early June and we had never seen it this hot for that long that early in the season before. So that's our number five event. You must have loved it because you're, you know, remind the listeners this is Jim hot weather du Bois.
Jim du Bois 04:34
No, I reveled in that June heatwave. So that's certainly one of the events of this past year that I did enjoy weather-wise. So we'll go from one extreme to another from a heatwave to a cold outbreak in February of 2021. That's the fourth-ranked weather event of 2021, and Kenny, that one covered a good portion of the US going as far south as Texas. That was the event that caused problems with the Texas electrical grid, correct?
Kenny Blumenfeld 05:06
Yeah. So you know, we get, we get kind of stuck in this pretty brutal cold outbreak. And I'll just say this one, number four, the cold outbreak, is very similar in how we position it to that June heatwave. It was not the coldest that we'd ever been by a long shot. But it was pretty late in winter to have it be that cold for that many days. So it actually, you know, the kinds of things that we do, they're not always warm, warm, warm, warm, warm. Some of the ways that we've expanded the seasons a little bit has been to displace or dislodge some of the coldest weather from its traditional time of year and send it, have it happening a little earlier, or later in some cases. Yeah, so this was, you know, about two weeks of really cold weather here, this period during the middle of February for almost two weeks where we were averaging over 20 degrees below normal for the entire period. And there were some days that were close to 30 degrees below normal, depending on where you were looking. We had gone all winter without having a 50 below anywhere in Minnesota, and that that ended with this cold outbreak. We had some very low wind chills. And the only real saving grace was that it was late enough in the season that a lot of the days were sunny, and you can actually feel the sun beating down on you even as the air temperature was below zero. So there was, you know, at least a little of that subtle February warmth, because, you know, there you're only a month away from the spring equinox. And you are correct. This is basically while this large sort of dome of high pressure was anchored over our region, and we had this kind of pretty significant cold outbreak covering a large part of North America, a separate lobe kind of lurched southward and really ran down, right down kind of just to the west of us from the Dakotas through Nebraska, into Oklahoma and Texas. And it was during that period that we had the electrical grid, energy grid catastrophe in Texas and in parts of Oklahoma. So yeah, it was a pretty major event up here. Again, we didn't break any cold weather records. It wasn't the lowest temperature we'd ever recorded. It wasn't even close to that. But it was pretty late in the winter to have it be that cold for that many consecutive days. And that, people remember it. And so got ranked number four.
Jim du Bois 07:46
Well, checking in at number three is the summer of smoke.
Kenny Blumenfeld 07:51
Gosh, you remember that, Jim?
Jim du Bois 07:54
I do indeed. And if I recall correctly, it broke a record in terms of the level of particulate matter that the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency measured. I think it was at the highest level ever since measurements have been taken. So very, very unhealthy conditions.
Kenny Blumenfeld 08:11
You know, real kudos here to the Pollution Control Agency, we couldn't have summarized this event, if it weren't for them. They're the agency that's responsible for monitoring our air quality and issuing advisories that then get transmitted through the National Weather Service. And they had a very busy kind of a career summer, because there were, you know, there was, I think there was a highlight or a low light, which was this period between July 28 and August 6, where we kind of had this unprecedented smoke outbreak with visibilities that were often below a mile. We actually could find some stations that reported half and quarter-mile visibility during this period. Just to put that in perspective, that's in the air, there's nothing falling, it's just the particulates hanging in the air close to the ground, so that they're reducing visibility. When it snows hard enough to reduce the visibility to a half-mile, you're generally clocking in around an inch an hour. And if, and if it's a quarter-mile visibility while it's snowing, you're usually coming in over one inch per hour of accumulation. So basically the smoke at times was reducing the visibility to levels that you really only get during moderate and heavy snowfall. And apart from that smoke outbreak, you know, the Twin Cities only being one example, but in the Twin Cities there were 25 days during the summer where the airport reported smoke present as part of its present weather so it was a that's you know, almost a third of the meteorological summer had had smoke pretty bad. And so people do remember it. It came from mostly the fires that were in the region in northern Minnesota, and especially across the border in parts of Ontario and Manitoba. But there were a few times at least where we actually got caught up in some westerly winds and high smoke, you know, not necessarily making it to the ground, but was enough to filter the sun and reduce the temperatures a little bit that drifted in from some of the fires in California and Oregon and Washington. So yeah, very smoky summer. And people won't remember it fondly from that aspect, because it obviously caused some pretty severe consequences, and at least imminent threats for people with respiratory conditions. And also, you know, even for the healthy population, posed some challenges on some of those days where the air quality was, was really low. And again, kudos to the pollution control agencies, air quality forecast crew, they did a great job. And they are the reason that we know what we know about this summer.
Jim du Bois 11:02
We're recapping the top five weather events of 2021. Coming in at number two is the drought of 2021, which looks like it may become the drought of 2022, at least the way we're going.
Kenny Blumenfeld 11:16
Yes, so it was a pretty nasty drought, for sure. And this was going to, I think this was slated to be the walkaway number one. You know, there were months during the summer where it just seemed like we could not buy a good rain across the state. And, you know, it was, it was hot. People didn't have enough water. We saw Minnehaha Falls basically get reduced to just drip, drip, drip like a leaky faucet, which, you know, is something that we had not observed since the great drought of 1988. It was common to see lakes, shallow lakes, in particular and streams, especially in northwestern Minnesota just dried up, not flowing. And it was a dry, dry summer. It was a major, you know, in northwest Minnesota, it was the worst drought that we've had in over 40 years since 1980. And the rest of the state, most of the rest of the state, including, let's say, including the Twin Cities, and north central and northeast and southwest Minnesota, it was more like a 10 to 30 year drought. So not unprecedented, but, and not even necessarily generational, but you know, pretty substantial. And it behaved just like a drought, it was mostly hot, it was frequently quite hot. And here's an area where some of these different pieces work together. Obviously, the hot weather is easier when the air is dry, so you can get those heatwaves. But also because everything was so dry, and we had so many fires, there was actually smoke, which we just covered, the number three event prevented the heat from being worse than it was. And we had talked about this on the show. There were quite a few days in late, mid and late July where the smoke might have suppressed the temperature by five or possibly even 10 degrees. And by suppressing the temperature, you know, July was incredibly dry. And by preventing it from being even hotter, it really prevented the drought from getting even worse. So this was a big story even with, you know, the kind of, quote, benefit of smoke holding some of the temperatures down. So that was obviously a huge story. We started climbing out of it. Drought is a long, kind of long lasting animal though, and it takes a long time to revert some of those deficits. So even though we got a lot wetter during the fall in much of Minnesota, and winter's honestly off to a pretty good start, we still have a long way to go. And still much of the state is technically in some kind of drought condition. And it's quite likely that unless we get you know really high amounts of precipitation over the next couple months, it's pretty likely that drought will persist and remain in Minnesota at some level as we get into spring.
Jim du Bois 14:12
And drum roll, checking in at number one, an event that occurred just a couple of weeks ago, the historic mid-December severe weather and wind event. And the National Weather Service actually on its website, you can find a recap. They call it historic, unprecedented storm of December 15 and 16 of 2021. Kenny, this was one for the record books, correct?
Kenny Blumenfeld 14:38
This is another one where I think the event itself was actually pretty remarkable. I think any time of year, the severe weather event would have probably made the top five because it had a huge footprint. Did a lot of damage. And it just, the whole thing had a lot going for it. Very big complex system. But it was really the timing. So just in terms of the way that the votes got tabulated, this was our kind of hands down runaway number one, the next one wasn't even close. And, you know, again, think of how influential the drought was, and how much we, how much time as a state we collectively spent talking about it. But you throw a severe weather outbreak that includes 20 tornadoes in Minnesota, and technically a serial derecho, that's the prolonged damaging thunderstorm winds that race oh, you know, in this case across several states. And then you also throw in some of the other things that are a little more typical, but just heightened the intensity of this, that you had these very strong winds that set up after all the thunderstorm activity subsided as the pressure gradient started getting equalized, and wow. So we had power going out across Minnesota from thunderstorms. And then after the thunderstorms, just from regular winds, and during that time the temperature was dropping, and you started to have snow falling in parts of central and northern Minnesota. So it was quite a storm. The magnitude in and of itself maybe could have secured it a number one spot, but probably would have gotten it in the top five in any case, but having it come in December, Jim, we just had never seen anything like that. You know when the latest tornado on record had been previously, Jim?
Jim du Bois 16:29
It was sometime in November, wasn't it?
Kenny Blumenfeld 16:32
Yeah, it was November 16, I believe 1931, there was a tornado in Hennepin County that was reported. So November 16. So this broke the record for latest tornado on record by almost a full month. And it wasn't just one tornado. I think, if you would talk to climatologists or meteorologists, you know, and said, well, what's gonna happen, you know, are we ever going to have a winter tornado? I think a lot of people may have said no. I know that those of us who follow the changing climate have been talking about how at some point we're going to get a winter tornado. But, you know, honestly, what I would have expected would be that it would be one kind of renegade severe thunderstorm that has a little bit of rotation in it, and produces a small tornado, somewhere in the southern or southeastern part of the state. I think that's what almost any sane meteorologist or climatologist would picture, Jim. They would not think, oh, yeah, someday there will be a mid-December massive, you know, severe weather outbreak that covers tens of thousands of square miles and includes, you know, what looks like on a on a regional basis over 60 confirmed tornadoes. And 20 of those coming in Minnesota. What? No! And then in addition to the tornadoes, you know, large number of hurricane force wind reports or greater, and storms moving at 60 to 80 miles an hour. It was just too much. We had no real ability to see this kind of thing coming. So just if only for its element of surprise, that event gets number number one.
Jim du Bois 18:24
Well, Kenny, it's been quite a year, 2021, not only from a historical standpoint in so many ways, but from a weather standpoint as well. So we're going to start out to 2022 on the cold side.
Kenny Blumenfeld 18:40
Yeah, it's, uh, you know, not memorable, but a cold outbreak, kind of typical Minnesota cold outbreak coming, starting basically on New Year's Eve, and peaking overnight and into New Year's Day. We're gonna see some wind chills around 40 below, 45 below maybe in parts of western and northwestern Minnesota, northern Minnesota, and maybe more like 20 to 35 below in the southern, central and eastern parts of the state. This will be one of those situations where it's not the temperature so much, it's the winds. Temperatures will be in the negative teens at their lowest, but the winds are going to be up 10 to 20 miles an hour. And that's really going to drive those wind chills down. So, is it one for the record books? No, no, not not at this time of year it's not, but it is dangerous cold weather conditions. We might see these things, you know, a dozen or so times this winter. They're always dangerous. Always worth noting. And it does look like it's going to be mostly cold during that first, first week or so of January. So my question to you, Jim, is how does a hot weather loving person cope with cold weather? Do you just stay inside the whole time or do you find a way to get outside?
Jim du Bois 20:00
You know, Kenny, I don't spend a lot of time outside when it's bitterly cold like this. But, you know, I do get out. I kind of do it for my own mental health, considering we're still kind of in this quasi-COVID lockdown right now. So, while I don't embrace cold weather, I've come to learn to tolerate it.
Kenny Blumenfeld 20:19
Yeah, I think a lot of people have, have that sort of coping mechanism. I try and do as much as I can outside until it becomes unbearable. But I, in my hands, my fingers tend to get very cold, but I do like, you know, I like the days where it's cold, but calm. The ones where it's really windy, and so that cold just sort of penetrates everything, those are, those are a lot less pleasant. And again, I think that, I think that this one, you know if you think of some of the real brutal outbreaks, if you've been in Minnesota for a long time, this is not an upper echelon cold weather event. But this is a rude awakening to anybody who hasn't spent a lot of time in Minnesota or maybe is new to the area. And it's also kind of our first real serious one of the year, so it's gonna jog your memory. I mean, going outside Saturday morning, New Year's Day morning, for more than a couple minutes is going to be pretty, very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. And you know, especially if you don't have the right gear. So keep those extremities covered nicely, cover your head, your ears. And obviously, you want to keep enough heat in your core area. So you know, an extra couple layers around your chest always a good idea. This is something that I think Minnesotans can generally handle and we can do this. But you know, on the other hand, don't ever underestimate the climate. It can hurt you, if you don't respect it
Jim du Bois 21:56
Well, sound advice, Kenny. Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to our listeners, and we will check in with you again next year.
Kenny Blumenfeld 22:06
I'll talk to you in 2022 .Thanks, Jim.
Jim du Bois 22:09
They care, Kenny. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. We'll catch you next time.