No Surprise...July Was Hot And Dry (But Maybe Not Quite As Hot As You Thought)
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.