Grab Your Ticket For The Precipitation Lottery!
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.