Enjoy Some of the Best Weather of the Year!
SPEAKERS
Jim du Bois, Kenny Blumenfeld
Jim du Bois 00:00
The greatest time of the year...period. This is Way Over Our Heads. It's a weather and climate podcast. I'm Jim du Bois. Kenny Blumenfeld's a climatologist. Kenny, hope you're doing well. We're celebrating all the wonderful weather we've had which segues perfectly into what we're going to talk about today. So, if you are planning a wedding or any outdoor event, this is the time, isn't it?
Kenny Blumenfeld 00:24
Well, I mean, so here's the thing. It's a dice roll. Yeah, you're right, Jim, this period, it really centers on the last few days of September, and the first few days of October, it's more likely than any other time of year to be clear. And that, that's we're putting it up against even January when, you know, you get a lot of clear days. But those days are cold. Here in early autumn when it's clear, we get yeah, kind of crisp in the morning, but you can get nice, beautiful, you know, 60s and 70 degree days. And even as we've had this here, some 80s. It's a little bit, a little bit much for some people, but we know that Jim du Bois likes it hot.
Jim du Bois 01:03
Oh, yes.
Kenny Blumenfeld 01:05
And so the trick, of course, is that it doesn't mean that it's always clear, it's just more likely than any other time of year to be clear. So, you know, in this time of year, if you don't get that bright sunshine, things can kind of turn on you because we really are dependent on the sun to stay warm this time of year. But yeah, if you're just looking at clear days, and that's what you need. If you're a photographer, or someone looking for clear weather, this is definitely the time. If you're planning a big event, I think you have to weigh what are the risks of you know, and how much can I tolerate if, if it's cloudy and cool, and only in the 40s? Because that's possible too this time of year. But honestly, yeah, it's, it can be spectacular. And that's exactly what we've had, right on cue this year. Love it.
Jim du Bois 01:59
Well, it's October, when most people will hear this podcast, and is it safe to say, Kenny, for the very reasons you mentioned that September would be the sweet spot for, say, an outdoor wedding or some other ceremony where you'd be kind of rolling the dice a little bit more if you pushed it into October?
Kenny Blumenfeld 02:18
Yeah, I would say again, you know, late September, early October has that. I mean, here's the thing. There's a famous paper written by Don Baker, former university professor and a few colleagues. This was written almost 40 years ago now. Maybe it was a little over 40 years ago. But the idea is that this is a synchronized micro-season. I kind of made up that last term micro-season. But when I say it's synchronized, I mean, the entire region experiences the same peak in frequency of clear skies. And when they looked at it, atmospheric pressure tends to go up at that time. But when they looked even more deeply, so that, you know, high pressure, that usually means you got pretty nice, often clear weather. So that makes sense. But when they looked even more deeply, and they looked at some other studies, they realized that, well, there's a wet season in this entire region, and it tends to shut off right around September 20 or so. Now again, give or take, it can be later than that it can be earlier than that, you can always get surprised what events but they'd noticed that the wet season, the monsoon, the summertime sort of monsoon, a wet pattern, on average ends around September 20. That tends to coincide with when the photosynthesis in the plants starts to shut down. And so at that point, and just for those who don't remember, photosynthesis is just, you know, basically the sun activating living things and then kicking off some biophysical processes. And one of those includes evapo transpiration, which is how the plants share moisture, give moisture back to the atmosphere. And so Jim, when you have no more plant-sharing moisture, you tend to reduce the humidity, and that could be one of the reasons that we see an end to our rainy season. The whole point is this, is that it's a fairly narrow window. If you go too early in September, you got a good chance of it being kind of muggy, murky, cloudy, stormy, and if you go too far into October, you got a good chance of it being cold, dreary even and maybe get some snow. So, I would say if you're planning something the sweet spot would be right around now. Not a huge difference between late, very late September and very early October that way. I would just say again, it's not the most likely type of weather necessarily. It's just the most likely time of year to see clear weather. And I love it.
Jim du Bois 04:52
As do I Kenny. Well, the latest updated Drought Monitor is out. How do things look for Minnesota?
Kenny Blumenfeld 05:01
Ah, yeah, you know we've been doing well. The basic message over the last week was hold steady. We didn't make any big changes, we didn't see any big changes to the drought pattern in Minnesota. The conditions are worse in northern Minnesota. The entire northern third of the state is in severe drought, with pockets representing about almost a quarter of the state still getting that extreme level of drought. Now it's not the highest level. We did lose, going back last week, we actually had our exceptional drought, the highest level of drought taken off of the map, and that was a relief. But it doesn't mean that we're out of the woods at all. It just means that the really terrible drought conditions subsided a bit in response to some rainfall. I'd say the main message was that we got decent rains in August. September had enough hit and miss rains to kind of hold things at bay, although I think we're going to find that a lot of the state finishes the month below normal for precipitation again, and also above normal for temperatures. So, we are really hovering on the edge of a pretty big drought situation right now and should not count our chickens before they hatch. In fact, you know, this dry weather, if we don't get significant precipitation, this dry weather could cause some of the drought categories to deteriorate again, maybe not quite to the levels we saw this summer, but you can lose a lot of moisture in the fall as things are cooling off. But you know agriculturally, most of that damage is done, most of the damage to the sort of landscape level stuff, that's been done. We expect to kind of be in a holding pattern wherever we are, once we get into winter. We don't expect huge changes in the drought conditions unless we get a ton of precipitation which ,that's, we don't have much guidance telling us about that. But so all in all a general improvement since mid-August, in drought conditions.
Jim du Bois 06:58
Well Kenny, as we close out the working week, a lot of folks in Minnesota are going to be seeing some rain. And the temperatures will be, oh I would say moderating a bit but it sounds like next week, it's going to be pretty nice again with temperatures largely above average for this time of the year.
Kenny Blumenfeld 07:16
Yeah, that seems to be the way things are looking. Certainly Jim, you know, this is definitely a good time to get outside and do your outdoor tasks, and get some exercise. We don't have much smoke around. The air quality's good. The temperatures are for most people pretty comfortable. And the humidity is down. And also the sunlight is not particularly potent. I mean, it's always dangerous, and you can always get sunburn and skin damage from, from too much sun. But you know, we're not looking at nearly the intensity level of say a mid-June sun. So you know, actually the sun right now is about the same intensity as it is in early to mid-March. So, you can be outside fairly easily and comfortably. And it does look like the next week or so is going to be maybe not quite as warm as it's been. I think some of these 80s, they're going to go away but still 60s and 70s right into the next week.
Jim du Bois 08:17
Well Kenny, this is a shorter edition of Way Over Our Heads but we will reconvene next week and talk about the month of September.
Kenny Blumenfeld 08:26
Very good. Yeah, look forward to it. Thanks, Jim.
Jim du Bois 08:28
Always great talking to you, Kenny, and we'll talk to you soon. 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.