Too Early To Predict Spring River Flooding Risk

This Day in Weather History
February 28th

1981: Ice is out on Lake Minnetonka. Boats are enjoying the early thaw.
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Average High/Low for Minneapolis
February 28th

Average High: 34F (Record: 57F set in 1932)
Average Low: 18F (Record: -26F set in 1962)

Record Rainfall: 0.70″ set in 2012
Record Snowfall: 8.0″ set in 1907
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Sunrise/Sunset Times for Minneapolis
February 28th

Sunrise: 6:52am
Sunset: 5:59pm

Hours of Daylight: ~11 hours & 7 minutes

Daylight GAINED since yesterday: ~ 3 minutes & 6 seconds
Daylight GAINED since winter solstice (December 21st): 2 Hour 21 Minutes
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Moon Phase for February 28th at Midnight
0.7 Days Until Full  “Worm” Moon

“In March, the ground softens, and the earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of the robins. The Northern tribes knew this as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signals the end of winter, or the Full Crust Moon because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. Fullness occurs at 7:51 p.m. EST(0051 GMT on March 2).”

By the way, did you know that there was NO full moon in Februray? It turn out that it is a little rare! Read more from Space.com HERE: “This occurrence happens once every 19 years. The last time February didn’t have a full moon was in 1999, and the time before that was 1980; the next time there will be no full moon in February will be 2037. (Once again, this is true for most locations on Earth, but in some places, including eastern Asia and eastern Australia, the moment of peak fullness will occur on the morning of Feb. 1.) The timing of the full moon is related to the Metonic Cycle, which is named for the Greek astronomer Meton, who discovered this phenomenon around 500 B.C. He noted that a given phase of the moon usually falls on the same date at intervals of 19 years. There doesn’t seem to be a name for a month that lacks a full moon, but February is the only month in which this can happen. Recall what we noted above: The lunar (“synodic”) cycle is roughly 29.5 days on average, but even during leap years, February cannot have more than 29 days. So if a full moon takes place on the final day of January, the next full moon will jump over February and occur at the beginning of March. And this will result in a second month with two full moons; the second full moon makes up for the lack of a full moon in February.”

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 Temp Outlook For Wednesday

Temps on Wednesday will be fairly warm across much of the state with highs in the 30s to near 40F, wich will be nearly +5F or so above average. Note that reading will be nearly +15F above average as you get closer to the Great Lakes, while readings will be -5F to -10F below average in the western Dakotas.

 

 

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Here’s the temperature outlook into the 2nd weekend of March, which suggests that colder than average temps will continue across much of the High Plains and Upper Midwest, while reading will be a little closer to average as you get into the Great Lakes Region.

8 to 14 Day Temperature Outlook

As we head into the 2nd weekend of March, colder than average temperatures will still be fairly widespread across much of the nation and especially in the High Plains and the Mid-Atlantic States. However, the Northern New England States and the far Southwest will be above average.

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“North Pole surges above freezing in the dead of winter, stunning scientists”

“The sun won’t rise at the North Pole until March 20, and it’s normally close to the coldest time of year, but an extraordinary and possibly historic thaw swelled over the tip of the planet this weekend. Analyses show that the temperature warmed to the melting point as an enormous storm pumped an intense pulse of heat through the Greenland Sea. Temperatures may have soared as high as 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) at the pole, according to the U.S. Global Forecast System model. While there are no direct measurements of temperature there, Zack Labe, a climate scientist working on his PhD at the University of California at Irvine, confirmed that several independent analyses showed “it was very close to freezing,” which is more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) above normal.”

See more from Washington Post HERE:

 

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“It will be warmer at the North Pole next week than in much of Europe”

“In what seems to be becoming an annual occurrence, temperatures at the North Pole are about to reach or possibly exceed the freezing point this week as the North Atlantic and the North Pacific Oceans inject unusually mild air into the Arctic. Not coincidentally, Arctic sea ice is at record low levels, with a freak disappearance of ice off the western coast of Alaska, between Alaska and Russia. This vanishing of sea ice in the Bering Sea is exposing coastal communities in Alaska to storm surge flooding from typically fierce winter storms, particularly Little Diomede Island. Videos from the island, which straddles the border with Russia show high waves slamming into the coastline, when normally there would be a sheet of ice protecting the island from high waves during the winter.”

See more from Mashable HERE:

 

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“‘Unprecedented’: Bering Sea loses half its sea ice over two weeks”

“The Bering Sea has lost roughly half its sea ice over the past two weeks and has more open water than ever measured at this time of year. “This is unprecedented,” said Brain Brettschneider, a climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “The amount of ice is less than it’s ever been during the satellite era on any date between mid-January and early May.” This comes as much of western Alaska, including places like Saint Paul Island and Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow, is in the midst of its warmest winter in recorded history. The community of Umiat measured unofficial temperatures 45 degrees Fahrenheit above normal on Tuesday, according to Rick Thoman, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Alaska.”

See more from USAToday HERE:

 

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“Move or die: Global warming threatens Antarctica’s King penguins”

“Will our favorite flightless bird waddle off to the sunset? Some 70% percent of all the king penguins on Earth — around 1.1 million breeding pairs — will be forced to relocate or die trying by the end of the century if global warming continues at its present rate, according to a new study published online Monday “The species may disappear,” study co-author Celine Le Bohec, a scientist at the University of Strasbourg, told Agence France Presse. The king penguin is one of several threatened species of penguins in Antarctica. Previous studies have found that other species — such as the emperor, Adelie and chinstrap — are also in danger of extinction or severe population loss due to climate change.”

See more from USA Today HERE:

 

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“Hurricane Harvey Destroyed More Vehicles Than Any Single Event in America. This Is the Aftermath”

“Disasters are always fascinating. From fender benders to war, humans will stop and stare at the tragic, the grotesque, the hideous. In early December, I watched a massive plume of malevolent brown smoke moving over Ventura, California, threatening my hometown of Santa Barbara. I was mesmerized by the Thomas Fire, like everyone else. But it wasn’t just the physical proximity of the flames that captivated me. I had just returned from Houston, which was still picking up after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. Last year, as August came to a close, Houston was hit with nearly 52 inches of rain. At least 88 people were killed, and thousands lost their homes. Reports also estimate that up to a million cars were destroyed in the widespread flooding, as many as half of which were in Houston, America’s fourth-most-populous city. That’s a huge number, but it would make sense. The city of Houston has 2.3 million residents and spreads out over 627.5 square miles. Throw in the suburbs, and the metro region expands to 6.3 million residents and almost 1300 square miles. There are some buses and light rail running in the city’s urban core, but both get scant in the vast sprawl beyond. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles had more than 3.5 million cars registered in Houston’s Harris County during 2016—and seven other counties border Harris. Few places are more car-dependent than rapidly growing, economically vital, multicultural but wholly Texan Houston.”

See more from Car and Driver HERE:

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“The Mystery of the Fog Holes That Form Over Cities”

“IN THE WINTER MONTHS, THICK fog forms over the plains that stretch south of the Himalayas, through Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Visibility can be so limited that it’s impossible to see more than 10 or 20 feet ahead, which means planes stay on the ground and even rail travel slows to a crawl. Ritesh Gautam, a climate scientist who works for the Environmental Defense Fund, first started studying the formation of fog in order to understand the ways in which air pollution was making it worse. But during his research, he noticed another strange phenomenon: Holes, dramatic enough that they show up in satellite imagery, would form in the thick fog directly over cities. The cause of these fog holes was a mystery, but Gautam and other scientistssuspected that they could be caused by the heat trapped in urban landscapes, which makes city temperatures hotter than those in the surrounding area. In a new paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Gautam and a team of colleagues outline the relationship between cities and these mysterious fog holes. By looking at 17 years of satellite data, capturing fog holes in California, Europe, South Asia, and China, they found a clear connection between the size of cities and the size of these gaps in the fog.”

See more from Atlas Obscura HERE:

 

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“Could More Snow in Antarctica Slow Sea Level Rise?”

“Some experts are heralding the news as a silver lining: Scientists have found snowfall recently escalated in East Antarctica, which could lessen the high amounts of melt seen in West Antarctica that are contributing to rising seas. That prospect is comforting because the vast frozen desert at the underbelly of our world contains about 200 feet of potential sea level rise. But other scientists argue the story line is not so simple. Scientists have long maintained rising temperatures would cause an increase in the amount of vapor the air can hold. And they have suspected this could lead to more snowfall in Antarctica, but observations were few and far apart. So Brooke Medley, a NASA research scientist, and her colleagues, analyzed a 500-foot-deep ice core extracted from the thick ice sheet in Queen Maud Land, an area in East Antarctica due south of Africa’s southern tip.”

See more from Scientific American HERE:

 

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“Montana Wildfires Provide A Wealth Of Data On Health Effects Of Smoke Exposure”

“Jean Loesch and her family live in Seeley Lake, Mont., which saw the longest and most intense smoke from Montana’s wildfires this summer. Loesch has 10 children, adopted or in her foster care, and they are learning what it’s like to have lingering respiratory problems. Last summer, Loesch says, the smoke was so thick outside, the family couldn’t see the trees across the street, so they stayed inside. It was still really hard to breathe. “These guys were miserable,” Loesch says. “I think each one of them ended up having to go to the doctor.” Everyone needed inhalers. The family is usually pretty healthy, but not this year. Loesch got pneumonia and the kids had bloody noses. And now, even with the smoke long gone, the children are still having trouble with their lungs. “They’ll wake up hacking,” Loesch says “They’ve all been sick. I’ve had to take them in for upper respiratory infections.”

See more from NPR Here: 

 

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“What’s the most distant human object from Earth?”

“The most distant human-made object is the spacecraft Voyager 1, which – in late February 2018 – is over 13 billion miles (21 billion km) from Earth. Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune. Now both Voyagers are heading out of our solar system, into the space between the stars. Voyager 1 officially became the first earthly craft to leave the solar system, crossing the heliopause, in 2012. Both Voyager spacecraft were designed back in the early 1970s. They were built to take advantage of a rare grouping of planets on a single side of the sun in our solar system. This grouping, which happens only every 176 years, let the Voyagers slingshot from one planet to the next, via gravitational assists.”

See more from Earth Sky HERE:

 

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