Windy & Warmer Tuesday. Light Snow Late

This Day in Weather History
January 30th

1994: Duluth has a record low of -35.
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Average High/Low for Minneapolis
January 30th

Average High: 25F (Record: 48F set in 1989)
Average Low: 8F (Record: -30F set in 1887)

Record Rainfall: 0.49″ set in 1878
Record Snowfall: 6.4″ set in 2014
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Sunrise/Sunset Times for Minneapolis
January 30th

Sunrise: 7:34am
Sunset: 5:18pm

Hours of Daylight: ~9 hours & 43 minutes

Daylight GAINED since yesterday: ~ 2 minutes & 30 seconds
Daylight GAINED since winter solstice (December 21st): 57 minutes
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Moon Phase for January 30th at Midnight
0.3 Days Until Full “Snow” Moon

“Usually this title is reserved for a full moon in February, since  world tends to be fully coated in snow by then. But this year is an oddity, in that there will be no full moon in February. (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.) During February, the snow and bitter cold makes hunting difficult, so some tribes called this moon the Full Hunger Moon.

This is the second time the moon turns full in a calendar month, so it is also popularly known as a Blue Moon. On average, full moons occur every 29.53 days (the length of the synodic month), or 12.37 times per year. So months containing two full moons occur, on average, every 2.72 years. This year, however, is a striking exception to this rule, as you will soon see.

Jan. 31 will also be the night of a total lunar eclipse.The Pacific Rim — the lands around the rim of the Pacific Ocean— will have a ringside seat for this event: Totality will last 77 minutes, and at mideclipse, the moon will appear directly overhead (or nearly so) over the open waters of the western Pacific Ocean.

In the western U.S. and western Canada, the eclipse will take place during the predawn hours, but across the rest of North America, the progress of the eclipse will be interrupted by moonset.

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“How Rare Is The All-In-One Supermoon, Blue Moon, And Lunar Eclipse, Really?”

“This January 31st, something quite rare and special will happen. At 1:30 PM, Universal Time (8:30 AM Eastern / 5:30 AM Pacific), the Moon will reach its full phase for the second time in the month of January, making it a blue Moon. The full Moon also occurs very close to perigee, where the Moon makes its closest approach to Earth in its elliptical orbit, occurring close enough to create a Supermoon, where the full Moon is up to 14% brighter than average. And finally, the Moon will fully slip into the Earth’s shadow during this time, creating a total lunar eclipse. NASA is calling it the “Super Blood Blue Moon.” For observers in North America, it’s the first time all three of these phenomena will line up since 1866. But how rare is it, really, to get a Supermoon, blue Moon, and lunar eclipse all at once?”

See more from Forbes HERE:

 

_______________________________________________________________________________Temp Outlook For Tuesday

 

 

 

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Here’s the temperature outlook as we head into the 2nd week of February, which suggests that colder than temperatures will be in place across much of the region. While temperatures will likely be colder than average, it doesn’t appear to have as big of a bite that it had at the end of December and early January.

8 to 14 Day Temperature Outlook

As we head into the 2nd week of February, warmer than average temperatures will still be in place across the Southwestern and Southeastern US, while much of the central and northern part of the nation will still be running below average.

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“The Magnetic Field Is Shifting. The Poles May Flip. This Could Get Bad.”

“ONE DAY in 1905, the French geophysicist Bernard Brunhes brought back to his lab some rocks he’d unearthed from a freshly cut road near the village of Pont Farin. When he analyzed their magnetic properties, he was astonished at what they showed: Millions of years ago, the Earth’s magnetic poles had been on the opposite sides of the planet. North was south and south was north. The discovery spoke of planetary anarchy. Scientists had no way to explain it. Today, we know that the poles have changed places hundreds of times, most recently 780,000 years ago. (Sometimes, the poles try to reverse positions but then snap back into place, in what is called an excursion. The last time was about 40,000 years ago.) We also know that when they flip next time, the consequences for the electrical and electronic infrastructure that runs modern civilization will be dire. The question is when that will happen.”

See more from Undark.org HERE:

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“The Troubling Consequences of the Vanishing Ice at Glacier National Park”

“The very name of Glacier National Park, a 1-million-acre expanse in northwest Montana on the Canadian border, comes from ice. But the name may need to change by 2030: Experts predict the formations could disappear by then. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the glaciers in Glacier National Park have shrunk by an average of 39 percent since 1966; some lost up to 85 percent of their ice. A 2014 study in Science attributes global loss in glacier mass to both anthropogenic (or human caused) and natural climate changes. The study blames human causes for about a quarter of the loss between 1851 and 2010, but that share increased steadily and accelerated to account for almost two-thirds of the loss between 1991 and 2010. Glaciers are one of the main reasons 2.9 million people visited the eponymous national park in 2016. But the looming loss of these formations has many significant ramifications. Moreover, the changes at the park are representative of what’s happening globally—and visitors can see these changes for themselves.”

See more from Mental Floss HERE:

 

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“This Instagram-famous pilot’s photos of thunderstorms, blinding sunrises, and the Northern Lights show what it’s like to work from the cockpit at 37,000 feet”

“34-year-old Christiaan van Heijst, Dutch senior first officer and cargo pilot, flies the Boeing 747-8 and -400 Freighter — and he’s racked up 8,000 hours of flying time. Van Heijst is also a travel blogger and photographer. He takes photos of the incredible views he enjoys from the cockpit via his Instagram account, then writes about them on his blog. From blinding sunrises to the Northern Lights — or navigating his way through a violent front of thunderstorms — scroll down to see some of the insane things he has experienced from 37,000 feet in the air.”

See more from Business Insider HERE:

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“World’s Oceans Were Hottest On Record In 2017, Study Finds”

“The long-term warming trend driven by human activities continued unabated,” researchers said. The world’s oceans in 2017 were the hottest ever recorded, scientists revealed in a new study published on Friday. The findings were based on an updated analysis of the top 6,000 feet of the world’s seas by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the Chinese Academy of Science. “The long-term warming trend driven by human activities continued unabated,” researchers said in the study, which was published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. “The high ocean temperatures in recent years have occurred as greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere have also risen.”  Owing to its “large heat capacity, the ocean accumulates the warming derived from human activities; indeed, more than 90 percent of Earth’s residual heat related to global warming is absorbed by the ocean,” according to the researchers. “As such, the global ocean heat content record robustly represents the signature of global warming.”  While ocean temperatures dropped slightly in 2016 because of a massive El Nino effect, the last five years were still the hottest recorded for the world’s oceans. The second hottest ocean year was 2015.”

See more from HuffingtonPost HERE:

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“The flu can kill tens of millions of people. In 1918, that’s exactly what it did.”

“The flu arrived as a great war raged in Europe, a conflict that would leave about 20 million people dead over four years. In 1918, the flu would kill more than twice that number — and perhaps five times as many — in just 15 months. Though mostly forgotten, it has been called “the greatest medical holocaust in history.” Experts believe between 50 and 100 million people were killed. More than two-thirds of them died in a single 10-week period in the autumn of 1918. Never have so many died so swiftly from a single disease. In the United States alone, it killed about 675,000 in about a year — the same number who have died of AIDS in nearly 40 years.”

See more from Washington Post HERE:

(Photo Credit: Library of Congress via AP)

 

 

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“Solar Energy Now Creates More Jobs in America Than Any Other Industry”

“Solar energy isn’t just a tool to reduce emissions and help slow climate change – it’s a job creator. According to the most recent National Solar Jobs Census published by The Solar Foundation, the industry creates more jobs than any other sector in the US. According to the census, solar energy adds jobs 17 times faster than the overall economy in the United States. In 2010, there were only 93,000 jobs in solar. The sector has seen a steep rise and six years later 260,077 people were employed in the field. This means that in 2016 one in every 50 new jobs was in the solar industry, and analysts expect the trend to continue. Although the figures presented in the census were originally criticised for underestimating the number of workers operating in the solar industry, The Hillnow reports that “the Census is widely recognised as the most authoritative and comprehensive analysis of the US solar workforce.””

See more from Science Alert HERE:

(Photo Credit: Thongsuk Atiwannakul/Shutterstock)

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“The 2017 Hurricane Season Officially Rewrote the Record Books”

“Even before they made landfall, 2017’s major hurricanes—Harvey, Maria and Irma—were already causing billions in damage. A new update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) makes clear just how costly this trio of terrors will end up being, estimating that all three storms clock in among the top 5 most expensive hurricanes to ever hit the U.S. According to the NOAA official list of billion-dollar hurricanes, Harvey tied with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina for the most costly on record, coming in with an estimated $125 billion price tag. The damage was largely tied to the storm’s record-setting rains which swamped Houston, the fourth-most populous city in the U.S. Just over five feet of rain fell on the metro area over six days in August, turning the city into a Venetian-looking disaster.”

See more from Earther HERE:

 

 

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“The Number of Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters in the U.S. Is Surging”

“Extreme weather is becoming more common, and the economic impact is soaring. Last year there were 16 weather events in the U.S. that caused at least $1 billion each in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The cumulative cost was $306 billion—easily surpassing the previous one-year record of $215 billion set in 2005. In September a report from the nonprofit Universal Ecological Fund, “The Economic Case for Climate Action in the United States,” estimated that total climate-related economic losses and health costs in the U.S. averaged $240 billion a year over the past decade. The authors project the annual cost will rise to $360 billion over the next 10 years.”

See more from Fortune HERE:

____________________________________________________________________________“CAPE TOWN’S WATER CRISIS IS SO SEVERE, EVEN LUXURY TOURISTS ARE FEELING IT”

“For people who know it, Cape Town is a city that can feel defined by its mind-boggling levels of inequality. But for travelers being catered to by the city’s sophisticated luxury travel market, Cape Town’s rampant challenges often stay shielded from view. However, the city’s increasingly severe water crisis—which has Cape Town officials warning that “Day Zero,” when the city will turn off its taps, could come as soon as late April—is a reality that even the city’s finest hotels aren’t shielding their guests from. In fact, as a whole, five star and ultra luxury properties are responding to the crisis with an urgency that is somewhat surprising—especially when you consider the types of wealthy guests they generally serve.”

See more from Quartzy HERE:

 

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