Minnesota Nice Overwhelms Minnesota Ice

Coldest Super Bowl on record? It was 5F Sunday afternoon outside U.S. Bank Stadium. You call that cold? I’m proud of how the city, state and 10,000 volunteers stepped up to be good hosts. Minnesota Nice completely overwhelmed Minnesota Ice.

To smirking sports reporters from other cities complaining about a lack of warmth, get over it. No need for a Richter Scale in Minnesota. No storms with names or desert heat or bugs so big they show up on Doppler radar, just a steady supply of “fresh air” this time of year. We’re used to it.
Yes, the glass is more than half-full. Once it defrosts.
Four winters ago MSP enjoyed 53 nights below 0F. So far this winter: 22 subzero nights. A few more nights of negative numbers this week, but nothing like the “Polar Vortex” winter of 2013-14.
Models show a few clippers dive-bombing south of the border; a coating of snow possible tonight, but no big storms brewing. 20s & 30s return next week, and I still maintain the coldest days and nights of winter are behind us now.
For 35 years I’ve been telling people we live in the Super Bowl of Weather. Real winters – bold and cold! Keeps out the riff-raff.
Image credit above:
Coldest Super Bowl on Record. Thanks to Dr. Marshall Shepherd at Forbes for the nugget: “…According to the Southeast Regional Climate Center’s database, the Super Bowl played in Pontiac, Michigan (also in a dome) holds the record with a maximum temperature of 16 degrees F and a minimum temperature of 5 degrees F. 18 of 51 Super Bowls have been played indoors, and Super Bowl LII may notch its number in the record books. By the way, the coldest non-dome Super Bowl was played in 1972. The maximum temperature was 43 degrees at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans as the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins did battle…”

Pulling Out of the Deep Freeze. Yes, this week will be a good 10F colder than average, but ECMWF guidance shows 20s; even a few low 30s next week. A higher sun angle will make subzero temperatures more rare as we move into late February. Twin Cities numbers: WeatherBell.

Real-Time Road Conditions. We can monitor and predict road conditions into the future, based on Doppler radar, surface conditions and high-resolution models. Dark blue denotes heavier snow, light blue is lighter snow and flurries accumulating at a slower rate. Frame-grab from Monday night, courtesy of AerisWeather.

Public Domain Source. If you’re interested in latest road conditions check out the SSEC site, courtesy of the University of Wisconsin.

NAM Snowfall Potential by Friday Morning. Any plowable snows shouldd stay south of Minnesota over the next 72 hours, a coating possible tonight with a weak clipper. The next chance for a little snow comes on Saturday. Map: pivotalweather.com.
(Sloppy) Snow Potential Increases in 2 Weeks? We’ll see if the GFS model above comes close to verifying,  but NOAA’s global model prints out a longwave trough over the central USA, pulling Gulf moisture northward, with enough warmth for wet, slushy snonw – even rain for parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes. The core of coldest air lifts well north of the Arctic Circle.

Hurricane Center: Harvey’s “Overwhelming” Rains Were Likely Nation’s Most Extreme Ever. A staggeringly large area picked up staggering amounts of rain from Harvey. Jason Samenow reports for Capital Weather Gang: “Hurricane Harvey unleashed a tropical deluge probably unsurpassed in U.S. history, the National Hurricane Center says. In an in-depth meteorological review of the storm released Thursday, the center said it was unable to identify any past storm that had unloaded so much rain over such a large area. “[T]he areal extent of heavy rainfall is truly overwhelming, literally and figuratively,” the report said about the storm, whose catastrophic flooding engulfed Southeast Texas in August’s final week last year, killing 68 people. Such extreme rain amounts  — which only have a 1 in 1,000 chance of happening in a given year — covered an enormous area, an accompanying geographic analysis showed…”

Map credit: “Different color shades show the likelihood of the amount of rain in different areas of Southeast Texas in a given year. For example, the dark blue shaded area indicates less than a 1 in 1,000 chance of happening in a given year in that location.” (NOAA Office of Water Prediction)

World’s First Electric Container Barges to Sail from European Ports This Summer. The Guardian has details: “The world’s first fully electric, emission-free and potentially crewless container barges are to operate from the ports of Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam from this summer. The vessels, designed to fit beneath bridges as they transport their goods around the inland waterways of Belgium and the Netherlands, are expected to vastly reduce the use of diesel-powered trucks for moving freight. Dubbed the “Tesla of the canals”, their electric motors will be driven by 20-foot batteries, charged on shore by the carbon-free energy provider Eneco…”
Image credit: “Dutch manufacturer, Port Liner, has developed the world’s first emission-free barges.” Photograph: Courtesy of The Loadstar.
The Biggest Career Mistake is Getting Too Comfortable. Innovate, reinvent, or fade away – the cycles of change and disruption are coming faster now; all of us have to wrap our heads around a career of lifelong learning. Here’s a clip from Quartz: “…So what did I learn after several reinventions over more than three decades? Growth and comfort don’t co-exist. Neither do change and comfort. It would have been easy for me to stay a watchmaker or work on displays for 35 years, but I have zero regrets for having seized other opportunities to change and reinvent myself. Whether it’s a change in technology or a strategy, which pushes you in a new direction, embrace or even accelerate it, don’t fight it. The biggest mistake is to get too comfortable. If you find yourself to be the expert with the most experience in your field, you might already have missed several valuable opportunities for re-invention...”
14 F. high in the Twin Cities on Monday.
26 F. average high on February 5.
32 F. maximum temperature on February 5, 2017.
February 6, 1994: The national low is at Tower, dropping down to -41.

“The measure of a man is not how many servants he has, but how many men he serves.” – D.L. Moody

TUESDAY: Cold sunshine. Winds: SW 5-10. High: 8

TUESDAY NIGHT: Coating of light snow possible. Low: 3

WEDNESDAY: Morning flurries, then slow clearing. Winds: NW 5-10. High: 13

THURSDAY: Intervals of sun, still chilly. Winds: NW 7-12. Wake-up: 5. High: 12

FRIDAY: Bright sunshine, less wind. Winds: W 3-8. Wake-up: -3. High: 11

SATURDAY: Chance of light snow or flurries. Winds: NW 7-12. Wake-up: 2. High: 16

SUNDAY: Partly sunny, better travel day. Winds: NW 5-10. Wake-up: 5. High: near 20

MONDAY: Patchy clouds, closer to average. Winds: S 5-10. Wake-up: 7. High: 24

Climate Stories…

Polar Vortex: How the Jet Stream and Climate Change Bring on Cold Snaps. Because what happens in the arctic doesn’t stay in the arctic. A story at InsideClimate News explains how a rapidly warming arctic may be altering the jet stream: “…Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis has found “robust relationships” between Arctic warming and a wavier jet stream. Melting sea ice speeds up the warming of the Arctic because open water absorbs more heat. And that, in turn, leads to even more sea ice melting. In that vicious cycle, Arctic temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average. And that’s reducing the temperature contrast that’s one of the jet stream’s main engines, Francis said. More extreme and persistent swings in the jet stream may also be shaping a North American winter weather pattern that’s been common the past few years—a warm and dry West, especially California, and cold waves in the Eastern U.S…”

ExxonMobil Issues Climate Report: From Climate Nexus: “World demand for oil could dip substantially by 2040 if policies to curb warming are aggressively implemented, ExxonMobil said in a climate-impact analysis released Friday. The oil giant’s shareholders, including financial giants BlackRock and Vanguard, backed a proposal last year requiring Exxon to provide analysis of how climate policies will impact its bottom line in an increasingly warming world. The analysis paints a mostly rosy future for the oil and gas industry, saying that even aggressive climate policy poses “little risk” to the company. However, the report does not address the multiple lawsuits facing Exxon and other fossil fuel giants, while some of the company’s analysis–including its predictions for the number of electric vehicles on the road by 2040 and the assumption that carbon capture technologies will allow the continued use of fossil fuels–has been challenged by experts.” (New York Times $, FT $, Reuters, AP, Axios, Quartz, The Hill)

Study Confirms Carbon Pollution Has Ended the Era of Stable Climate. ThinkProgress reports: “Recent temperatures experienced across Europe and North America are unprecedented in the past 11,000 years, a new study in the journal Nature finds. Significantly, the new study found that the average temperature of the last decade (between 2007 and 2016) exceeded the warmest centuries of the last 11,000 years by more than 0.5°F — which is much larger than century-scale changes have been over the pre-industrial era. This research confirms findings from 2013 that human-caused carbon pollution has ended the stable climate that enabled the development of modern civilization, global agriculture, and a world that could sustain a vast population…”

Chart credit above: “Temperature change over past 11,000 years (in blue) plus projected warming over the next century on humanity’s current emissions path.”

Record Number of Scientists Running for Office in 2018. Here’s a clip from TheHill: “At least 200 individuals with backgrounds in science, math, engineering and technology have launched bids for state House seats across the country, according to HuffPost. The number marks the largest number of scientists to run for office in modern history. The PAC 314 Action told the outlet that the candidates were running in elections for 7,000 state legislature seats.  “The sheer number is really astonishing,” the group’s founder, Shaughnessy Naughton, told the outlet. The PAC’s membership expanded from 4,000 to 400,000 in 2017…”

Climate Change Could Swamp Your Muni-Bond Portfolio. The Wall Street Journal has the story: “…Other California localities have told courts one thing and investors another regarding climate change. In a similar lawsuit, San Francisco claims it faces “imminent risk of catastrophic storm surge flooding.” But in a bond offering last year, the city said it is “unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding . . . will occur.” San Mateo County claims in another suit that there is a 50% chance that a “devastating three-foot flood . . . occurs before 2030.” The county uses boilerplate similar to San Francisco’s to play down such risks in its communications to bondholders. These jarring inconsistencies have led Exxon Mobil , a target of the lawsuits, to seek judicial relief...”

Photo credit: “San Francisco in 2015.” Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News.

Our Coastlines Are Eroding, Along with Our Democratic Norms and Institutions. Climate scientist Ben Santer has an Op-Ed at Scientific American; here’s an excerpt: “…Over the past year, the United States has witnessed a different kind of erosion. There has been an erosion of our democratic norms and institutions, with attacks on the legitimacy of courts and judges, the professionalism and integrity of intelligence agencies, and the fairness and patriotism of the press. Protections on clean air, clean water and human health are crumbling before our eyes. The boundaries of our national parks are eroding. The borders between what is real and what is imaginary are eroding, caving in to the relentless assault of “alternative facts,” outright lies and declared reality. Civility and decency are eroding on a daily basis, undercut and weakened by language emanating from the White House. Trust is eroding. The rest of the world no longer trusts our word…”

Photo credit: Michael Isaac Stein.

How Bill Gates Aims to Clean Up the Planet. Here’s a clip from The Guardian: “…The idea is grandiose yet simple: decarbonise the global economy by extracting global-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) straight from the air, using arrays of giant fans and patented chemical whizzery; and then use the gas to make clean, carbon-neutral synthetic diesel and petrol to drive the world’s ships, planes and trucks. The hope is that the combination of direct air capture (DAC), water electrolysis and fuels synthesis used to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels can be made to work at a global scale, for little more than it costs to extract and sell fossil fuel today. This would revolutionise the world’s transport industry, which emits nearly one-third of total climate-changing emissions. It would be the equivalent of mechanising photosynthesis…”

Image credit: “Carbon Engineering’s direct air capture plant in Squamish, British Columbia, one of the few such facilities in the world.” Photograph: pembina.org.

Warming in Minnesota. The Weather Channel has undertaken an ambitious (and in my opinion, effective) project, localizing the impact of climate change on all 50 states. Here is a clip of what they’ve posted for Minnesota: “…Since the start of the 21st century in 2001, Minnesota has experienced 10 of its top 20 warmest years on record dating to 1895. Two of the state’s top five warmest years have happened in the last five years: 2012 was the second-warmest year, and 2016 ranked as the fifth-warmest year…Since the start of the 20th century, the annual average temperature statewide has risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of the warming has occurred in winter. In December-February, temperatures have risen about four degrees Fahrenheit (1896-2017)...”

Climate Change Could Make your Basement Uninsurable in the Next Decade. Bloomberg explains why: “Private property below ground in New York and Mumbai may not be insurable in the next decade if climate change advances, the head of one of Europe’s largest insurers said “If you go much further to 2020, 2030, we can clearly say that at a scenario between 3 and 4 degrees, it’s not insurable anymore,” Thomas Buberl, chief executive officer of AXA SA, said on a panel at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “Your basement shop in New York, your basement shop in Mumbai will at this point not be insurable anymore.” Global warming and the subsequent rise of extreme weather events are expected to increase insurance companies’ claims, possibly to the point where certain assets are too risky to underwrite new policies in some places. The number of natural disasters from hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean to wildfires in California increased last year. As sea levels rise, cities on coastlines will be much more vulnerable to flooding…”

Graphic credit: Munich Re NatCatSERVICE.

Climate Change is Affecting our Health. Is There a Cure? Check out this Tedx Talk from Dr. Jonathan Patz: “Public health is being impacted by climate change via many pathways – from alterations in infectious disease transmission to water-source compromise, malnutrition, air pollution, and other factors. This talk includes recent analyses that show how mitigating global warming provides extensive health opportunities, as well as major savings in healthcare costs. Jonathan Patz, MD, MPH, is Professor & John P. Holton Chair in Health and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also directs the Global Health Institute….”