Meteorological Boomerang: From Record Chill to 80F Next Week

Highs Near 80 Next Week Make Up For Lost Time Yep, I threw in the towel and cranked up our furnace too. It is, after all, meteorological fall. A few thoughts: the intensity of this Canadian belch is typical of early November. And no, there is no research (that I'm aware of) that says early cold snaps are a precursor to unusually harsh winters. Weather is random, cold fronts happen.

Minnesota is the Saudi Arabia of cold fronts, but I'd much rather be reaching for a sweatshirt than outrunning wildfires, gagging on smoke or tracking a Category 4 hurricane aimed at my house. Pick your poison. The immediate MSP area should avoid a frost this morning, and the sun breaks through the gloom. Another round of showers and possible thunder is likely late Friday into Saturday. Sunday still looks like the nicer day, and a few waves of western warmth are on tap next week. ECMWF predicts highs near 80F a number of days.

According to NOAA June through August was the USA's 4th hottest, and in the driest third of all summers on record.

And it's not over just yet.

ECMWF prediction for MSP above: WeatherBell.

Median Date of First Freeze. For much of Minnesota it's late September, but for the MSP metro area (urban heat island) it's the first week or two of October, according to data compiled by climatologist Brian Brettschneider.

A Well-Earned Warm Front. Temperatures mellow into the 60s by the weekend with a string of 70s next week, even a few days close to 80F. Winter is coming, but we have a few relatively mild weeks left in September and (possibly) early October. Today should be dry but showers return late Friday into Saturday. Map sequence above: Praedictix and AerisWeather. Summer Hangs On For Much of USA. With the possible exception of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes, where more frequent puffs of Canadian air are predicted going into the last week of September. But if NOAA's GFS model looking 2 weeks out verifies much of America will bake most of this month. Fourth Hottest Meteorological Summer on Record for USA. Details via NOAA: "August 2020 will be remembered for its extreme heat and violent weather: The U.S. endured heat waves, hurricanes, a devastating derecho and raging wildfires out West. Meteorological summer -- June through August’s end -- was a standout: It ranked 4th hottest and in the driest one-third of all summers in the historical record...For meteorological summer (June through August), the average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 73.6 degrees F -- 2.2 degrees above the average. Summer 2020 ended with the ranking of 4th-hottest summer on record. The precipitation total for summer was 7.99 inches (0.33 of an inch below average), which ranked in the driest third of the record..." File photo: NOAA.

Praedictix Briefing: Issued Wednesday, September 9th, 2020:

Western Wildfires

Fires Burning Out West. We continue to track numerous wildfires burning across the western United States. The Almeda Drive Fire in Oregon caused evacuation orders last night in Medford. Meanwhile, the Slater Fire near Happy Camp, OR, caused that entire community to be evacuated as well yesterday. In California, some of the major fires burning include the Bear Fire and North Complex (both in the Plumas National Forest), the Creek Fire (in the Sierra National Forest), and the Bobcat Fire (in the Angeles National Forest).

Get more information on wildfires burning out west from:

CalFire (California fires only): https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/ InciWeb: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/

Fire Danger Today. Critical fire danger continues today across portions of western Oregon, northern California, southern California, and the lower Colorado River Valley as a strong pressure gradient continues to produce gusty winds across the region. These strong winds in combination with low humidity values and very dry fuels across the region will continue to allow any new or ongoing wildfires across the region to quickly spread.

Fire Weather Warnings. Due to the expected volatile fire weather conditions across the western United States, we continue to see numerous Fire Weather Warnings stretching from Washington to Arizona.

September Snowstorm

Winter Storm Alerts. Snow continues to fall across portions of the Rockies and Front Range this morning. As of 1 AM, 1” of snow had official been measured at the Denver airport, with 4.9” reported in Boulder as of about 4:30 AM. Winter Weather Advisories and Winter Storm Warnings continue to be in place across the region, including in the following areas:

Denver, CO: Winter Weather Advisory through Noon Wednesday for up to an additional 2” of snow. Colorado Springs, CO: Winter Weather Advisory through Noon Wednesday for up to an additional 2” of snow. Below are expected additional snowfall amounts today across the region:

Atlantic Tropical Update

Paulette, Rene, And Other Areas Of Interest. As we look at the Atlantic, we are tracking two named systems and a couple other areas of interest. Tropical Storm Paulette is expected to weaken some over the next couple of days before it starts to strengthen again approaching the end of the five-day period. While it poses no threat to land in the next five days, it could approach Bermuda next week. Rene has weakened into a Tropical Depression but is expected to become a tropical storm again and still could become a hurricane late in the week as it curves northward. We are also tracking an area of low pressure about 375 miles southeast of Wilmington, NC, that is producing a limited amount of showers and storms. While some development is possible in the next couple of days before it reaches the Mid-Atlantic coast, it only has a low (30%) chance of development into a tropical system. Meanwhile, another tropical wave will move off Africa Thursday and has a medium chance of formation in the next two days (40%) and a high chance (80%) in the next five days.

D.J. Kayser, Meteorologist, Praedictix

La Nina Signal Increasing. A cool phase of the Pacific correlates with a heightened tropical storm/hurricane risk for the Atlantic and Gulf going into October, and a (possible) cold bias east of the Rockies as we push into the winter season. That's low confidence, because every La Nina cycle is different.

The Dominance of Chaos. An accurate forecast 4 months into the future? Don't hold your breath. At the end of the day meteorologists are up against chaos theory, as a story at Mashable explains; here's an excerpt: "...Yet, there’s a limit on how far into the future humanity can ever predict the day-to-day weather: Will a storm probably hit my town? Will it be a terrible day for a barbecue? Will driving be too dangerous? The absolute limit on this type of weather prediction is somewhere between two and three weeks, said Falko Judt, a research meteorologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Even the relentless march of technology -- with ever faster, better, smarter computers -- cannot push beyond this boundary. “It’s the natural limit,” said Judt, who in 2018 tested the limits of weather prediction on a supercomputer running sophisticated algorithms to simulate Earth’s atmosphere. “It’s inherent to the atmosphere,” explained Judt. “It’s something that is set by nature itself...”

How to Escape From an Erupting Volcano. Because 2020. Here's an excerpt from WIRED.com (paywall): "Let’s say you were visiting the Roman town of Pompeii on the morning of August 24, 79 AD. And let’s say you arrived sometime between the hours of 9 and 10 am. That should give you enough time to explore the port town and maybe even grab a loaf of bread at the local bakery (see map below for directions). But it would also put you in Pompeii in time to experience a 5.9 magnitude earthquake, the first of many, and watch the black cloud rise from Mount Vesuvius as the mountain began to erupt 1.5 million tons of molten rock per second and release 100,000 times the thermal energy of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. All while you were standing a mere 6 miles away..."

Arenal volcano in Costa Rica file image: Susie Martin, Praedictix.

50 F. high at MSP yesterday, coldest on record.

75 F. average high on September 9.

70 F. maximum temperature on September 9, 2019.

September 10, 2002: A late-season tornado strikes Albertville just after midnight. According to a damage survey conducted by NWS personnel, it touched down on the eastern edge of Cedar Creek Golf Course, then it moved straight east and dissipated in a city park just west of the railroad tracks. It completely tore the roof off of one home. Roofs were partially off a number of other homes, many attached garages collapsed, and a couple of houses were rotated on their foundation. About 20 homes were damaged, nine of which sustained significant damage.

September 10, 1986: 3 inch hail falls in Watonwan County.

September 10, 1947: Downpours fall across the Iron Range. Hibbing receives 8.6 inches in three hours.

September 10, 1931: St Cloud experiences a record high of 106 degrees, and it reaches 104 degrees in Minneapolis.

September 10, 1910: The shortest growing season on record in Duluth ends, with frost free days from June 14 to September 10 (87 days). Normally the frost-free season is 143 days.

THURSDAY: Sunny breaks, much better. Winds: S 3-8. High: near 60 FRIDAY: Sunny start, more showers late. Winds: SE 8-13. Wake-up: 46. High: 65 SATURDAY: Frequent showers, possible thunder. Winds: NW 8-13. Wake-up: 58. High: 64 SUNDAY: Nicer day of weekend. Partly sunny. Winds: W 5-10. Wake-up: 57. High: 74 MONDAY: Intervals of sun, warming up. Winds: S 8-13. Wake-up: 56. High: 78 TUESDAY: Feels like summer again. Hazy sun. Winds: S 10-20. Wake-up: 60. High: near 80 WEDNESDAY: Mix of clouds and sun, pleasant. Winds: NW 8-13. Wake-up: 63. High: 77

Photo credit: Paul Douglas.

Climate Stories...

Billion Dollar Disasters. Up for a little light reading? Here's an excerpt of a 111-page PDF from Environmental Defense Fund: "...Harbingers of the future, these costs are borne by homeowners, businesses, farmers, ranchers, taxpayers, and government. In the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially, federal, state, and local governments will be hard-pressed to provide adequate resources for response and recovery from weather disasters. As of this writing, COVID-19 federal aid is estimated to be in the range of $1 trillion to $3 trillion (Restuccia and Davidson 2020). Even before the pandemic, federal and state disaster resources were already strained, with climate change-fueled extreme weather events increasing in frequency and intensity, and more people living in at-risk locations. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that between 2005 and 2019, the federal government, including FEMA and other agencies, has spent at least $450 billion on weather disaster assistance, an average of $30 billion per year (GAO 2019). It is easy to imagine that, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, a similar level of aid may not be available for weather disaster assistance..."

Western Wildfires Burning Larger, Longer and Hotter. Here's an excerpt from a post by Climate Central: "Human-caused climate change is adding to the heaping tinderbox of wildfire risk. Warmer temperatures and worsening drought make for more dry vegetation, elevating the risk of a fire igniting and the fire spreading. The West has warmed nearly two degrees on average since the 1980s, while the number of acres burned by wildfires has exploded. In California, over 12 million acres have burned between 1980 and 2019, which is more than any other western state included in our analysis. The increasing size of wildfires coupled with more people and homes at risk also puts a strain on emergency services. Even hundreds of miles from a blaze, smoke waves from wildfires can endanger public healthparticularly among at-risk populations, including people with chronic health conditions and outdoor laborers like farm workers..."

Banned From Considering Climate Change, Insurers May Soon Flee California And Its Fires: This is an extraordinary development; headlines and links via Climate Nexus: "California home insurers may abandon the state in the face of near-certain losses as wildfires engulf the state and prohibitions on accounting for climate risk when setting premiums, the New York Times reported. Climate change has worsened the state's wildfires in recent years, and last year the state implemented a nonrenewable ban on insurance companies cancelling policies in the face of around 800,000 potential cancelations. That prohibition, however, is about to expire and state law limits whether and how much insurance companies can increase premiums and prohibits insurers from setting rates based on expected future changes. “From homeowners’ point of view, this is scary,” Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College near Los Angeles, told the Times. It will leave insurers asking, “‘Why am I insuring something that I know is going to be destroyed?’” Miller said. Legislation to reform California's homeowner's insurance laws failed last month in the State Senate. “We will never, ever, have enough fire engines to park in every driveway,” David Shew, a former staff chief at Cal Fire, told the Times. “It’s only going to get worse.” (New York Times $; Climate Signals background: Wildfires)

Climate Change Will Transform What it Means to be a Homeowner. Quartz examines the trends with real estate - will certain parts of the USA become uninsurable? Here's an excerpt: "...For people considering buying homes in many parts of the US, the answer is increasingly no. Some areas in the American South will be too hot to be livable; others in California will be so susceptible to wildfires that they will be uninsurable. Areas of some states, such as Florida and Louisiana, are virtually guaranteed to be underwater in the coming decades. In many cases, potential homeowners are left to divine this potential risk on their own. Regulations around disclosing flood and fire risk vary by state. In California, for example, insurance companies looking to reduce their wildfire risk are raising prices in the most vulnerable areas; so many buyers have backed out of sales that some real estate companies now require buyers to get an insurance quote before putting an offer on a house. In many cases, unless a shopper has done their research, they might not know if they have to get insurance until after they buy..."

Photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard.

Federal Report Warns of Financial Havoc from Climate Change. Here's the intro to a story at The New York Times (paywall): "A report commissioned by federal regulators overseeing the nation’s commodities markets has concluded that climate change threatens U.S. financial markets, as the costs of wildfires, storms, droughts and floods spread through insurance and mortgage markets, pension funds and other financial institutions. “A world wracked by frequent and devastating shocks from climate change cannot sustain the fundamental conditions supporting our financial system,” concluded the report, “Managing Climate Risk in the Financial System,” which was requested last year by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and set for release on Wednesday morning..."

Trump Appointee-Commissioned Report Finds Climate Poses 'Major Risk' To US Financial System: Climate Nexus has more headlines and links: "A massive, first-of-its-kind report, commissioned by Trump appointees and compiled by dozens of analysts from firms across the economy, says "climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy." The findings themselves are not entirely new, but the fact that they were published by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulatory body charged with overseeing the complex financial instruments that set the prices of commodities like corn, wheat, and oil, carries significant importance. This is the first federal government report of its kind to focus on the effects of climate change on financial markets. “It was shocking when they asked me to do this,” Robert Litterman, the chairman of the panel that produced the report and a founding partner of Kepos Capital, told the New York Times. “This is members of the entire community involved in financial markets saying with one voice, ‘This is a serious problem, and it has to be addressed.’” (New York Times $, Politico Pro $, Reuters, New York Magazine)

Wall Street file image: Wikipedia.

States are Doing What Big Government Won't Do to Stop Climate Change, and Want Stimulus Funds to Help. Here's a clip from InsideClimate News: "...In Maine, state officials are working to help residents install 100,000 high efficiency heat pumps in their homes, part of a strategy for electrifying the state. In California, an in-demand grant program helps the state's largest industry--agriculture, not technology--to pursue a greener, more sustainable future. Across Appalachia, solar panels are appearing on rooftops of community centers in what used to be coal towns. The Trump administration may have pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, but most states and many rural areas in America have developed their own plans for reducing carbon emissions and moving away from fossil fuels as they maneuver--often aggressively--to address the threat of climate change..."

The Environmental Racism Threatening South Carolina's Black Communities. Quartz looks at system inequality and climate risk: "...Climate change really is a Black issue,” said Bernard Powers, interim CEO of IAAM. “People who live close to the coast as we do, we’re the ones who are going to be affected by potential damage from increasingly devastating hurricanes.” But natural disasters are not the only force threatening to unseat Black South Carolinians from their homes. In the last 60 years, as politicians and developers sought to turn the region into a tourism powerhouse, rising costs have displaced many Black residents. Those economic realities make it far more likely that a storm will turn temporary dislocations into permanent ones--threatening the Black Lowcountry’s cultural survival..."

Catastrophic Hurricanes are "The New Normal" and They Will Cost Trillions. A post at VICE examines the trends with costly hurricanes and how a warmer world may supersize storms to come: "...Since 2005, the US federal government has paid out roughly $30 billion a year to respond to extreme weather disasters. But from 2016-2018, the US has experienced disaster costs on average exceeding $150 billion a year. And total damages to the US mainland from the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season (comprising hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria) amounted to some $265 billion. These costs are set to increase dramatically if global average temperatures continue to rise. The EDF report notes that every 1° Celsius (C) of warming will generate roughly $257 billion of costs to the US every year from extreme weather impacts...That means that on a business-usual-trajectory, when we hit another 1°C higher to reach around 2°C of warming, annual US disaster relief expenditures will more than double to around $514 billion..."

Hurricane Laura file image: NOAA.

Is Rapid Intensification of Hurricanes Becoming More Common? Here's an excerpt of an explainer from The Conversation and Honolulu Civil Beat: "...Because rapidly intensifying hurricanes are fairly rare, there isn’t enough information yet to say if rapid intensification is happening more often. The hurricane research community has consistent, reliable observations of storm intensity only since the start of the satellite era and routine storm-penetrating “hurricane hunter” flights since the 1970s. We have seen more rapid intensification events in recent years, and some scientists have concluded that the warming climate is likely playing a role. However, we’ve also had more active hurricane seasons in those years, and more work needs to be done in this area to understand global trends, such as why hurricanes are crossing ocean basins more slowly..."

Image credit: "Hurricane Laura intensified quickly over the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall on Aug. 27." CSU/CIRA and NOAA/NESDIS.

Natural Disasters Can Inspire Better Local Climate Change Policies - If They're Notably Deadly or Weird. Climate change hits home...when it hits home. Here's an excerpt from Fast Company: "...The main indicator of if there would be policy change, researchers found, was a high-impact weather event, which the researchers measured as being those with ten or more fatalities in one day, and which resulted in a Presidential disaster declaration. “A really impactful event matters to spark policy change,” Giordono says. From there, the researchers identified two “recipes” for local policy change: a high-impact event in a Democratic county with a lot of post-event media attention, and a high-impact event in a Republican county where the event was particularly unusual, either because it was not normal for the area in terms of type and timing or because it happened in a string of multiple other extreme weather events..."

Image credit NOAA CPO.

Wildfire Threat is Bad and Getting Worse in the American West. An Op-Ed at Star Tribune caught my eye: "...Looking farther ahead, the picture does not improve. As climate change worsens, wildfires are growing in number, scale and duration across the American West, overwhelming local firefighting capacities and putting property and lives in peril. Since 2017, fires have consumed more than 20 million acres and caused at least $50 billion in economic losses. The U.S. needs a coherent national strategy to address the threat. New resources, including extra staff, are essential if fires are to be fought more effectively. But prevention matters as well. Addressing climate change is vital, but other kinds of mitigation are possible too..."

File image credit: Washington State DNR.

New Research Show Importance of Military Personnel Communicating the Risks of Climate Change. Here's the intro to a post at The Center for Climate & Security: "While senior military leaders, due to their apolitical reputation, can influence skeptical audiences about climate change risks to national security, enlisted personnel can be even more persuasive when they deliver personal messages, according to new research in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Communication. The experimental study examined how to construct a climate change communication strategy using a pro-climate framework, and focused around national security concerns delivered by enlisted military personnel to groups who are more prone to skepticism regarding the scientific consensus on climate change.The bottom line up front from the study is simple: active duty U.S. military personnel are increasingly concerned about climate change, and that evidence-based perspective is influential with conservatives..."

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