Is Tornado Alley Shifting – Deepening Drought West – Penn State: Fewer Atlantic Hurricanes in 2021?

”Fishing is not an escape from life, but often a deeper immersion into it” wrote Harry Middleton. Sorry Harry, it is an escape and that’s OK. A chance to put down your phone and give your brain a break sounds good to me.

Even if your idea of fishing is rummaging through the frozen food aisle at Kowalski’s, odds are you know someone heading out to their favorite lake for the Fishing Opener this weekend.

Considering we’ve seen frost, flurries and wind chill in previous openers, this one looks fairly sedate with 60s – even a shot at 70F by Sunday afternoon, with low humidity and a light walleye chop. Showers and T-storms are possible late Friday and Friday night, again late Sunday, but amazingly I see no all-day washouts this weekend. Better than average, to be sure.

70s are commonplace next week with a few days above 80F as we ease into a more summer-like pattern, complete with a few pop-up instability T-showers each day. Nothing severe, just a nice warm up.

Yes, I can live with a little thunder. But no quakes, volcanoes, floods or storms with names.

Very High Risk of Wildfires Across Red River Valley. The Minnesota DNR has details: “Continued drought conditions mean very high fire danger persists in northwestern Minnesota. Spring outdoor recreation activity is increasing, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources urges outdoor enthusiasts to limit the use of campfires and use caution with off-road vehicles that could spark and start a wildfire. Northern Minnesota counties remain under open burning restrictions. Minnesota’s wildland fire management agencies report nearly 900 wildland fires have burned more than 32,000 acres since the beginning of March. The majority of the wildfire activity has occurred in the driest area of the state, the northwest corner. This includes the Oxcart Fire, which burned approximately 13,000 acres on and around portions of the Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge near Mentor, making it Minnesota’s largest wildfire in nearly a decade, and the Goods Fire, which scorched more than 5,500 acres near Red Lake last week…”

Slow Warming Into Next Week. Upper 60s to near 70 into Sunday, then consistent 70s next week with a few days above 80F. Models hint at a slight chance of thunder late Friday, again late Sunday – more numerous T-storms by the middle of next week.

Severe Threat Increases by Late May. A series of cool frontal passages predicted by NOAA’s GFS model may increase the threat of a few rough T-storms the last week of May with highs in the 70s to near 80F – whicle significant heat stretches from Texas to New England.

2021 Minnesota Fishing Opener Historical Facts. The Minnesota DNR always does a great job putting weather into context. No ice or flurries for the Opener this year: “Opening day temperatures have started as low as 24 degrees at International Falls (1996,2004), and sub-freezing conditions have even affected Minneapolis (31 degrees in 1979). On the warm side, St. Cloud saw 92 degrees in 1987, Minneapolis reported 91 in 1987, and International Falls reached 88 in 1977. Precipitation is not uncommon, but certainly is not the rule either. Three-quarters of past opening days have been free of measurable precipitation, and two-thirds of the fishing openers have been free of any precipitation, measurable or not. On those days with measurable rain, the amounts averaged close to a half-inch in the south and a quarter inch in the north. Rainfall has exceeded one inch once in St. Cloud, and twice in the Twin Cities, with a maximum of 1.64” in 1965. Snow, usually just a trace, was officially recorded in 1963, 1993, 2000, 2009 and 2013 at International Falls, and in 1968 at St. Cloud…”

Western Drought Intensifying. More headlines and links via Climate Nexus: California governor Gavin Newsom expanded an emergency drought declaration from two to 41 of the state’s 58 counties on Monday. About 40 million people, around 30% of the state’s population, now live under a drought emergency that Newsom said is likely to expand. “The hots are getting a lot hotter in this state, the dries are getting a lot drier,” Newsom said. “We have a conveyance system, a water system, that was designed for a world that no longer exists.” (AP, Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times $, CAL Matters, Mercury News, Deadline, Axios, Reuters, The Hill; Climate Signals background: Drought, Wildfires)

Penn State Prediction: Fewer Atlantic Hurricanes in 2021 Than 2020. Here’s an excerpt of a press release from Penn State’s Earth System Science Center: “ESSC scientists Dr. Michael E. Mann and Daniel J. Brouillette and alumnus Dr. Michael Kozar have released their seasonal prediction for the 2021 North Atlantic hurricane season, which officially starts on 1 June and runs through 30 November. The prediction is for 11.9 +/- 3.4 total named tropical cyclones, which corresponds to a range between 9 and 15 storms, with a best estimate of 12 named storms. This prediction was made using the statistical model of Kozar et al. (2012, see PDF here). This statistical model builds upon the past work of Sabbatelli and Mann (2007, see PDF here) by considering a larger number of climate predictors and including corrections for the historical under-count of events…”

Is Tornado Alley Shifting? THV11.com takes a look at potential shifts, a fluke or a trend? Here’s an excerpt: “…Our understanding of tornadoes has grown through the decades, but the public’s perception and the influence of pop culture had always put the focus on the plains as “Tornado Central.” Research has shown that the tornado frequency is increasing in states such as Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, but decreasing in Texas, which has always been the top state with the most tornadoes. The Significant Tornado Parameter or STP is an index used by Meteorologists that measures atmospheric ingredients that are known to produce tornadoes. Analyzing past STP data and seeing increased tornado reports is what has indicted more of an eastward shift…”

Predicting Tornadoes and Flying Cows: The Science Behind “Twister”. I stumbled upon an illuminating post at syfy.com – here’s an excerpt: “…Storm chasing certainly predates Twister, but it saw an uptick after the film’s release. Professor John Knox of the University of Georgia looked at interest in meteorology over the years and identified what he calls the Twister Effect, an uptick in interest after the release of the movie. The number of meteorological majors increased by about 10 percent in the late ‘90s. It makes sense. I’ve definitely harbored a quiet desire to see a tornado in person, ever since I watched the flick as a kid. Any time I’ve had occasion to travel through tornado alley, I’ve silently hoped to see one in the distance. To date, no luck. Some people took that pursuit to heart, taking up storm chasing either for the adrenaline of it or for science. And, there’s plenty of science to be had. The precise cause and mechanics of tornadoes still aren’t well understood…”

25th Anniversary of “Twister”, The Movie. ”Hey Bryce, you better get over here and take a look at this!” 13 words that changed my life forever. Well, not really. That was my line in the movie, “Twister”, which came out 25 years ago. Director Steven Spielberg used software from a previous weather company for “Jurassic Park”. His team reached out again for “Twister” and we created new, tornado and supercell-centric graphics and special effects for control room scenes. I was drafted to have a line in the movie, and I wasn’t about to say no. The weather control room shots were filmed in a retrofitted barn outside Ames, Iowa. While there, the director drafted me for a part, but if you blink you’ll miss it. PS: they shot the movie during a blistering heat wave. If you look carefully you can see shadows during the tornado chase scenes. It was 100F when they filmed my scene, turning off the A/C each time, which created a lot of very sweaty actors and extras.

“Take 9”. It only took 9 takes before I said my line “Hey Bryce, you better get over here and take a look at this!” with such power and conviction that the director shook his head, muttered something (in Dutch) and then moved on to the next scene. Good memories.

My take: making a movie is hours of boredom, interrupted by a few seconds of sheer terror.

Separating Face from Misinformation. Here are some facts about comparisons between electric and fossil fuel vehicles when it comes to overall lifespan carbon emissions, courtesy of Politifact: “…Another thing the Facebook post omits is that the CO2 emitted in the production of the battery can be offset over a short time in an electric car by the lack of tailpipe emissions when it’s in operation. The Union of Concerned Scientists found in a 2015 report that taking into account electricity sources for charging, an electric vehicle ends up reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 50% compared with a similar size gas-powered car. A midsize vehicle completely negates the carbon dioxide its production emits by the time it travels 4,900 miles, according to the report. For full size cars, it takes 19,000 miles of driving...”

Ford About to Unveil All-Electric F-150 “Lightning” Pickup Truck. There will be many all-electric options shortly, and hopefully networks of electric charging stations around the U.S. to support them all. CNN.com reports: “Next week, in a milestone moment for electric vehicles, Ford will unveil a fully electric version of the Ford F-150 pickup truck called the F-150 Lightning. Companies like Tesla (TSLA) and Rivian have already unveiled electric pickups, but this is the Ford (F) F-150. This is the big time. Ford’s F-series has been the best-selling truck in America for 44 years. Ford has offered few details about the truck, which it will unveil on the evening on May 19. A short preview video showed the truck’s front lights, which include a long bar of bright lights running between the tops of the headlights. The design’s effect is reminiscent of the lights on the Tesla Cybertuck...”

People Aren’t “Addicted” to Wearing Masks, They’re Traumatized. A collective form of PTSD, according to a post at Vice.com: “…There’s a glaring omission from this discussion about why people “can’t quit” pandemic behaviors: the mental and emotional toll of the last year. After what many have been through—death, grief, isolation, stress, anxiety, unemployment, trauma—people are going to have some feelings around transitioning back to a less cautious way of life. This doesn’t mean that they reject the CDC guidelines or are wielding progressivism as a weapon. It means some people need a little extra time to put their masks away as they stroll around the park—and they should take it. Especially since, broadly speaking, on a policy level, states are opening up, and have concrete plans to continue doing so in the coming months...”

The pandemic could make us want to dive back into life and seize the day.

Will the Pandemic Make Us Nicer People? Probably not, but we can dream. Here’s an excerpt from The Washington Post (paywall): “Could the pandemic make us better people? For those of us lucky to emerge from the past year intact — physically, mentally, financially — there are many reasons to be grateful. Theoretically, we could use this experience to become more thoughtful and intentional, less judgmental and reactive. We could appreciate more and criticize less. We could, in a word, be nicer. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve been awash in feel-good stories about celebrating essential workers, uplifting local businesses, appreciating what we have — all shining a light on our better angels. A year ago, Kelly Ripa told The Washington Post, “I think we’re all going to be better off for this” because “we’re all being satisfied with less…”

69 F. Twin Cities high yesterday.

68 F. MSP average high on May 12.

58 F. Maximum temperatures at MSP on May 12, 2020.

May 13, 1872: A hailstorm hits Sibley County. Hail up to the size of pigeon eggs is reported. Lightning burns down a barn near Sibley, killing a horse tied up inside.

THURSDAY: Partly sunny, breezy. Winds: SW 10-20. High: near 70

FRIDAY: Some sun, stray T-shower late. Winds: S 10-15. Wake-up: 50. High: 67

SATURDAY: More clouds than sunshine. Winds: SE 7-12. Wake-up: 51. High: 68

SUNDAY: Partly sunny, late T-storms south. Winds: SE 7-12. Wake-up: 53. High: 71

MONDAY: More sunshine, lukewarm. Winds: E 8-13. Wake-up: 54. High: 76

TUESDAY: Mix of clouds and mild sunshine. Winds: SE 8-13. Wake-up: 55. High: 78

WEDNESDAY: Warm sun, late-day thunder? Winds: SE 10-20. Wake-up: 57. High: near 80

Climate Stories….

Climate Volatility and Weather Extremes Threaten the World’s Shipping Routes. Here is an excerpt from on the private weather companies I’m involved with, AerisWeather: “…Today the numbers are staggering: from microchips to winter wheat to automobiles, massive ships ferry close to 20 million containers around the world, making over 200 million trips every year! Sophisticated GPS systems provide smart routing, but the wild card is always the weather. A new generation of massive (taller) container ships, some 200 feet above the water level, are increasingly vulnerable to strong winds and massive waves. A rapidly changing climate introduces new risks into the calculus of safely transporting goods across the world’s oceans. Warmer temperatures and more heat extremes during the summer months can impact staff, rising tides are already forcing many ports to retrofit docks, arctic warming may be influencing the prevailing winds that operators rely on to operate as quickly and efficiently as possible, warmer air is unleashing heavier rains, and consistently warmer ocean water may be fueling a new generation of stronger hurricanes, worldwide…”

NASA has been involved in Earth-observation studies since 1960, capturing images such as this one from the DSCOVR satellite.

NASA Reboots Its Role in Fighting Climate Change. Here’s an excerpt from a post at Nature.com: “…Among the many US federal agencies that Biden has conscripted to curb climate change, NASA stands out because it is a leader in basic planetary discoveries. Its history of Earth observation stretches back to 1960, when it launched the TIROS-1 satellite to test the feasibility of monitoring weather from space. Over more than six decades, NASA has designed, built and launched spacecraft to observe Earth as it changes. Often working in concert with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has primary responsibility for national weather forecasting, NASA runs satellites that measure ice sheets melting and carbon dioxide flowing through the atmosphere. The agency also flies aeroplanes to gather data about planetary change and funds a broad array of fundamental climate research, such as climate-modelling studies. “Our central role is in understanding how the Earth system is changing,” says St. Germain…”

Jet Stream: Is Climate Change Causing More “Blocking” Weather Events? A post at Carbon Brief caught my eye, here’s a clip: “…While models – tentatively – suggest that blocking events could decline in the mid-latitudes, there is also a prominent theory that a rapidly warming Arctic could bring more of them. The Arctic is warming more than twice as quickly than the global surface average. This phenomenon is known as “Arctic amplification”. In part, this stems from the rapid loss of sea ice cover in the region – as the ice diminishes, energy from the sun that would have been reflected away by the bright white ice is instead absorbed by the ocean, causing further warming. (Declining snow cover over Arctic land areas has the same effect.) There are some theories that these rapid changes in the Arctic “might influence the frequency of blocking events”, explains Shaffrey…”

IEA Says ‘Unprecedented’ Renewables Boom Will Continue But Needs To Be Faster: Headlines and links via Climate Nexus: “Global renewable energy capacity jumped 45% last year, the biggest annual increase since 1999, and will need to accelerate in order to meet net zero targets, a new report from the International Energy Agency says. The “unprecedented boom” the IEA predicts will become a “new normal” was driven largely by a 90% increase in global wind energy capacity. “Renewables currently are expanding rapidly, but it should be faster,” said Heymi Bahar, a renewable energy analyst at the IEA. “If your target is net-zero, it has to be faster.” While the IEA expects renewables growth to continue at 2020’s pace the sector will need to expand even faster in order to both replace coal and gas and meet new power demand driven by the electrification of transportation and industry.” (Bloomberg $, NPR, Wall Street Journal $, Reuters, The Guardian, The Verge, CNBC, Axios, Washington Examiner)

Offshore Wind Comes to Massachusetts. On federal land, the turbine farm should provide enough electricity to power 400,000 homes. Details via Nexus Media News: “The Biden administration will resume permitting review for the 800MW Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced Wednesday. Officials said the process will pick up where it left off after the previous administration canceled the review in its final weeks. The project, which is the farthest along of the nearly dozen offshore wind farms under BOEM consideration, would generate enough electricity to power roughly 400,000 homes. “Offshore wind has the potential to help our nation combat climate change, improve resilience through reliable power, and spur economic development to create good-paying jobs,” BOEM Director Amanda Lefton said in a statement. “BOEM is committed to conducting a robust and timely review of the proposed project…”

The U.S. Owes a Massive Climate Debt. One Way to Pay It: Let in Climate Migrants. Fast Company makes the argument: “The United States has generated more heat-trapping carbon pollution than any other nation, but it has not felt the impact of climate change in equal measure. Poorer countries in warmer latitudes are enduring the most devastating droughts, heat waves, and violent storms, and seeing more poverty, disease, and mass migration as a result. By doing so much to fuel climate change, the United States has incurred a massive debt to the developing world, and there is no easy way to pay down the balance. President Biden is trying, but in a country that is largely opposed to more foreign assistance, he faces significant hurdles to ramping up aid...”

“Survive the Future” Online Game Makes Climate Choices Real. Gizmodo Earther has details: “…You are the senior editor of the world’s most popular and trusted news organization. You have the enviable power to set the news agenda, and thereby shift the zeitgeist.” So reads the introductory text to Survive the Century, an online game. Also my dream bio, but I digress. What follows is a Choose Your Own Adventure-style series of prompts that allows you to game out the next decade as the world battles the pandemic, climate change, inequality, and conflict. At the end, you get to read the headlines from 2030 based on the stories and ideas you championed for the public. It’s a novel way to make the big forces that shape our world manageable, putting them in the hands of everyday people—and it allows players to imagine how to change course from our current destructive one…”

Faulty Weather Forecasts Are a Climate Crisis Disaster. The forecasts will never be perfect, but they will get better – but how to leverage state of the art simulations for higher confidence predictions of solar, wind and other renewables. A story at WIRED.com (paywall) caught my eye: “…Jack Kelly thinks he knows a way to vastly improve these predictions. A former researcher at DeepMind, the Alphabet-owned artificial intelligence firm, in 2019 Kelly cofounded Open Climate Fix, a nonprofit focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions using machine learning. “I’m a machine-learning researcher who’s terrified by climate change and keen to do everything possible to try and fix it,” Kelly says. He estimates that better solar forecasts in the UK could save 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted each year, and will be critical if the National Grid ESO is going to meet its 2025 target of operating at zero emissions whenever there is enough renewable generation available. Kelly’s idea is to use machine learning to improve what is known as solar “nowcasting”—predicting solar electricity generation less than a few hours in advance...”

Fossil Fuels, Climate Change and India’s COVID-19 Crisis. Here’s an excerpt from an analysis at TIME.com: “…There’s been some research on air pollution and COVID-19 in India specifically, but it’s probably first worth looking at the bigger picture. A slew of studies have shown direct links between exposure to air pollution and vulnerability to COVID-19. One paper published in December in the journal Cardiovascular Research found that chronic exposure to particulate matter—a type of pollution that results from a mix of chemicals that come from sources like smokestacks and fires—is likely linked to some 15% of global COVID-19 deaths. Particulate matter doesn’t just come from fossil fuels, but the study’s authors found that more than 50% of air pollution-linked COVID-19 deaths are specifically connected to fossil-fuel use...”

Is Tornado Alley Shifting – Deepening Drought West – Penn State: Fewer Atlantic Hurricanes in 2021?

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