Weather Blog

Before we begin, let’s take a moment to appreciate the duck like appearance of today’s severe weather outlook.

Quack quack quack. Now, the breast meat of this duck-look is featuring an enhanced risk of severe weather. Looking at the bulk of the severe weather in the forecast, it is apparent that here is a cold front running roughly from the Great Lakes to the Red River Valley, with a second embedded low over north Texas to inflame any severe storms in the region.

There is something mildly unusual about this particular forecast, and it has been part of an ongoing trend to the spring and early meteorological summer. It’s been so cold in the central US that the bullseye for severe weather hasn’t really shifted as far north as it usually does this time of year.

Here is the SPC climatology for severe weather for 6/19s through history.

Certainly, there has been severe weather further north this season, such as the tornadoes in Dayton and Jefferson City, and Kansas and Nebraska have had some severe storms as well, but the particularly cool start to summer in the Upper Midwest has kept the Great Lakes fairly quiet so far this season, it has also lead to a prolonged storm season through Texas and Louisiana.

With the long term outlook for the next couple of weeks turning warmer in the center of the country, the severe threat looks to be moving further north. Additionally, a standing trough coming to the west looks to set up a clash of air masses in the Dakotas late in the month to the beginning of July. It’s certainly too far out to make any specific predictions, but it certainly looks like we are on our way to course correction through the middle of summer.

I recently wrote about the challenge of presenting weather dangers in a clearer manner, and how important it was to clarify the risk represented by much of our sometimes vague terminology.

Another problem is that most consumers receive their weather from the media, and the media does indeed to need to drive viewership. I am of the opinion that people who are watching the news are already in it for the weather forecast, as it will help guide their decisions for the day, but some corporate overseers see it differently.

Meteorologist Joe Crain was recently terminated for espousing the opinion found in the above video. His station’s corporate management insisted upon a certain number of “Code Red” weather days with no real threshold for what that meant. Obviously, that runs counter to the efforts of increasing weather awareness for the every day person.

Overwarning, or in this case overpromoting severe weather is akin to crying wolf. If a Code Red day can mean rain for three or four days, how can the viewer know that Code Red means severe thunderstorms or tornadoes on another day?

But alas, the bottom line is financial, especially when a national corporation owns a local TV station, rather than public safety. While Crain was in the right by most clear thinking opinions, he definitely ran afoul of his employers’ business plan. It’s a blight for all meteorologists.

This massive, sprawling dust storms are more frequently associated with the sandy deserts of the Middle East, or more locally, the dusty landscapes of the Southwest, but this massive haboob swept into Lubbock, Texas late last week, and was captured by Texas Tech University for all of us to marvel at.

As the Red Raiders noted, the haboob is formed, as they often are, but winds rushing away from thunderstorms, thanks to downdrafts hitting the earth and spreading outward, faster than the storm motion itself. This is a feature that often appears in the desert where the climate is arid and the ground can get dusty, but where instability can be such that strong, but low precipitation thunderstorms can develop. Usually, there is more moisture available than this in West Texas, but on this occasion, we get quite the show.

We’re now into Meteorological Summer (June-August), so it’s no surprise that temperatures are starting to heat on up here across the country. After what seemed like an extremely late start to Spring around here in the Upper Midwest, everything is in full bloom as the temperatures have been pushing into the 70s and 80s lately. Well, today here in the Twin Cities, we officially hit 90! We last hit 90 on September 16th, a span of 264 days! (The record, if you wish to know, is an insane 691 days, Minneapolis went all of 1915 without hitting 90F). Luckily the humidity was kept in check today, with dew points around 60, so it was nowhere close as bad as it could have been.

Where it WAS pretty awful was south Texas. Brownsville hit 104 degrees today, not only setting a record for the date, but setting an all-time record high for the month of June! (103F in 1918 and 2012 previously). However, that was no match for Falcon Lake, TX (also along the Texas/Mexico border), which reached an incinerating 116 degrees! Heat Indicies reached into the 120s in some places given the dew points were in the upper 70s to 80 at some spots. Certainly no good for anybody having to be outside in that.

And it’s not just the US that’s roasting right now. Record heat engulfed Scandinavia, as portions of northern Finland reached well into the 80s, nearly into the Arctic Circle. Some reports are saying they haven’t experienced this type of heat that far north so early in the summer season before. And since most of those locations have homes which aren’t equipped with air conditioning, it’s leading to some miserable nights.

Most likely we’ll see more extreme heat “outbreaks” as Summer plugs along, but we can always hope that they’re short in duration and people take precautions to protect themselves from its effects.