Updraft: August 10, 2011 Archive

Climate versus weather

Posted at 6:32 AM on August 10, 2011 by Craig Edwards
Filed under: Climate

We experience weather, that eventually defines the climate. Recently updated annual climate information across the USA has put into use the so-called new normals. By agreement among the climatological community, the normals are based on three decades worth of daily statistics recorded at approved weather observing sites. Proably the biggest change, previously noted in blogs, is the increase in overnight minimum temperatures in the winter season in our neck of the woods.

From the data I have briefly examined, made available by NOAA, the overnight low temperatures in the Twin Cities during the coldest time of the winter season (mid January), went up from tree degrees to seven degrees. In large part, this change was a result of dropping off the rather cold decade of the 1970s and incorporating the past ten years of documented warming.

Here's more details of the story from the National Weather Service in Chanhassen.

I came across a story on the web, attributed to Livescience.com, that stated that there were record temperatures set in every state during the month of July. Comments to the story remarked on the coolness in Washington State throughout the summer. However, I did find a report on the Seattle NWS webpage, that indeed, Seattle set a record high of 79 on July 6th. This broke the previous record of 77 set in 2007. Can you believe everything you read on the internet?

There has been some frisky solar flare activity on the sun recently. I pulled this file photo out of my archive of the solar activity forecast posted way back in March of 2009. It appears heavily weighted to a historically document cycle. Or as I like to say, we are due.

You have realized by now that the weather in our neck of the woods is rather tranquil, but on the cool side. Overnight lows dipped into the 30s in the favored cool spots in northeast Minnesota. About the Twin Cities, the burbs dipped into the 50s.

I like this graphical post from the Chanhassen NWS website this morning that summarizes the weather in the upcoming days.

If timing on precipitation is right, we may catch a break in Minnesota and find the showers moving through on Thursday night through Friday night, leaving behind dry weather for the weekend.
CE