Updraft Category Archive: Daylight

Cool front today; Hot & thundery later; Brightest days of 2012 ahead

Posted at 8:54 AM on May 15, 2012 by Paul Huttner (4 Comments)
Filed under: Daylight, Tornadoes

"Storm Ready" series continues today- a joint project with MPR News/KARE11 (details below)

85 in the metro Monday - Warmest of 2012 so far

90 in Hutchinson, Madison, Morris and Olivia Monday

Cool front moving through today; cooler breezes

Noticeably cooler today & tomorrow highs in the 70s

"Hot front" gurgles back north with heat & humidity by Thursday & Friday

Thundery - Growing T-Storms chances again by Thursday and into the weekend

Brighest Days: Longest daylight of 2012 in the next 10 weeks!

6:09pm June 20th - Summer Solstice 2012

15 hours 36 minutes of daylight on June 20th

Source: Twin Cities NWS

Cooler Front Today:

Welcome to the fresh breeze today, and life behind an advancing cool front. The front features noticeably cooler temps about 10 degrees below Monday's warm spell. Highs will stay in the 60s up north today, with some 70s south.

Our comfy front will linger through Wednesday with dry dew points in the 30s.

By the way Monday was the warmest day so far this year in Minnesota. We hit 85 in the metro. Last year we hit 88 on May 10th. We managed 4 days of 90 degree heat in June last year, and 10 in July including a torrid 99 on July 1st! Do you remember?

Thursday "Hot Front:" Hotter & humid with storms again

By Wednesday night, a powerful warm front will move north into Minnesota.

This is the leading edge of a warm (borderline hot) and sticky tropical air mass.

As the front pushes north Wednesday night, showers and T-Storms may bust out in the eastern Dakotas and Iowa and rumble north and east into Minnesota by Thursday morning.

Source: NOAA/HPC

Additional waves of thunder may slide through as we head into the weekend. Some of the models are hinting at some 1"+ rainfall totals with tropical downpours into the weekend.

Source: Iowa State University

We can't rule out developing MCS, and severe weather as the system moves in.

If we get sun during the day, temps should soar well into the 80s Friday & Saturday. Another wave of low pressure tracking in Sunday suggests a possible washout...stay tuned on that one.

Source: http://www.die.net/earth/

Brighter Days Ahead!

The next 10 weeks are the brightest days in Minnesota. We are now entering the 10 weeks with the longest daylight of 2012 in the northern hemisphere.

Source: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Daylight hours explorer

We hit 15 hours of daylight in Minnesota this weekend, and stay there until July 23rd. Daylight peaks at 15 hours and 36 minutes near June 20th, on the date of the summer solstice.

This year's solstice occurs at 6:09pm on June 20th.

These are the weeks to get out and enjoy the long evenings with daylight lingering in the western sky until well after 9pm for most of the next 2 months.

Tornado Options: Safer in your car?

The excellent reporting continues today with MPR News/KARE11's joint project on tornado safety in Minnesota. Check out the eye opening piece by MPR's Curtis Gilbert and Paul Tosto on what (bad) options you may face if stuck in your car as a tornado approaches.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Simonson MPR News

Heres' an excerpt:

MINNEAPOLIS -- You're stuck in Minneapolis rush hour traffic on Interstate 94, near the Lowry Hill Tunnel. A thunderstorm spins out a tornado nearby. What can you do?

Not much. You're now among the most vulnerable people in a tornado. There are no good options.

Traffic's gridlocked, so you can't drive away. Hide under an overpass? It's a trap of swirling wind and debris. Hit the ditch immediately? That's what you were taught, but many experts believe that advice is more likely to get you hurt or killed.

In this situation, your best chance is to stop, stay in your car, duck below the dash -- and hope.

"When you have a big, vicious tornado moving across an area and traffic is just bumper to bumper -- that's probably one of the big scenarios that we really worry about," said Todd Krause, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Chanhassen.

"I don't know that there's really a safe way to be out there on the highway."

You may recall we've talked about this on my weather chats on MPR in the last year. Damage surveys found that cars and trucks can be potentially "survivable" options in "weaker" EF0 to EF2 tornadoes. In stronger tornadoes... cars and trucks can be crushed like a twisted metal ball, or wrapped around tree trunks. It's just plain hard to give anyone caught outdoors or in a car good advice on how to survive and EF3 or stronger tornado. The sad fact is not many people live to tell how they survived.

We touched on this Monday during my chat with KARE's Belinda Jensen and Kerri Miller on The Daily Circuit on MPR. You can listen below.

FYI, Belinda is a joy to work with and the whole news staff at KARE11 has been fantastic on this story.

Look for more today from MPR News and KARE11.

PH

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The feel of a winter day

Posted at 6:33 AM on December 1, 2011 by Craig Edwards
Filed under: Cold, Daylight, Snow

An east to west band of light snow accompanied an invasion of colder air into Minnesota overnight. Snowfall from Duluth to Alexandria southward tallied up to an inch in isolated locations. Most places accumulated a half inch or less, including the measurement at the Twin Cities International Airport.

The narrow band of light snow and remaining cloud cover will continue to push through the southeast corner of Minnesota this morning. Afternoon temperatures will hold close to seasonal normals. Colder air is poised to invade the Upper Midwest on the weekend and extend into Tuesday. Indeed, with the low sun angle and shortendaylight hours you'll experience the chill of a Minnesota winter.

Meteorologists are still pondering the model data to determine the northward extent of a snow system coming out of the Colorado region on Friday. Southeast Minnesota, from Albert Lea to Rochester and Hastings looks to be the most likely area for the potential for accumulating snowfall late Friday night through Saturday.

Current thinking from the NOAA Prediction Center on the favored region to receive four inches or more of snow on Saturday.

Forecasting snow amounts is problematic due to the lack of a definitive center of low pressure. Here is the graphic of the track of the lowest pressure for the next couple of days. Note the weakness of the surface low as the system moves through Iowa.

Let's see how this plays out in the next forty-eight hours. There is still plenty of time to refine the forecast before the first flakes fly.
CE

No need to rush into winter

Posted at 3:45 PM on October 20, 2011 by Craig Edwards
Filed under: Climate, Daylight, Fall, Winter 2011-12

Now that we have the offical winter outlook from NOAA we can perhaps ease our way into the cold and enjoy a little more autumn weather for late October and early Novemeber. Here's the eight to fourteen day temperature forecast for last weekend in October and the first couple days of November. As a reminder, the normal maximum and minimum for this time of the year are dropping to near 50 and lows near 32 degrees.

Extending the long range outlook through November we see odds appear to favor an easing into a cold and snowy pattern. Here's the temperature outlook for the month of November, released by NOAA this morning. Marry this graphic with the December through February outlook and you might surmise changes set in the deeper we go into November. Thanksgiving is usually about the time our winter weather pattern sets in.

For those wondering about snowfall for the winter, odds posted by the Climate Prediction Center pattern above normal moisture with the cold. Overall the outlook is aligned with the Almanac and other prognasticators. I just work on trying to get the next couple of days accurate.

Why all the attention on the outlooks when you've got plans for the weekend? Because there is not much going on until late Saturday. Winds will be on the light side and temperatures will be at or above normal. Afternoon sunshine should feel pretty nice on Friday.

Clouds thicken late in the day on Saturday and a band of showers is likely to show up in northwest Minnesota around dark and sweep east overnight. Timing in our favor, would put the wet weather east of the region by mid morning on Sunday.

To validate the absence of problematic weather, here's the visible satellite image from mid afternoon.

If Mother Nature can excite the atmosphere sufficiently, some places may receive up to a quarter inch of rain overnight on Saturday. The GFS model suggests the most likely area for measureable rainfall would be from the Iron Range to Duluth.

Not to throw water on the weekend party, we will lose about ten minutes of daylight between now and Monday. Time to get at those outdoor chores!
CE

Arctic air oozes south

Posted at 8:31 AM on January 18, 2011 by Paul Huttner (3 Comments)
Filed under: Cold, Daylight

It's here, right on schedule.

The week's first taste of arctic air has invaded Minnesota as expected today.

Temperatures are colder than -20 in northwest Minnesota this morning, with wind chills in the -30s.

It looks like the coldest mornings of the week will be Wednesday and Friday.

Temps could reach -10 in the metro tomorrow morning, with -20s to -30 north. Friday could bring the season's coldest air mass, with lows pushing -15 to -20 even in the urban core of metro. The GFS is cranking out a respectable -22 for MSP Airport Friday morning!

Coldest week of the year on average:

This is on average the coldest week of the year in Minnesota. The Twin Cities average high of 21 degrees and low of 3 degrees (above zero) sounds really good this week. Instead we're dealing with -21 and colder in parts of Minnesota.

It takes about a month after the winter solstice for temperatures to bottom out in the northern hemisphere. Daylight slowly creeps back into the Arctic Circle in January, but the sun angle and intensity is just too low to start warming arctic air until February.

Our average temperatures start to rise later this week and next week. Increasing daylight and slightly more incoming solar radiation will boost temperatures over the next month.

Our coldest air masses of the year invade from the Arctic Circle this time of year.

Our average temps by February 20th? High of 30 & Low of 14. I know...it's slow progress.

Milder next week: Here's some positive thinking. After this week's cold wave it looks like the cold will mercifully ease next week. In fact, temperatures may approach 30 above zero in the next two weeks.

Brighter days ahead:

Have you noticed how much brighter the days are? We've gained about 30 minutes of daylight in the evening in the past month. We're now gaining about 2 minutes of daylight each day. Sunset is now after 5pm in the metro and the evenings are noticeably brighter on clear evenings.

Hang in there, it's a sign that a seasonal warm up is closer than we might think during our January doldrums!

Stay warm, and be cool.

PH

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June Monsoon: Wettest in 8 years

Posted at 8:00 AM on June 28, 2010 by Paul Huttner
Filed under: Climate, Daylight, Rainfall

NWS storm total rainfall shows a band of 2" to 3" rainfall from near Marshall into the southern Metro Saturday night.

Welcome to the June Monsoon.

We've just experienced the wettest June in 8 years in the metro and much of Minnesota. So far this month, 6.25" of rain has fallen at Twin Cities International Airport. That's about 2.25" above average for the month, and marks the wettest June since 2002 when 8.30" fell in the Twin Cities.

Many communities in southern Minnesota have recorded similar rainfall totals.

NOAA rainfall analysis for the past 14 days shows general 2" to 4" rainfall in southern Minnesota, with some pockets of 6" rainfall. Some areas in Iowa picked up 6" to 10" during the past two weeks.

Severe storm reports spiked too.

Check this out from Twin Cities NWS today.

The number of preliminary severe weather reports in the NWS Chanhassen county warning area during the ten day stretch from June 17th-26th was 199. Prior to that, 23 reports of severe weather had been received. The amount of preliminary severe weather reports across the country has spiked as well during the same stretch, with June 17th being initially the most active tornado day in the country so far in 2010.

The weather maps insist the rest of June will remain dry, and the next chance of storms will not approach the region until late Saturday or Sunday.

Latest sunsets of the year this week:

Sunset behind Big Island on Lake Minnetonka Sunday June 27th. Note the crepuscular rays shooting up from above the sun. (Photo by Paul Huttner. Click for bigger image)

The suns sets this week in the Twin Cities at 9:03pm. This marks the latest sunset time of the year in the northern hemisphere. Here are some sunset times this week for select Minnesota locations. Since the sun sets north or due west this week, note that the sun sets later as you move northwest.

Rochester 8:56pm
Twin Cities 9:03pm
Redwood Falls 9:09pm
St. Cloud 9:10pm
Brainerd 9:13pm
Duluth 9:06pm
Ely 9:10pm
Moorhead 9:25pm
Bemidji 9:20pm
Roseau 9:30pm

Enjoy the longest evening daylight of the year this week!

PH

A day at the beach

Posted at 6:34 AM on June 24, 2010 by Craig Edwards
Filed under: Daylight

UVI for Thursday, June 24, 2010.

While we may end up spending some of the weekend dodging thundershowers, there is still a risk of sun damage even when there is a veil of clouds. Be wise about exposure to the sun particularly a couple of hours either side of the solar noon.

Plenty of outdoor activities are in full swing now that school has let out. As temperatures heat up and we spend more time in the sun think about an application of sunscreen for yourself and young ones. A few folks probably experienced a little burn on Sunday when sunshine was plentiful.

I'll leave the SPF rating up to the dermatologists. And regarding the the debate about sunscreen inhibiting the intake of vitamin D, you can read up on that yourself.

In the weather business, we are the messengers of weather information, with a minor role to advise on safety precautions. Remember lightning safety? Stay indoors! Pretty basic concept, I would think.

More on localized UVI to track where your summer takes you.
CE

Brighter Days

Posted at 8:25 PM on June 1, 2010 by Paul Huttner (2 Comments)
Filed under: Astronomy, Daylight

Call it Minnesota's version of the midnight sun.

Path of the Midnight Sun over the course of 3 hours, South Cape, Spitsbergen, Norway.

The next 6 weeks feature the longest daylight of the year in Minnesota. The summer solstice is roughly 3 weeks away, on June 21st. That means the sun is close to its highest point in the sky, and the farthest north on its annual trek into the northern hemisphere sky.

At precisely 6:28 am CDT on June 21st, the sun will be directly overhead at 23.5 degrees north latitude. In Minnesota, the Twin Cities lies at about 45 degrees north. That means the sun will be at 68.5 degrees above the horizon on June 21st at solar noon. That's the highest point in the sky during the year.

Another interesting aspect of the sun this time of year in Minnesota is that the sun rises and sets north of due east and west. This is why the sunlight falls on the NORTH side of your home in June in the morning and evening. It's uplifting to see windows and other areas that do not get direct sun most of the year basking in sunlight.

The higher sun angles are accompanied by the longest daylight. The week of June 21st features about 15 hours and 36 minutes of daylight, and less than 9 hours of darkness. The sun sets in the central Twin Cities as late as 9:03 pm from June 20th until July 3rd.

June 26 Deephaven, MN

Twi: 4:51am
Sunrise: 5:29am
Sunset: 9:04pm
Twi: 9:41pm
Moonrise: 9:28pm
Moonset: 5:29am
Full Moon: 5:31am

Even more remarkable, the sunset in Hallock in northwest corner of Minnesota is as late as 9:35pm in late June! That means civil twilight provides considerable light in the sky until 10:17pm.

June 26 Hallock, MN

Twi: 4:43am
Sunrise: 5:25am
Sunset: 9:35pm
Twi: 10:17pm
Moonrise: 9:58pm
Moonset: 5:25am
Full Moon: 5:31am

Here is a great site for tracking sun and moon rise and set times for any location. It's a great planning tool for summer vacation trips.

Enjoy the long lazy daylight the next 6 weeks!

PH

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