We’ve had a record annual snowfall in my part of Minnesota this year. This diary’s about how climate change is adversely affecting weather and that climate change might be causing too damn much snow, and too damn much rain, and too damn many tornadoes in my part of the globe.
Record.annual.snowfall.in.Minnesota. That’s a depressing arrangement of words. With records going back 120-130 or more years, you know that’s a lot of snow and cold. Now, not all parts of Minnesota have had record snowfalls this year. The Cities haven't but we broke the local record with an 18” storm on President’s day and have had a couple of 4” storms add to the record after that.
When we moved back to Minnesota from the Deep South two years ago we were hopeful that Global Warming just might mitigate the harshness of Minnesota winters. NO SUCH LUCK. The past two winters have been long, cold, hard, and snowy. The bummer is these hard winters might have been caused by Global Warming.
Due to Global Warming, hell with these nasty winters I’m going to refer to it as climate change, we of the Upper Midwest might be facing the possibility that these types of winters are going to be closer to the norm in future decades. Climate change might be causing a winter weather pattern where a ‘Greenland block’ of high pressure pushes relatively warm air over NE Canada and Greenland, and that results in bitter Arctic air blasting over us. The ‘Greenland block’ has been a weather pattern that has contributed to making the last two winters in Minnesota miserable. As the far northern latitudes continue to warm, it is reasonable to believe there might be more ‘Greenland blocks’ and that we could be freezing our asses off in Minnesota for decades to come.
This year’s heavy snow pack might cause record floods this spring on the Minnesota and Upper Mississippi Rivers. Right now people are forecasting there’s a 50% chance of breaking the record flood of 1965. All time record snow, maybe an all time record flood – not a good pattern shaping up.
Last year winter relented in mid-March and my wife planted her garden the first of April. This is two weeks before when you are suppose to start planting your cool weather crops. They all came up, and there were no additional hard freezes thanks to an unusually warm spring.
Then June came and it was a month of torrential rains. We ended up with 200% more than the annual monthly rainfall. The stormiest day that month was the 17th, when Minnesota experienced an outbreak of 48 tornadoes. It was a strange afternoon/evening as our farm was on the dry line, and over a period of several hours large thunderstorms built up right over us and cruised to the east. This happened at least three times and we got bursts of heavy rain and a bit of tiny hail out of these erupting monsters. Towns as little as ten miles away got clobbered.
It was the largest tornado outbreak in Minnesota’s history. There were many other tornado warnings last summer. We spent the part of one night in the cellar because of a warning.
State with the most tornadoes in 2010? Minnesota – first time ever. There was a lot of energy and a lot of juice in the atmosphere thanks to climate change.
July came in with another 200%+ above the monthly average rainfall amount. The mosquitoes – give them that much rain – the horror, the horror. August was a month where the rainfall was just a little above average.
September was moderating with mild temperatures and average rainfall, but then on the night of Sept. 22/23 the heavens took a dump. That night we got 11”+ of rain – an all time single day record. Some locals reported 12” or more of rain.
The trigger was tropical moisture from a hurricane that went into Mexico and worked its way north and disgorged its moisture on us. Now late September in Minnesota is not the time of year you would expect tropical downpours. That was a strange night.
Our sump pump began racing non-stop and when I went down to check I realized the shutoff float was not working because there was no water in the hole where the pump was placed. So I spent the next five hours in the cellar manually plugging in and unplugging the sump pump. Your typical 120 year old farm cellar is closer to a Stone Age cave than a modern basement so I always expect big spiders to pounce on me every minute when I’m down there.
That night the water was rushing in so I had to plug in the sump every minute or two and let it run for a minute. I did take my laptop down there so I was surfing the Internet in my watery Stone Age cave. I thought of live blogging on Daily Kos, ‘I’m writing this from my cellar with water gushing in like I’m on the Titanic,’ but the water was gushing in too fast to type.
My wife had purchased an emergency backup sump pump. Problem was she couldn’t remember where she placed it, so she was running between three outbuildings in this torrential downpour trying to find it. She did manage to find it after getting a pretty good moisturizer treatment.
About four in the morning the sump pump I had been manually running burnt out. At that point I tried to replace it with the new pump, but we needed a different kind of fitting to connect the pump to the drainage pipe. So we just went to bed. The next morning we had 9” of water in the cellar. I went to town at 8, got the right fitting, and then stood in a long checkout line of people getting all types of water draining and plumbing supplies. We live outside a small town, so there usually are not long lines at the hardware store at 8 in the morning. I got the pump running and the standing water in the cellar was drained fairly quickly. But the sump pump ran regularly for the next two months.
The good outcome of my night in the basement was it prevented the furnace from be ruined by flooding. Our furnace serviceman said the water in the basement stopped 1” below the electronics of the unit.
Here’s a summary of this monster storm from the Minnesota Climatology Working Group:
The highest two-day rainfall total reported to the MNGage volunteer network was 11.06 inches near Winnebago in Faribault County. The official National Weather Service observer at Amboy in Blue Earth County reported 10.68 inches for the event (including 9.48 inches for the 24-hour period ending 3:00 PM, September 23). Other higher amounts include 10.20 inches at Truman in Martin County, 9.26 inches at Windom in Cottonwood County, and 8.57 inches at Theilman in Wabasha County.
The combination of huge rainfall totals and a very large areal extent, make this episode one of the most significant "flash floods" in Minnesota's climate history. A six inch rainfall total for a given location in this region over a 24-hour period is said to be a 100-year storm. The area receiving six or more inches during this event encompassed over 5000 square miles in Minnesota alone.
There were numerous reports of reports of urban and rural flooding as the rain fell on already soggy soil. Swollen creeks and rivers left their banks and flooded neighborhoods in communities such as Owatonna, Pine Island, Pipestone, Truman, St. James, Zumbro Falls, and many others. Basement flooding was reported throughout the southern one third of Minnesota. Numerous state, county, and township roads were closed due to flooding. Water levels on many southern Minnesota rivers and streams approached or exceeded all-time highs. Record high river level values are uncommon outside of the spring snow-melt season. Agricultural interests were significantly impacted by the event. The fall harvest was slowed by wet fields and yield potential suffered from crop inundation.
The Mississippi River rose above flood stage (14 feet) at St. Paul on September 29. This is the first time that the Mississippi River has reached above flood stage in the autumn. Checking flood stage records back to 1893, the next closest autumn peak in the Mississippi at St. Paul was on September 30, 1986 with a peak stage around 12.8 feet.
This storm dumped massive amounts of rain from the border with SD to the border with WI. By the morning of the 23rd of September, the Land of 10,000 Lakes had become the Land of 25,000 Lakes. All time record crests on some rivers in late September, the Mississippi River hitting flood stage in September for the first time ever– bizarre.
After the deluge it didn’t rain for 28 days which is one of the longest dry stretches on record. The mild dry stretch allowed most farmers to complete their harvest in the fall, but some fields remained too wet to harvest. Many farmers took hits on soybean yields, but the corn crop was mostly OK.
Then we had a monster storm with all time record low pressure hit the state on Oct. 26-27.
From the Minnesota State Climatology Office:
The weather map for October 26, 2010 showed a large storm system dominating the continental United States. This is one of the strongest non-tropical storms on record for lowest minimum pressure in the United States. The lowest pressure found, after adjusting for the true mean sea level pressure, was 28.21 inches at 5:13 pm at Bigfork in Itasca County. This shatters the old Minnesota lowest pressure record of 28.43 inches that was set in the November 10, 1998 storm at both Austin and Albert Lea.
This storm rapidly intensified over the course of 24 hours. Aided by a strong jet stream, a strong low pressure system became better organized over central South Dakota on October 25. The low moved to the northeast and by noon on October 26, the center was over Hibbing. High Wind Warnings were posted from southeast Montana to Ohio. A Blizzard Warning covered a good chunk of North Dakota. The strongest wind gust reported in Minnesota was 65 mph at both Georgeville in Stearns County and Mehurin Township in Lac Qui Parle County.
To illustrate how strong of a storm this is, 28.21 inches is equivalent to a Category 3 Hurricane. The lowest pressure for the storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975 was 28.95 inches. Even with the Armistice Day storm (a legendary MN storm) the lowest pressure recorded was 28.55 inches. Of course, pressure is only one measurement of a storm.
We got wind gusts of 60 mph. It was just a big wind storm with incredible low pressure.
After that we got our first frost on the 28th of October, and that was more than three weeks later than average. In our county that frost was the second latest first frost on record. Then we had another winter from hell.
Kossacks pretty much accept as scientific fact that human caused climate change is responsible for making the earth’s atmosphere hotter and increasing the water vapor in the atmosphere. The weather we’ve experience in the last year might be a pretty good indicator of the consequences of climate change.
People tend to view weather as one off events – ‘well that happened’ and then the weather continues on. ‘It will be sunny tomorrow,’ seems to be the mindset of people, well except for the doomer/gloomer Kossacks. Hey, don’t take that personally, I’m one of those doomer/gloomers. The point I’m making is that context is not often applied to unique weather events. Based on my weather experiences in the last year perhaps these were not isolated, one off events because climate change might really be a root cause of this extreme weather.
Flooding around the world is one weather feature that seems to have exploded over the past several years. The amount of flooding and the intensity of flooding seems unprecedented to me. There was serious flooding last year in another place I lived, Sioux Falls, SD. There was flooding where I vacationed as a kid in Delhi, IA where heavy rains took out a dam. I suspect the flooding the human race is going to experience is only going to get much worse.
Getting back to local weather, in the past year we’ve experience:
The snowiest winter on record
The second latest frost on record
The most intense low pressure storm on record
All time 24 hour record rain fall
Record fall flooding
Minnesota led the nation in the number of tornadoes
Record tornado outbreak
A summer of exceptionally heavy rain
Now we’ve got a 50% chance of an all time record spring flood.
Perhaps the Minnesota born poet said it best, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’.
In the future I’ve just got to make sure the pump does work.
Link:
http://climate.umn.edu/