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High-Resolution Weather Predictions Will Power the Clean Energy Revolution Winston Churchill had it right. The future is a riddle, wrapped inside a mystery, inside an enigma. Predictions are always tenuous, but one thing is increasingly apparent: what worked in the 1970s probably will not work in the 2030s. The election of President Joseph Biden has accelerated a transition to a more sustainable, clean-energy future for the United States. But federal incentives and stimulus are only part of the equation. Market forces are already in play, powering and accelerating an inevitable transition to wind, solar, energy storage, biofuels, tidal power and...

Star Tribune Another Low Ice Year Predicted on Lake Superior, Great Lakes. Star Tribune has an update: “As the sun rose over this corner of Lake Superior on Wednesday morning, the windchill was nearly 30 below. Open water at last disappeared under a thin layer of ice after stubbornly sticking it out through an unseasonably warm January. But just over the horizon, the waves remained. For the second season in a row, Lake Superior and the Great Lakes as a whole are expected to have below-average ice, which could increase shoreline erosion and threaten organisms that depend on ice cover,...

Icy Trees in Tangshan, ChinaKent Kruhoeffer Winter Season Snowfall To Datewww.nohrsc.noaa.gov/snowfall_v2/ Will Mild Pacific Signal Continue to Dominate? The 500mb forecast 2 weeks out looks cold, but there are still hints that our pattern may be flavored by the Pacific, a persistent westerly component to steering winds aloft that may take some of the sting out of any polar air. Still too early to speculate about intensity or duration of any bitter cold. Or if it’s even real. CW3E Scripps, Twitter Atmospheric River in California Poses Debris-Flow Threat. The Capital Weather Gang at The Washington Post has perspective on the...

NOAA On The Cusp of Frigid? Looking out 2 weeks GFS guidance shows polar air pooling over Canada, and all it will take is a series of clippers to drag successive waves of increasingly cold air south of the border, arriving in waves of cold fronts. Briefing: Issued Tuesday morning, January 26th, 2021: Central United States Winter Storm Morning Radar. Snow continues to fall from portions of Iowa into the Great Lakes with our central United States winter storm this morning, with wintry precipitation (including freezing rain) stretching east into portions of the Northeast, including Pennsylvania. A band of at...

David Josephson, WCCO Radio A Relatively Balmy January. Dr. Mark Seeley has details on lingering warmth in this week’s edition of Minnesota WeatherTalk: “…It looks like this January may end up among the 5 warmest in state history based on statewide climate data so far. Through two-thirds of the month temperatures are running from 8 to 17 degrees F above normal. The last ten days of the month will not all be warmer than normal, but a mixture of above and below normal values. This will mean that the average temperature for January in Minnesota may not be as cold...

Twin Cities National Weather Service We need a better way to set expectations for winter storms. “How many inches?” doesn’t capture potential impacts from timing and temperature. A lousy inch of snow at 15F can be far worse on highways than 6 inches at 32F. The reason cold storms are more challenging? Salt loses its effectiveness melting snow and ice when the mercury dips below 20F or so. At 32F most freeways will be wet and slushy. At 15F even major highways and interstates will be snow covered and icy. Timing Saturday’s SnowTwin Cities National Weather Service Snow Reaches MSP...

ECMWF Snowfall Predictionweatherbell.com NAM Model Snowfall Potential by Sunday Morningpivotalweather.com Dueling Models. The 00z Thursday runs of ECMWF (top) and 12 km NAM (below) show plowable amounts of snow Saturday into Sunday morning, possibly 3-6” of fluff. Pacific Breezes. We will continue to see cheap shots of cold air, but the dominant signal is steering winds howling from the west, allowing relatively mild air to penetrate unusually far inland, a trend that should spill over into early February. Bay Area office of the National Weather Service Fire Season Just Won’t Quit. Record warmth, high winds and lingering drought are fanning...

Paul Douglas Storm Impact? Check Timing and Temperature ”I beseech you Paul, how many inches!” That never gets old, by the way. My favorite meteorology college professor was right. Americans are preoccupied with inches, demanding a level of specificity and precision the science can’t provide. So we give a range of inches (if I say 2-4 inches you’ll probably remember 4) and a much-borrowed snowfall rating scale: nuisance-plowable-crippling. Yesterday was a rude reminder that when temperatures are cold enough, inches don’t matter. A snowy coating of fluff turned roads into skating rinks. Inches are a factor, but so are temperatures...

“Parhelia”Todd Nelson Probably Not a Polar Winter This Year A couple months ago I went out on a tenuous limb and predicted “half a winter” for Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. Studying the maps and models I stand by my (reckless) outlook. In spite of a La Nina cool phase in the Pacific (which often produces colder winters here) unusually strong jet stream winds are blowing more from Seattle than the Yukon. Bitter air is trapped to our north; small burps of chilly air reaching the U.S. When in doubt, follow the trends. According to NOAA January is the 6th...

NOAA The Forecast Calls For Uncertainty ”Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you wrote Eckhart Tolle. We have all been living with uncertainty for nearly a year now, waiting for vaccines and our better angels to return. Predicting weather is the rough equivalent of peeling an infinite onion of uncertainty. We can track what’s happening (now) and weather models, rough approximations of how the atmosphere should behave, are good and getting better. But every storm is different, every wet swirl a unique puzzle to be deciphered. 3 KM NAM Snowfall PredictionNOAA and pivotalweather.com...