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Election Day Weather Preview. Most of the USA is forecast to have a quiet, relatively mild Tuesday. The only exceptions: rain for the Pacific Northwest and cold winds and snow showers and flurries across New England. Zonal Flow Spills into Mid-November? GFS guidance is a bit contradictory. The forecast for 500mb winds roughly 2 weeks out shows more of a Pacific influence, keeping temperatures close to average across most of the USA, maybe a few degrees below average for Minnesota as we end out the second week of November. Briefing: Issued Thursday, October 29th, 2020: Tropical Storm Zeta Zeta Moving...

Cooling Off Mid-November. After an unusually mild start to November, GFS guidance shows a return to average or cooler than average by mid-month. Nothing like last week, but jacket weather. Which sounds about right for mid-November. Briefing: Issued Wednesday, October 28th, 2020: Hurricane Zeta Zeta Strengthening. Zeta has been strengthening through the overnight hours, and as of 7 AM CT, Zeta had sustained winds of 90 mph, making it a Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane-force winds extend out up to 35 miles from the center with tropical-storm-force winds extending outward to 150 miles. The center of Zeta was located about 265...

Forecast: Full Moon on Halloween. Technically it’s a “Hunter’s Moon”. USA TODAY has details: “Halloween night will feature the moon event of the year. For the first time in decades, there will be a full moon visible across the entire U.S. on Halloween night, Oct. 31. The last time that a full moon was seen in all U.S. time zones on Halloween was 1944, according to the Farmers’ Almanac. The next time we’ll see an equally spooky Halloween full moon is 2039, so plan your werewolf costumes accordingly. The Halloween full moon is also known as a “blue” moon because it’s the...

Leaflet is the leading open-source JavaScript library for responsive, detailed, and extensible maps. Encompassing just 39 kilobytes of JavaScript code, this lightweight dependency takes advantage of the powerful OpenStreetMap basemap and supports both standard geocoded raster and vector imagery as well as WMS tile layers. AerisWeather users have long requested a tutorial teaching how to integrate with this library and we’re excited to deliver a solution. Building on previous iterations of tutorials where we’ve shown AerisWeather users how to use multiple tile servers, we’ll walk through integrating AerisWeather Maps with Leaflet’s powerful tile mapping library to create striking and informative...

Frost, Freeze and Flakes? Here We Go “Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we’d have frozen to death” wrote Mark Twain. I’m not suprised or offended temperatures are tumbling. Considering the sun is as high in the sky today as it was back on February 24 we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised Canadian air is rushing south of the border. It’s not an exaggeration to say the next week or so will look and feel more like early November. Wind chill is back, and a light mix of rain and snow can’t be ruled out early...

Limits of Weather Models All weather, like politics, is local. What will happen in my yard, my neighborhood, my hometown? With major media 7-Day Outlooks are tailored for large metropolitan areas, where most people live. It’s not fair, but this is our reality. Weather apps can help to localize current and predicted weather, but they only go so far. Meteorologists try to capture future variations across the entire state, but weather models, no matter how high-resolution, will never capture tiny wobbles in weather from town to town. It’s worth repeating: weather models are pretty good going out 2-4 days. They...

Graphic credit: Minnesota DNR. Does Snow in October Mean We’re In For a Rough Winter? The short answer is no. And The Minnesota DNR has the data to back that up: “…So, do early snows tell us anything about the coming winter? In short, no. It appears that an October snow is just an October snow, and has no bearing on the remainder of winter. From 1884 through 2019, 45 out of 136 Octobers in the Twin Cities have seen at least one day with measurable snow. The winters that followed those instances of snowfall have spanned nearly the entire...

Intermediate Briefing: Issued late Thursday afternoon, October 8, 2020: Key Points: – Hurricane “Delta” is the 6th tropical system to impact Louisiana in 2020, hitting roughly the same area impacted severely by Hurricane Laura in late August. – Hurricane Delta has strengthened back into a Category 3 storm, growing larger over time with a broad windfield and significant storm surge. – Although not as severe as Hurricane Laura, Hurricane Delta will cause very considerable coastal storm surge flooding as well as flash flooding hundreds of miles inland after landfall in the next 72 hours. – Hurricane Delta is the 5th...

NOAA: 16 Separate Billion-Dollar Disasters So Far in 2020 Don’t let anyone living in Louisiana ever give you a hard time about Minnesota weather. Hurricane Delta will be the 6th tropical system in 2020 to impact Louisiana, still recovering from Hurricane Laura’s aftermath in late August. “Delta” will come ashore along the Louisiana coastline late Friday as a major, Category 3 storm, with sustained winds of 120 mph. According to NOAA, there have been 16 billion-dollar disasters in the USA in 2020, 6 of those since June. From unprecedented western fires to hurricanes to 140 mph gusts from an August...

  Hurricane Delta Threatens Gulf Coast “Paul, has a hurricane named after the Greek alphabet ever been retired?” According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that has never happened – and no, any Greek name would be reused in the future. Why is this even relevant? Hurricane “Delta” may deliver a devastating blow to Cancun today before curving north, coming ashore as a major (Category 3+) storm over coastal Louisiana or Texas Friday night. Many small towns in Louisiana still haven’t recovered from Hurricane Laura, which roared ashore August 26. “Delta” is the 25th named storm of 2020. The all-time...