This isn’t a weather report. Well it is, but that’s not the point. Check out what MPR’s Paul Huttner’s great blog says about “climate disruption.”
First your forecast:
OK, that’s summer. But the real eye-raising part is Huttner’s link to the Weather Channel’s list of top 25 cities for climate disruption. For some reason, Minneapolis (!) is at #2, right between New Orleans and Las Vegas. (For the record, New Orleans is below sea level in a hurricane zone, and Las Vegas is in one of the continent’s hottest deserts.)
Here’s what the list says about Minneapolis:
2. Minneapolis, Minnesota
Population: 400,070Minneapolis could get pummeled from a lot of different angles, making it number 2 on our list. The city itself will be a good deal hotter than rural places close by. It has seen precipitation increase by almost 40 percent since 1958, a trend expected to continue. Drought here will also continue to worsen. The city isn’t waiting around for these changes; in 2013, it implemented a sustainability plan that includes reducing energy consumption by 17 percent and using renewable forms of energy to meet 10 percent of its needs by 2025.
I remain skeptical of their logic, and suspect them of trolling. But then again, weather.com has me trumped on climate credentials.
And St. Paul is #8 on that list. Why didn’t they organize it by metro area instead of city?
I don’t get the list and wouldn’t personally think that the Twin Cities was anywhere close to the top of cities threatened by climate disruption…
I didn’t buy that article either. We already have extreme weather, how would we even notice it getting crazier?
? Well if we used to get hail once or twice a summer and in 10 years we get hail storms 5-7 times a summer that’s an example. Or if we get the same amount of annual rain but it comes in much bigger storms and more basements flood (or, people need to spend more money than they otherwise would on sump pumps, etc), we’d notice. Or if farmers see 5% less yield on crops because of wetter Junes and droughtier droughts, they’d notice.
The CityPages piece notes that St Paul was excluded from the study on urban heat island effects (only looked at top 60 cities), which is likely why it wasn’t right next to Minneapolis. But yea, metro area would have made sense.
For anyone who’s curious, the screen shots Paul Huttner posts are not from some proprietary meteorologist-only software but are from the free web site http://www.weatherspark.com . It’s like a weather web site, but for the sentient.
I always loved that site. But I’m a data nerd, so …
It makes sense that as a continental climate Minneapolis would be exposed to more severe storms and flash flooding. It already gets more severe weather than coastal climates, so it would make sense that climate change, which typically increases severity and frequency of storms, would make the storms here worse and more frequent. Which somewhat goes along with the seeming contradiction of increased precipitation and increased drought.
But yeah, weather.com sucks.
“But then again, weather.com has me trumped on climate credentials.”
I could make an argument against that, given how sensationalist TWC has gotten over the years.