A Nippy Super Bowl VII – No Big Storms Expected

When I testify on behalf of clients in weather-related court cases I often mention that you can’t negotiate with the atmosphere. “You make plans, draw up schedules and deploy resources, but never forget that Mother Nature bats last.”

Super Bowl LII plans have been fine-tuned for many months; one of the few wild cards has been the weather; ice, blizzard, flood or anything in-between. What can possibly go wrong?
It turns out the weather on February 4 won’t be a worst-case scenario, after all. It’ll be cold (air temperatures around 10F with a wind chill close to 0F). A few Eagles fans may wind up with frostbitten middle fingers. But right now odds don’t favor heavy snow or ice within a 50 mile radius of U.S. Bank Stadium.
In the meantime we get to enjoy a thaw today, and low to mid 40s tomorrow will feel amazingly good. With a northwest flow aloft conditions aren’t ripe for any more heavy snow anytime soon, just a family of clippers into early February. Each storm drags a new surge of numbing air southward. Not as cold as early January, but cold enough to get your attention.


Cold Start to February. Not as numbing as late December and early January, but still 10-15 colder than average during the first week of February, based on ECMWF numbers for the Twin Cities. Enjoy low 40s on Friday – there’s still plenty of winter left to enjoy (or muddle through). Graphic: WeatherBell.

Split Flow. 500mb winds looking out roughly 2 weeks suggest a split flow; the Mother Lode of bitter air tracking well north of Minnesota while a trough of low pressure over California becomes a potential storm incubator, spinning up a series of storms out of the southwestern USA. With cold air still firmly in place this could (in theory) be a favorable pattern for more snow across Minnesota. Stay tuned.

Chilly Super Bowl. Highs in the low to mid teens with single digit lows and wind chill values close to zero? That seems reasonable, based on NOAA’s GFS model, which seems fairly consistent from run to run. No sign of a big storm, but a few clippers swept up in a northwest flow could squeeze out a coating of light snow.

February Outlook. NOAA’s CFSv2 climate model predicts a warmer than average February for much  of the eastern USA and Pacific Northwest, a slight cool bias for the Dakotas and Minnesota. Confidence levels this far out are pretty low. Map: WeatherBell.

School Dilemma: When to Call a Snow Day? It’s a complicated matrix of factors, which varies from school district to district. Here’s an excerpt from Star Tribune: “…Superintendents base their calls mainly on two factors: the safety of students and the ability of school buses to navigate roads. But weather forecasts can be wrong, placing school leaders in a tough spot. Should they decide to cancel classes based on an erroneous forecast, they run the risk of unnecessarily disrupting children’s learning and parents’ schedules. If they stay open, as St. Paul and Minneapolis did on Monday, they run the risk of a fiasco. On rare occasions, the state’s governor has stepped in to declare a statewide snow day...”

Super Bowl Weather. Many of the games were played indoors, but The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio has a run-down on meteorological conditions for the games held outdoors.

Killer Air. 92% of people globally live in places with dangerous levels of air pollution. Huffington Post has the story: “Every year, millions of people die as a result of air pollution-related illnesses. According to the World Health Organization, 11.6 percent of all deaths worldwide are associated with air pollution, making it almost as deadly as tobacco. Watery eyes, wheezing and difficulty breathing are acute and common reactions. But air pollution has other, less perceptible but insidious effects — and it can harm you even before you take your first breath. Exposure to high levels of air pollution during pregnancy has been linked to miscarriages and premature births, as well as autism spectrum disorder and asthma in children. In a comprehensive study of the effects of air pollution in the United States, scientists at Harvard University found air pollution is especially dangerous for men, the poor and African-Americans, who are about three times as likely to die from exposure to the tiny pollutants...”

Data Shows Solar Energy Really Is a Leading American Job Creator. Here’s an excerpt of an Op-Ed from The Solar Foundation at TheHill: “The rapid expansion of solar energy over the past few years has created hundreds of thousands of well-paying American jobs. The most recent National Solar Jobs Census published by The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit organization I lead, found there were 260,077 solar workers in the United States as of 2016. That year, one in 50 new U.S. jobs were in solar, and the industry added jobs 17 times faster than the overall economy.  As the industry wait for a decision on solar panel tariffs, some critics questioned the accuracy of this jobs data…”


Botoxed camels aren’t welcome in Saudi Arabia. Reuters explains: “…A dozen beasts have been disqualified from this year’s Saudi “camel beauty contest” because their handlers used Botox to make them more handsome.  “The camel,” explained the chief judge of the show, Fawzan al-Madi, “is a symbol of Saudi Arabia. We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime.”  Much is changing in Saudi Arabia: the country is getting its first movie theaters. Soon women will be permitted to drive. The authorities eventually hope to diversify the economy away from the oil that has been its lifeblood for decades…”

Photo credit: “Saudi men stand next to camels as they participate in King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Rimah Governorate, north-east of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia January 19, 2018. Picture taken January 19, 2018.” REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser.


Team USA Will Wear Self-Heating Ralph Lauren Parkas for the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Quartzy has details: “…. Inside their red, white, and blue parkas will be an electronic heating system, made of flexible carbon and silver ink printed directly onto the fabric—in the shape of an American flag, of course. The ink, according to Ralph Lauren, is conductive, and connects to a battery pack that can be set to high, low, or off. At a full charge, it provides five hours of heat on the high setting, and 11 hours on the low. “The heat is immediate—it can be felt as soon as the button is pressed,” the company says. David Lauren, its chief innovation officer, led the project to develop the technology…”


The Fastest Shrinking Countries on Earth are in Eastern Europe. Quartz has the story; here’s a clip: “…Sobotka puts this population loss down to three factors—falling fertility rates, massive out-migration and relatively high mortality. “So whereas Western and southern European countries have attracted a lot of immigration which largely offset the effects of low fertility, the East is in a double bind, experiencing both out-migration and low birth rates,” he says. In 2016, growth in Europe’s population was largely as a result of immigration (paywall). While the number of births and deaths were equal at 5.1 million each, net migration boosted the population by 1.5 million to 511.8 million…”


Dog Bites Man, Man Bite Dog, Man Gets Arrested. CBS News has the baffling story; here are a few excerpts: “…A New Hampshire man has been charged with resisting arrest and biting a police dog. Police said the man unsuccessfully tried to hide under a pile of clothes to evade arrest over the weekend and then put the police dog in a chokehold and bit it on the head. They say the man who bit the dog faces charges including resisting arrest, interfering with a police dog and assaulting an officer.  He bit the dog, the dog bit him, he ended up getting Tasered,” Lt. Jason Killary of the Boscawen Police Department told Reuters news agency. “If you get into a biting competition with a police dog, you’re not going to win. They’re pretty good at that...”



9″ snow on the ground at MSP International Airport.

27 F. maximum temperature in the Twin Cities on Wednesday.

24 F. average high on January 24.

34 F. high on January 24, 2017.

January 25, 1964: A record high temperature of 64 is set at Redwood Falls.


THURSDAY: Peeks of sun, milder. Winds: SE 7-12. High: 34

THURSDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Low: 31

FRIDAY: Patchy clouds, feels like late February. Winds: SW 10-15. High: 42

SATURDAY: Peeks of sun, flurries up north. Winds: NW 10-20. Wake-up: 26. High: 32

SUNDAY: More clouds than sun, chilly. Winds: N 5-10. Wake-up: 11. High: 21

MONDAY: Bright sun, fresh air! Winds: NW 7-12. Wake-up: 4. High: 19

TUESDAY: Mostly cloudy, a stiff wind. Winds: SE 10-15. Wake-up: 10. High: 31

WEDNESDAY: Light snow or flurries, turning colder again. Winds: NW 10-15. Wake-up: 26. High: 28


Climate Stories…

Carbon Fees and the Mystery of the Untaxed Negative Externality. Now there’s a mouthful. CleanTechnica explains: “…De-carbonizing the environment is going to be expensive. Mitigating the harm that has already occurred and reducing the damage fossil fuels will do in the future will cost trillions and trillions of dollars. Everybody wants to do something about carbon emissions (except Scott Pruitt, of course) but nobody wants to pay for it. Asking people if they want to pay a tax to help out is like asking if they would like a colonoscopy. Addressing climate change is vitally important as the world approaches its existential moment. Environmentalists must stop shooting themselves in the foot by calling their plans “taxes.” It’s not always about what you say. More often than not, it’s about how you say it. The city of New York is now asking the courts to make ExxonMobil pay for the damage it has caused and will continue to cause. That could be a very effective way of taxing the negative externalities the fossil fuel industry has enjoyed for almost a hundred years...”

File image: Star Tribune.



How Engineering Earth’s Climate Could Seriously Imperil Life. WIRED.com has the article; here’s an excerpt: “…A study out today in Nature Ecology & Evolution models what might happen if humans were to geoengineer the planet and then suddenly stop. The sudden spike in global temperature would send ecosystems into chaos, killing off species in droves. Not that we shouldn’t tackle climate change. It’s just that among the many theoretical problems with geoengineering, we can now add its potential to rip ecosystems to shreds. The models in this study presented a scenario in which geoengineers add 5 million tons of sulfur dioxide to the stratosphere, every year, for 50 years. (A half century because it’s long enough to run a good climate simulation, but not too long that it’s computationally unwieldy. The group is planning another study that will look at 100 years of geoengineering.) Then, in this hypothetical scenario, the sulfur seeding just stops altogether—think if someone hacks or physically attacks the system…”

File image: NASA.


NOAA’s Climate Change Web Site Goes Dark Under Shutdown. The Washington Examiner has the story: “The partial government shutdown has led the nation’s lead climate change research agency to close its website until funding is restored. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website is effectively shut down, making its climate change and weather web-based data unavailable until appropriations enable the website to be publicly available. Only website information “necessary to protect lives and property are operational and will be maintained,” the NOAA climate website reads. “The federal government is currently shutdown,” it said. “NOAA.gov and many associated websites are unavailable while others remain live but not supported...”


Seeing Red on Climate. Republicans stepping up and talking about climate risk? It’s happening, as reported at Grist: “…There’s a small but growing alliance of concerned conservatives who want to reclaim climate change as a nonpartisan issue. This motley crew of lobbyists, Evangelical Christians, and far-right radicals call themselves the “eco-right.” Christine Todd Whitman, former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush, believes the eco-right has a real chance at inspiring action in Congress. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, and a record-breaking year of environmental disasters finally behind us, 2018 could be the year the party reverses course. “If you look at the damage from just this last summer, from the floods, the droughts, the fires, it’s pushing $300 billion out of our economy,” Whitman said…”