Wednesday weather update: Hurricane Idalia makes landfall, weekend heat wave forecast for Minnesota

CATHY WURZER: As you heard, hurricane Idalia has made landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast. Already, we're seeing photos of homes and vehicles underwater, streets that are turned into rivers. Meantime, back here in Minnesota, we are under much calmer weather. But things may heat up again soon, very soon. MPR's chief meteorologist, Paul Huttner, joins us with a look at what's happening at home and in Florida. Thanks for joining us. Let's start with the hurricane, shall we?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, incredible. I mean, where to start is the question?

CATHY WURZER: Right.

PAUL HUTTNER: So here's what I'm looking at right now. The landfall this morning, around 8:00 Eastern time-- I'm looking at a radar loop-- this came ashore in Florida's Big Bend area, Cathy, and as you know, that's a very low-lying area of Florida. It came ashore between a couple of towns, Perry and Steinhatchee, if I'm pronouncing that right. And the left side of the eyewall, right over Perry, producing a lot of wind damage-- the right side of the storm surge in Steinhatchee that I saw, just like a river of water coming on shore, and that went all the way down to Cedar Key.

There was even flooding in the Tampa area. 6.9 feet looks like a record storm surge in Cedar Key. And it came in at low tide, which is pretty lucky. And this is the strongest hurricane on record ever in that Big Bend region, Cathy. It went from, what, rapid intensification-- a tropical storm to a category 4 hurricane in just about 24 hours over those record warm gulf waters.

CATHY WURZER: Which is amazing, really. Is that a signal of what climate change can do to supercharge some of these storms?

PAUL HUTTNER: It is. And that's one of the clearer connections with climate change-- the warmer ocean waters translating into fuel for hurricanes and boosting hurricane intensity more quickly. We've seen that just many, many times over the last decade here, where these hurricanes rapidly intensify and go from tropical storm strength to, like today, a category 3 or 4 hurricanes-- 130 mile an hour winds with Idalia as it moved ashore today. So pretty classic key there, warmer ocean water-- it's not rocket science-- produces stronger hurricanes.

CATHY WURZER: Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the intro, we're doing great. Yesterday was nice. Today is also nice. Tomorrow-- and then it gets, what, hot?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, it does. Beautiful day at the fair today, as you mentioned. We're around 80 this afternoon, 87 tomorrow, and 90 Friday. And it's going to be breezy, so you'll notice that wind kicking up. And then we get ready for what looks like a record heat wave to me, Cathy, this Labor Day weekend. So the records this weekend-- Saturday, Sunday, Labor Day are 97 to 98 degrees. I think we will get there on Sunday and Labor Day. I'm forecasting 92 Saturday in the Twin Cities, lots of 90s across Western and Southern Minnesota, 98 99 Sunday and Labor Day. That should tie or potentially break a record for those two days, and then we're back to around 90 on Tuesday.

So this heat dome is going to build right back over the upper Midwest, Cathy. It's been sitting over the Central US all summer. And this could be another remnant of this Gulf of Mexico water temperature, because that has been up around 90 degrees, the surface water, and it's helped build this heat dome. They've seen records in Louisiana that they've never seen before. It's just been feeding heat into this entire system throughout the Central US.

CATHY WURZER: You know, somebody came up to us at the fair-- Kenny Blumenfeld, who you know, of course, a good friend of yours from the state climate office-- was doing the state fair weather quiz with me earlier in the week. Somebody came up and said, have we broken the Earth's climate? Because of all these just incredible records that have been set this year when it comes to heat. And I'm wondering what climate scientists are saying about all these ocean and air temperature records.

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, and it's interesting, The Guardian did a great piece on it this week where they asked dozens of climate scientists what's going on here? Because July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. We've had record ocean temperatures, heat waves, wildfires, floods that we keep seeing. And a lot of the climate scientists are searching for answers and even sounding alarms.

Now here's the thing, Cathy. As you and I have talked about before, this is an unknown experiment. We increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a faster rate than any point in history, and we don't know how quickly the climate will change. Now many of these things are within the predictions that the IPCC said, but how quickly it happens, really, we don't know. In fact, Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, said that some of these projections are underestimating the extremes that we're seeing, that we really are in uncharted territory here.

So have we reached a tipping point? Is it methane that's being released from the Arctic that's accelerating this climate change? We don't know, Cathy. We're living this experiment in real time. So the things that have happened in 2023-- and it does look like this will be the hottest year on record globally, and that's going to be 10 for 10. The last 10 years have been the hottest 10 years on record globally. Think about that for a minute. And it's just wild what kind of a climate situation we're in.

CATHY WURZER: Unreal. On a happier note, when you have some time tonight, are you going to go out and see the blue supermoon?

PAUL HUTTNER: I am. This is cool because this will be the last blue supermoon for, what, 14 years? I think it's 2037 is the next one. So 8:35 PM-- the moon is full. A blue moon happens about every 2 and 1/2 years. But this is a supermoon that's closer to Earth. It's only 222,000 miles away. So it's bigger and it's brighter, and boy, they've been beautiful. That little bit of smoke in the sky that we have, too, Cathy, has made that nice sort of orange hue to the moon. Of course, we don't want the smoke, but it does make for some pretty sights in the sky at times.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah, and before you go, what's on Climate Cast.

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, interesting because Minnesota based Cargill has developed these wind wings for cargo ships. And there's one right now doing a test voyage from China to Brazil. They think it can save as much as 20 tons of CO2 emissions per day on these ships. So interesting to see. We'll talk about that on Climate Cast tomorrow on All Things Considered.

CATHY WURZER: Now there's something new. There's, of course, water wings for the kids and wind wings for cargo ships. There you go-- like that.

PAUL HUTTNER: Yes.

CATHY WURZER: Oh boy, I tell you. Talk to you later. Thank you, Paul.

PAUL HUTTNER: All right. Thanks, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Paul Huttner is MPR's chief meteorologist.