Minnesota sees first widespread frost of season

EMILY BRIGHT: Well, we just got into the swing of things with fall weather. And yes, we are already talking about frost. Joining us now is MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner. Hello, Paul.

PAUL HUTTNER: Hey, Emily. Good to talk with you.

EMILY BRIGHT: You, too. So frost up north? How widespread was it this morning?

PAUL HUTTNER: Oh, a preview of coming attractions, I'm afraid. Yeah, it was widespread, and actually, it was a hard freeze in several locations up in Northern Minnesota. Hibbing hit 27 this morning. That's the coldest temperature in the state this morning. Crane Lake, Orr, and Cook hit 28. Tower, 29. Embarrass and Ely hit 30. International Falls, 31, and Hinckley, 32. So all those locations were at or below freezing this morning. You get over to Grand Rapids, it was 33. Duluth, 35. And then down into the Twin Cities, we had some 30s right in the Twin Cities suburbs. I saw Blaine hit 37, Lakeville hit 37, Lake Elmo, 36.

So, chilly around the suburbs. 47 officially at the airport. That's the coldest in four months, Emily. You have to go back to May 20th when we hit 44 degrees. And this is not that uncommon to see frost and freezing temperatures up north. The average for Ely, the first 32 degrees is September 20. So a little early, but we're getting close to that. Duluth, late September. Twin Cities, October 10, our first average at 32. So no need to panic just yet, Emily. We may stay above freezing for a while here in the Twin Cities.

EMILY BRIGHT: OK, good to know. So what can we expect from the weather through the weekend?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, it's going to warm up. Today, 68, with sunshine in the afternoon. Still some 50s in Northern Minnesota, but we'll be 80 or 82 in the Twin Cities tomorrow afternoon, mid 80s back toward Redwood Falls, and then a chance of some showers, a thunder shower on Friday. It doesn't look super heavy, maybe a quarter of an inch of rain. 74 in the Twin Cities. The weekend looks really nice, mostly sunny. Kind of crisp highs in the low 70s, should be a pretty nice weekend.

EMILY BRIGHT: OK, I won't put the short sleeves away then just yet. But I want to turn our attention globally to all the flooding. We've been hearing about devastating floods in Greece, Libya, Hong Kong, and Brazil, to name a few. Is there a discernible climate connection here?

PAUL HUTTNER: Well, there is. There have been several studies done that have linked warmer ocean temperatures to these systems producing heavier rainfall, including Hurricane Harvey. Kevin Trenberth did a study on that from the National Center on Atmospheric Research. So it's likely not a coincidence that we've seen these multiple, epic, deadly flood events, Emily.

Just a couple of points here, data points. Greece, Zagora had 30 inches of rain in a day. That's a year's worth of precipitation for the Twin Cities. That's why major agricultural lands were flooded there. Hong Kong, 6 inches of rain in an hour. You might have seen video of people literally being swept down streets there.

And then as we heard about with John, this Medicane Daniel, sort of a hurricane over the Mediterranean, 16 inches of rain in that area in Libya in 24 hours. Those two dams look like they failed. And yeah, what are they saying now? Maybe as many as 6,000 dead. So this looks like the deadliest storm on record, flood on record for Northern Africa.

And the climate connection is pretty simple. We've just come through the hottest months in global history, July and August. September is tracking to be the hottest September. You have that heat in the atmosphere. You add more moisture into the atmosphere. It creates stronger storms and heavier rainfall rates. So this is really what climate scientists have been warning could happen. This is what climate change looks like, Emily. And we're only at 1.5 degrees Celsius or so warmer than average, and we're trying to prevent it from going higher.

EMILY BRIGHT: Oh, my goodness. OK, well, we're sounding the call. And you're reminding us of the important economic, but more than that, life saving value of accurate weather forecasts. And I wanted to talk to you about how there are other companies that are employing meteorologists for the work that they're doing.

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, and I worked in this end of the business, Emily. I got my start in what's called operational meteorology as a weather forecaster for gas and electric utilities, right? Because they need precise forecasts to estimate the load that all of us are going to use with different temperatures. And basically, if they get caught having to buy spot power on the market, it costs them a lot of money.

So meteorologists and meteorology companies provide support to all kinds of companies around the United States. And that savings is in the billions of dollars. Electric utilities, gas utilities, big box stores, shipping, aviation, agriculture all use weather support. I like to think of it as there's a meteorologist in your light switch when you flip it on because your power company has probably used weather support to try to estimate their load. So interesting that you hear about meteorologists in radio and TV, right? That's only 4% of all meteorologists. A lot of us are working behind the scenes for producing economic value for the United States.

EMILY BRIGHT: Well, I am team meteorologist. So just briefly, Climate Cast. What's coming up?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, this week, we'll talk about the drought that we've had now for the last three years and excessive groundwater pumping in parts of Northwest Minnesota, especially in 2021. Dionne Searcey with The New York Times did a report on that. We'll talk to her tomorrow on Climate Cast during All Things Considered.

EMILY BRIGHT: All right. Thank you, Paul.

PAUL HUTTNER: Thanks, Emily.

EMILY BRIGHT: Paul Huttner is MPR's chief meteorologist. And to stay up to date with all the weather news you need to live in Minnesota, you can follow the Updraft blog at mprnews.org.