(00:00:00) We bring Bob Potter back to the microphones for a bit of a chat about the weather my goodness. It does feel a bit like fall these days. It was almost chilly last night. Well, it certainly was Mark and we will find out about the weather from a guy who really knows his business today. Mr. Ron Willis Deputy meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities Ron welcome. It sure is a pleasure to have you on the air here today. Mark was saying that it's beginning to feel a little fall. Like do you think we've seen kind of the the last hurrah of Summer here with the heat and humidity of the yesterday and the day before or can we get some more hot weather? Well, I think it's much less likely now, especially on the humidity side you even notice that when we do get a little shot of heat and humidity now it normally is just there the last couple of weeks it lasts for a day or two and then it's gone again, we're starting to see these these pushes of cooler and drier air out of the Northwest which is kind of a forerunner of the typical fall weather pattern so I would say a Likely, we're starting to slip into that fall pattern. Yeah. Well, we usually get a few hot days around the state fair. So I suspect that there's a chance that we'll see some more of that. You folks have got some exhibits at the State Fair this year to don't you write. This is the first time that we do have a booth at State Fair. We're sharing it with the Federal Executive Board and our forecasters and meteorological technicians are going to be Manning that Booth from about 9:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon every day of the fair and we're going to have a weather radio out there and the drop on the weather radar and the few handouts for the people. Where will it be located will be in the education building. I don't know the exact spot yet, but will be the education building. Okay Ronald seems like we have had some unusual weather this year. We had no winter at all to speak of practically no snow. It didn't get very cold with a very early spring. We were having wonderful weather wonderful temperatures in April and May and then we've had a pretty hot summer was a dry summer up until that huge range. We got in late July what's going on? Well, I guess as usual we can say that the averages are made up of the Extremes. In other words. The average weather pattern is made up of dry periods wet periods warm periods and cold periods things seem to even out in the long run maybe not quite as dramatically as we saw the the drought situation end on July 23rd with 10 inches of rain, but normally in the long run things do even now we're seeing ourselves closer to normal now for the month of August, we're running just about normal for temperature slightly above normal for precipitation. So I kind of have the feeling now that now we're more on the normal track will probably stay that way for a few months. Hmm. So you don't think we're going to have either a very early winter or a harsh winter or early fall or anything like that. There's no indication of that. I was talking to Jim Zane Lowe the state climatologist just the day before yesterday and Jim a lot of times we'll go back and look at the past weather records find something. Summer to what we've experienced and then project ahead what we could expect in the future and Jim was kind of the that the opinion that once we start to hit the normal again after an extreme of one way or the other that it's kind of a toss-up whether we're above or below in either temperature or precip for The Following Season. Ron Willis is with us today Deputy meteorologist in charge at the Twin Cities Office of the National Weather Service. And if you have a question for him about the weather, you can certainly give us a call today our telephone number two two seven six thousand in the Minneapolis st. Paul area in other parts of Minnesota the toll-free number one 865 29700 and if you're listening in one of the surrounding states, you can call us directly in the Twin Cities at area code 612 2276 thousand Ron tell us a little bit about what happens out there at the National Weather Service. I know that you put out forecasts three or four times a day what goes into putting One of those forecasts together our forecast responsibility is the whole state of Minnesota and we have one forecaster on duty working the public forecast desk 24 hours a day. The person uses information from weather observations that are taken once an hour from over 300 and some stations around the country. These are all fed into our main computer system and information system out in our headquarters in Washington and then fed back to us by our communication system. So we know at least once every hour what the weather is in all of the weather observing stations in the country. We also have weather balloons that are sent up twice a day once in the morning. Once in the evening for roughly about two stations per state. This gives us information on the upper atmosphere as a balloon is ascends vertically through the air it gives us information on temperature and humidity and wind direction and speed so we can not only draw the weather maps of the highs and the lows and the front's from the surface observations that we Hourly, but also from the upper air observations, which we get twice a day. We get a three-dimensional view of the atmosphere that way and all this information is fed into our I guess we could call him our forecast your computer system again out in our headquarters area and the computer takes all this information obviously can do a much better job than a human as far as digesting all this information coming up with a general or a large-scale forecast for the country and can tell us what the computer thinks will be the favorite locations of the low pressure systems in the high pressure systems over the US for the next 12 hours 24 36 48 hours and so forth and then it becomes the local forecasters job to take that General view of the computer and find out if it's appears to be correct or if it has some false data that would cause it to erroneous. We place some highs or lows are fronts. And then to use that information to narrow it down to the state of Minnesota or to the local community that you're forecasting for. All right, we got some folks with questions for run Willis today and we'll put them on the air. Hello your first (00:06:16) hi. I was wondering I had two questions. First of all our winter last year. Some folks had said that the jet stream had a lot to do with the way the winter went and I was wondering because it looks to me like it's about the same way as it was course. That's probably normal for summer. If you could comment on the jet stream and how that affects our weather and also my brother's a meteorologist and he's kind of a walking encyclopedia about whether you can tell you what happened 300 years ago just about it seems like and are all meteorologists like that because it seems to me that everybody even talk to us into the weather has been very much like that. They eat sleep and live weather. Y'all hang up and listen. (00:06:56) Okay, I'll take your last question or a comment first. A lot of people that are into where there are that way. They wanted to study whether or get into the weather business since they were little kids a lot of our people at our office are that way some of them have been reading whether books and then taking their own weather observations in their backyard, since they were just little kids on the other hand. Then there are those like me who kind of stumbled into it by accident. I wanted to be a geologist and study the rocks and the dirt and things like that turned out when I finished my work in geology as far as getting a degree there weren't any jobs. I stayed another year got a degree in meteorology and ended up in the weather business that we kind of by accident. I have been glad that I did but I think for the most part people that get into whether do have that interest or if they didn't have it to begin with though they pick it up real quick and it's probably something that will stay with you for quite a while your There is believe you said your brother. He's perfectly normal. I think you don't have to worry about him that way perfectly normal for a weather person. You might want to add many. Thanks everybody. Yes. How about the jet stream the impact of the jet stream on whether right the jet stream is that fast-moving River of air that flows generally from west to east in the upper atmosphere usually at a height of about 200 five or six miles or so and the Jetstream kind of tends to steer the weather systems that move across the United States. It's kind of the steering mechanism for the low pressure systems in a high-pressure systems in the wintertime. Normally the jet stream blows from the North West toward the southeast and it steers those systems with cold air down out of Canada. It will switch occasionally and blow from the southwest and bring us more moist warmer air low pressure systems out of the Panhandle area. These are the times that we normally get our heavy snows. So we kind of get a mix of these we get cold air normally mixed in Occasionally with a flow from the southwest that gives us some snow and then back to the more colder situation again last winter we had most of the winter we had what we call a split flow the jet stream came from the West up to about the west coast of the United States and then one branch of it went North stayed north of us while another Branch went South and stayed south of us. The net result is that our flow was generally from the West which wasn't a cold flow certainly at the same time. It wasn't a moist flow. We didn't get hardly any shots from the southwest with a lot of moisture which we normally get on the other hand. We didn't get a lot of shots of cold air out of the Northwest. We were kind of in between and you might hear that split flow mentioned again. It's kind of a different upper air pattern. We don't really know why it settles in like that but that's pretty much what happened. We were in a an unusual upper are situation. We're not likely to see that again. Are we probably not the we had Fourth least amount of snowfall here in the Twin City that we've had since records began in the middle 1800s. We only had shortly over are just over 17 inches of snow. And if you combine the lack of snow with the warm temperatures, it's probably something that's you certainly won't see again in this lifetime. At least on the average would never see more than once a lifetime. Yeah. I don't if I remember correctly. I don't think the City of Minneapolis even declared a single snow emergency and there might not have been more than one in st. Paul. That sounds just about right. I don't I had my snowblower out twice and I don't think either time it was even worth while cranking it up and getting it out. Yeah. All right. We'll take your question next to Lauren Willis is (00:10:38) listening. Good morning. I'm calling to say that I really appreciate the broadcast service that you run. I use it very frequently and I hope that that's not anything that's going to be endangered by all of the federal budget cuts. Secondly I have lived in Ha go in there was a service there where you could call a number and get a recorded message by the weather service. But if you stayed on the line, and it was not a you know busy time for the forecasters, they could come on the line that was helpful. For those of us who want to get some information about sees that you're traveling to I've been unable to locate any kind of number like that or service like that Minneapolis and I was wondering if you do have one or if you don't if you would consider doing that. (00:11:19) Okay first you're questioning whether radio what we appreciate your comments are people that operates a weather radio obviously are not professional broadcasters it just who happens to be on shift at the time or happens to be there working. The severe weather is the person that puts the recording or the live broadcast on the weather radio and we have different levels of I guess expertise on it. But nonetheless we keep going as best we can appreciate the comment again on the telephone number to our office. We do have a number that number is 7 Two five six zero nine zero and that number seven to five 6090 is a public line at Rings into our office. There is a recording that we put the latest hourly weather on their temperature humidity and the forecast and sometimes a little additional information if there's anything available the problem is it's just one line. It's probably busy most of the time in the daytime. It does ring through if the person hangs on after the recording then it will ring through and one of our people will answer it again. It's just one line and we would like to have many lines coming in there. In fact, I think there's nothing I'd like more than to have several lines coming into our office with people available to answer the phone, but we answer that phone with our normal Staffing of forecasters who are meeting deadlines and armies hradzka technicians who are working the radar and taking observations, so Had more than one line. We really wouldn't be able to answer it anyway, but there is the line 7256090 and it does ring through and we will answer it. And how many of you are there at the Twin Cities Office of the lawyer service. We have 10 forecasters that work around the clock seven days a week. We also have 10 meteorological technicians are basic Staffing at any one time. It's to forecasters one forecasts are doing the public forecast for the whole state of Minnesota the other doing Aviation forecasting for the state and then to meteorological technicians one person one runs the weather radar the weather radio and any other projects that are going on and the other person takes a weather observations Manziel other equipment and kind of answers the phone and kind of tends to the day-to-day record-keeping in the office. I think our caller also wanted to know if in your opinion the weather radio broadcasting might be threatened by possible budget cuts. I don't think so. The the it probably will not be expanded. We do have some gaps in the weather radio network right now. We have a big gap up around the Brainerd area for one thing. We'd like to get that filled. It doesn't look like it'll happen soon. And we have other gaps in various parts of the state that the transmitters will not reach. I think the basic weather radio program will continue probably what could happen is if Staffing gets cut a little bit maybe a little a little harder to keep it going the way we want but I don't see it being phased out at all. Ron Willis is Deputy meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities. And if you have a question for him about how the weather bureau operates or about what's going on with our weather, you can call us at two to seven six thousand. We have some lines open again now 2276 thousand in the Twin Cities in other parts of Minnesota one 865 to 9700. That's the toll-free number. Go ahead please now with your (00:14:50) question. Hi, I just got a simple question. I was kind of wondering you always hear about the dew point on the radio forecast and how I just want and how it relates to temperature and relative humidity and stuff like that. Just a simple question. Thank you. (00:15:06) The dew point is just an indicator of how much moisture is in the air. The dew point is measured in degrees Fahrenheit just like the temperature is the dew point cannot be any higher than the temperature itself. It can be the same as the temperature or lower but it can't be higher. The closer. The dew point is to the temperature the higher the relative humidity and I'll give you a couple of examples let's say the temperature is 80° and an in very unlikely situation say the dew point is 80 degrees temperature and dewpoint. Both 80 degrees. The relative humidity would be a hundred percent. Then as the dew point is lower than the temperature the relative humidity gets less for instance. If the temperature is 80 and the dew point is 75 relative humidity would be more like 80 to 85 percent. So as the dew point goes lower the relative humidity goes lower. That's why we watch the dew point very carefully and the dew point has been publicized a lot lately by The Weather Service and The media as an indicator of how much moisture is in the air and certainly how it how the air becomes uncomfortable especially in the summertime as the dew point gets high. Generally if the dew point in the summertime is in the 60s, certainly the middle 60s are higher it starts to get pretty uncomfortable if the temperatures up into the 80s the dew point is down in the 50s. It's usually a nice dry decent day. Does that word dew point have any say I mean is that the temperature at which do will form well by definition its the temperature at which a parcel of air when cooled will condense the water out of it. For example, if you have a let's say a one cubic foot block of are it has a certain amount of moisture in it. There's a general rule meteorology that warm air can hold more moisture than cool air. So if you take a blob of air and cool it and cool it and cool it it will reach a certain. Sure, which the moisture that's in there condenses out because as the air cools it can hold less and less. So for instance if we go back to our temperature of 80 and our dew point of 75 if we take a block of are at 80 degrees put it in a refrigerator seal the sides off. So there's no exchange of anything into their or out of the block cool it it'll we can cool it down to 75 before at that point the moisture that's in there will condense out and it'll form a cloud or fog or a little droplets. Hmm. All right. Let's take a question from you next a (00:17:37) little there. I have been reading about possibilities of major changes in weather patterns. Is there a possibility that that might occur in Minnesota? And so I'd like to know what the the pattern will be. Thank you very (00:17:56) much. There's a lot of studies being done in a lot of speculation on whether the atmosphere is warming or whether it's cooling. A lot of this is kind of global in size or certainly much larger than the state of Minnesota. Nonetheless. Certainly any changes would affect us. There's no real good theory that we know of that certain at this point. There's one school of thought that says the pollutants released into the atmosphere carbon dioxide causes What's called the greenhouse effect. It allows the the shortwave radiation of the sun to shine in and heat the surface, but then it blocks the the heat from radiating out again. The net result in the greenhouse effect is a warming of the the surface of the Earth on the other hand. There's a school of thought that particulate pollutants such as At and a little little pieces of little granules are pieces of dust that are injected into the air from industry and plants and whatever actually tends to block out the Sun or this can come from let's say a volcanic eruption to or you have a lot of debris ejected into the air does this definitely does call the cause of cooling and on a Global Effect is that this another school of thought thinks that the atmosphere will actually cool because of the pollutants being released into the atmosphere. Another thing which I just recently read about is the we've heard a little bit lately about the depletion of the ozone layer up in the higher levels of the are especially over. I believe it's a South polar area and that that might cause a net warming or cooling of the atmosphere and of course if it does warm or cool just a matter of a few degrees it can have a great effect on either starting to melt some of the polar ice caps and raise the sea level which we've heard with the coastal areas going under and you know various things like this to mine. Is there has been no agreement between the the real scientists who have studied this as to what's happening if anything is certainly there are pollutants going into the air maybe one problem is being counteracted by something else that's going on. And at this point I am not sure that anybody really knows what's happening. So be kind of hard to say how Minnesota's weather pattern might change if all this were going on, right exactly and of course we can see some changes short-term changes except for this year. We've had an except for one other year in the last 10 years. We've had exceptionally heavy snowfalls. We've had snow falls up in the 70 80 90 inch range when our normal is in the 40s and you know a person wanders. Well, you know, is this an indicator but again, I think that the this is relatively short term in that again the averages or the means are made up of the extremes and I think we're just seeing one of these little extremes In the in the curve of weather. Well, what do you think for this winter? Will we have more of the average 40s or would be way up there in the 70s? You've already said it's not likely to be like last winter with none. Right? I guess our best projection at this point is that we would tend back more towards the normal of somewhere in the 40s for snowfall temperature. Actually The Weather Service doesn't get into seasonal Outlook quite this far ahead. We do have an official 90 day outlook that takes us only through October through a good share of the fall and that indicates that's temperatures should be just a little bit below normal for the 90-day period August September and October precipitation just a little bit above normal. But these these outlooks are a little shaky at best and I would say they should be used with that in mind take him with your salt shaker in here. Right moving along to your question of around Willis. Hello (00:21:52) what happens to all the weather balloons and the instruments that you keep sending up? (00:21:58) The weather balloons each have a paper parachute that's tied on below the instrument and those balloons normally go up into the air or anywhere from sixty to a hundred thousand feet the balloon eventually when it gets into the thinny thinner air it expands expands finally it breaks. And then the whole thing comes down on this hanging on his paper parachute a couple of reason for the parachute one thing is when the instrument comes down, it won't come through somebody's roof for Skylight or kill somebody's cow or anything like that. And another reason is that it'll save the instrument somewhat so that if they are found they will be reconditioned and recycled. We have a reconditioning center that recycles or re conditions these weather instruments at a price of about half of what it would cost to to manufacture a new instrument and I'm not sure of what the percentages of these instruments that are returned but It's high enough that it certainly is worthwhile. And it is a value the instrument has a little mailing bag in it so that if anyone finds it, they can just take the bag out of the little container put the instrument inside the bag take it to the post office or set it by a mailbox and it will be automatically emailed to the reconditioning center. So we get quite a bit of mileage out of reconditioned instruments and you send up to a day right in Minnesota. The weather balloons go up at st. Cloud and International Falls and then surrounding states. There's that want to goes up in Green Bay Bismarck Des Moines and here on okay. Well, let's move on to your question now. Hello there run Willis is listening. (00:23:40) Good morning. My question pertains to probably a geographic situation in Minnesota. We are cruising Taylor's normally on goalie. Can we normally listen to NOAA out of st. Cloud last weekend? We were cruising on make the million. We're listening to know art of the International Falls. And received a weather report for last Saturday nights, which was quite blustery expecting winds from the north northwest all of a sudden the tonnage with winds from the southeast which was the forecast for Thunder Bay the natives the next day said that because of the Laurentian divide frequently their water does come in from the Thunder Bay Area, even though International Falls is closer, but could divide create that much of a (00:24:23) factor. There's I'm not sure there's a couple possible reasons for that. I depending if there are any any thunderstorms in the area, of course, you can get an outflow from a thunderstorm system. I'm sure you're aware of that. I do know that the geography and the terrain can make a great difference in the weather Direction. I'm not that familiar with with that particular location, but I've had experience in other parts of the country, especially in Alaska for several years and forecasting in the mountain areas. And I do know that normally of course your wind would flow from the high pressure center to the low pressure centers making some kind of a counterclockwise turn as it does that when you're in areas of Hills or mountains or valleys and things like this the wind will can at times flow at least at 90 degrees to what you think it will and sometimes even more than that. It's kind of like water I guess rather than following the normal pattern. Sometimes it'll seek the the quickest way. Which is straight from the high to the low and not necessarily make some of these turns the counterclockwise turns that usually happens around a low-pressure system or the counter clockwise around the hi. So yeah, there are strange things that happen in the geography if we were able to to zero in on any one certain area and if we could get some experience on that area, we could probably do a pretty decent job of forecasting the winds, but there's all kinds of weird patterns that go in. I think probably a person's experience as a border and familiarity with the your own area and then interpreting the forecast based on on what you know from your experience is probably the best way to go about it because it's a little difficult for forecasting wins in those areas of Hills and Valleys. We are talking weather today with Ron Willis from the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities. Lots of folks with questions will move right along to you know, hello there. (00:26:23) Yes for the next two weeks. Is there apt to be unusually high humidity in the st. Paul area? I'm thinking of doing outdoor painting. (00:26:30) I would say we're getting less and less likely now at this time of the year that we'd have the high humidities. If so more likely than not it would only last for a day or maybe two days rather than this five or six or seven or eight day of fair that we've seen a couple of times this winter. So it doesn't take long for those higher dewpoints to come back into the area from the South but at this time of the year, they normally don't stay around very long. So I would say if it does happen give it a day or two and then it would probably cool down again just like we're seeing now now, it's your turn to talk with Ron Wallace. Go ahead. Please (00:27:05) good morning run several weeks ago. I was doing some Roofing and the weather was uncertain. We had had a lot of rain and there was more in the forecast and I called the 725 number two, which you had referred earlier and stayed on the line after the tape and one of the meteorologists spoke with me and he gave me a rather. And pointed diagnosis of what was coming into the city and told me that if he felt that it was a good risk to go ahead with what I was proceeding with and I followed his advice and the weather was identical to what he said. He thought it was going to be in the thunderstorm cells that were approaching the Twin Cities to the South did follow that path and I just want to say thank you. I was able to finish a job that was difficult in the weather made it harder and the fact that we had a break-in that whether that was confirmed by your meteorologist was very helpful. So I just wanted to tell you I appreciate that. (00:28:05) I appreciate your comments that I wished we had as I mentioned earlier I wished we had people five or six people that we could just have sitting at the telephones to take requests like this because it not only does the general public a lot of good to get that information right up to date but it's it's great PR for the The service I'm sure what the person did is look at the radar right at that time and give you the best info possible from looking at the radar. This is one thing that we can't do on a normal forecast that's issued like every six hours we update them as much as we can. But there's it's just a matter of how much time we've got to do these things. I might suggest that we do have a continual where the radio broadcast on the FM band. You can buy these weather radios and any good radio shop and this radio broadcast continually 24 hours a day and it does include the latest radar summary for the Twin Cities and it gives a general idea at least of where the precipitation is in which way it's moving again. It isn't probably as exact as you got from the the forecast around duty, but it would be just a little additional help plus it isn't busy quite often that like 6090 s Any idea how many weather radios there are out there? What's your what's your ratings? So to speak might be for that know, I don't there's a lot of them. We do have surveys every so often asking for comments and we get you know, two or three hundred replies. I do know that the law enforcement people State Emergency Services all routinely listen to Weather Radio. And in fact is one of the key alerting factors to a lot of the media stations when we issue Watches or Warnings for the metro area. So it is very important a lot of hospitals nursing homes and schools are going to them and of course a lot of private individuals that were as well, but I don't know this of course many hundreds hmm 20 minutes before twelve and we've got some more folks with questions. Hi you're on now. (00:30:05) Hi. I'm a teacher and my students are I have a lot of questions about lightning and one of you can answer a couple of them. How does lightning travels that usually from the ground up also. Do you have any idea how hot a lightning bolt is and how can you protect yourself if you're out in lightning? Thank (00:30:23) you. I have read but I don't remember the the Heat or the the voltage or the electrical power of a lightning stroke. It probably even varies. I know that as far as starting lightning fires in the forests the experts here talk about hotter lightning Strokes than others and there was there a certain lightning Strokes that when they hit a tree are more likely to start a fire than others that are more likely not to others seems to be a difference and I would guess I can't really answer that particular question as far as the lightning traveling down or up or whichever direction as I understand it. There's a charge and electrical charge. That's forums at the ground under a thunderstorm. That's moving through an area and kind of follows this thunderstorm along and there are invisible leaders that go from the ground up and I believe from the cloud ground before the lightning never strikes. These leaders are are probing from the trees and the high buildings and any thing that sticks up from the ground and then when a certain amount of difference between the positive and the negative charge of the ground in the cloud is met then the actual lightning stroke itself is seen and a lightning stroke is not only one but I don't know how many but several lightning Strokes that appear one to the human eye but is actually several strokes and if I'm not too badly mistake and I think many times the lightning can go from the ground up as well as from the cloud ground and sometimes within the cloud itself. So you what looks always like lightning going from the cloud to the ground. Might not necessarily always be true as far as protecting yourself from it. What about some general advice? Basically stay away from open areas. Open Fields golf courses do not get under a tree in an open area because you're almost like a sitting near a lightning rod with a loan lightning rod poking into the air in an open area best to get into a building. If you can into a Woods area away from the larger trees and generally be as inconspicuous as possible stay away from metal objects off get off of tractors drop your golf clubs. Stay away from metal fences. Don't use a telephone unless you have to because people have been hurt badly and even killed when they're talking on the telephone and lightning strikes the wires and travels into the home that way. Well, let's go that's quite a bit of stuff to think about One other lightning question occurs to me. We all are familiar with the jagged bolts of lightning that appear to go most most times from from clouds to ground. But then sometimes you have a certain kind of a thunderstorm and you look outside at night and the whole sky is just kind of flickering from lightning is at a different sort of lightning or what's going on there. It generally means that you've got a pretty intense thunderstorm. We have a device that measures lightning called a severe X device that measures the the lightning Strokes in our office. It puts this measurement on a on a paper recorder and we use this in our severe weather forecasting. For example, if we're looking at a thunderstorm on radar that looks like it could be a severe weather producer high winds or large hail or maybe even the possibility of producing a tornado. We look at this lightning indicator. And if it looks like that lightning intensity is increasing would be much more likely to issue a warning then. We're looking at that exact same thunderstorm on radar and the lightning intensity was decreasing we would feel at that point that the thunderstorm is already gone through as maximum part of its life cycle and was dying off and therefore if a warning would be issued that wouldn't be of any value. So basically we feel a very general rule is that the more intense the lightning is in a storm the better the chance it will produce severe weather. Okay moving on is more folks with questions your next. (00:34:34) Hello. Hello. Yeah. I have a question about downtown st. Paul says being a basin, you know, I could know how come it form that way. And is it true that tornadoes can never start go downtown area because of the buildings (00:34:49) know certainly tornado can strike the downtown area as well as anywhere else there seems to be favored areas in the Twin Cities area for reasons, which we don't really know. We see a lot of them move from Southwest to Northeast through the northern half of Hennepin County and up into Anoka County and Northern Ramsey County through there. We saw one last year. We saw him this year again up in the Brooklyn Park Brooklyn Center through that general area. And then there seems to be a favorite area again south of the city's down through Scott and Carter counties are Scott County and Dakota counties. There's a theory that something called a heat island would tend to deter thunderstorms or tornadoes moving right into the downtown area the heat island means that the temperatures are a few degrees warmer over the city's then they are in the outlying areas because of all these cement concrete than and blacktop and all these kind of things that absorb the sunshine and create more heat. My feeling is and I think are feeling at the weather service is that at the thunderstorm that's significant enough and strong enough to cause any great amount of damage is not going to be deterred by a couple of degrees warmer temperatures in a heat island. So, yes, it can happen. Well, I remember the one we had was at the 23rd of July with all the rain there was talk about Funnel clouds being sighted over by the cathedral area in st. Paul that certainly is pretty close to downtown. Right and the thing about funnel clouds, you know there. We see quite a few funnel clouds during severe thunderstorm situations in any one of those could pop down. It's a pretty difficult situation to try to handle for warnings and depending on the the general weather situation. If it looks like a real potentially severe weather day, we'd be more likely to issue a tornado warning based on funnel cloud sightings, and we would in other situations when we have what we call cold air funnels that pop down out of the cloud of the ways go back up pop down go back up never to be seen again. So yeah, that was close. We've seen them before and we'll probably see him again. We have more questions for Ron Willis. We have a couple of lines available again to in the Twin Cities at 2276 thousand other parts of Minnesota toll-free, 1-800-695-1418 your question today (00:37:04) iíve got Your question one regards the televised Aviation forecasting and I don't know if your guest is responsible for that or not. But I find that to be a quick and easy access to whether questions for instance when traveling so forth, but I find it a little confusing and I'm wondering if there's any kind of informative booklet or pamphlet or something that explains some of the terminology and some of the aviation for Cassie. I know it's primarily for Aviation but like I say it is quick and easy access and the second question I have is I'm this time of year is a some weather forecasters include in their weather forecasting the pollen count and I'm wondering if the weather service has anything to do with that (00:37:50) okay on the pollen count we get our information from the Minnesota Pollution Control agency who monitors the different atmospheric pollutants and the pollens in the air daily on a five day a week basis. You do Supply them with a general forecast to go along with the release they have for whether the pollutants in the air are going to be getting better or getting worse for the following days. But basically it's the Minnesota Pollution Control agency that handles those kind of things as far as the Weather Channel. This is Channel 17. I believe this is pretty much handled by the Minnesota Department of Transportation the Aeronautics Division and the Federal Aviation Administration and you're right. It is mostly for Aviation are part of that is that our Aviation forecasts are used on that channel and the weather radar that's shown is of course our radar or the other whether service Radars around the area, I would suggest for information that you write to the Minnesota Department of Transportation the Aeronautics division, they may have some information. To what goes on in that channel, they're pretty much responsible for the programming. They say they do use some of our information but they're introduced possible for the programming as well as the federal government's FAA Federal Aviation Administration, and hopefully they would have some information for you. There is a lot of good information on there very good info is can be gotten from looking at The Radars in the area, especially if you're doing any kind of outside work and you want to keep track of not only where the precipitation is now, but which way it's moving and how fast and when you think it could be into your area and I'm sure that the pilots get a lot of good information out of the two. Okay moving on to some more people and their questions including you. (00:39:46) Hello. I would like to ask the gentleman now. I'm from the Grand Rapids area. I've tried to get a weather radio because I live in the countryside and they tell me that they don't work up here because we're too far from International Falls for Duluth. And we have occasions. I live alone out here where the storm has already gone through and the Duluth the TV station will come on and say it's going to hit the loop in a half hour, but it's already gone through here. We don't know what's coming isn't there some way that we can have better weather reporting from up in this area as well as International Falls Duluth in the rest. I'll listen for your answer (00:40:34) weather radio, the the maximum distance that it can normally be heard is roughly 40 miles. It's on the FM band and the FM signal doesn't normally travel that far. So if you're more 40 miles from Duluth or International Falls. You probably cannot hear the weather radio or maybe if you're down in a lower area so that there's some blocking by Hills the I don't think that there's a much chance that we can be expanding our radio network. We wish we could because we want to get Statewide coverage if we can but the funding is just is not available to put any more stations in at this point at one time five or six years ago. We had a we thought we had a pretty good chance of increasing the network by several more stations and actually having coverage for the whole state. But again the funding collapsed on that and it's even much less favorable. Now as far as the possibility of getting money than it was then so I'm sorry to say even though we would like to expand it right now the chances don't look very good. Not much solution for the lady in Grand Rapids as far as getting accurate storm information. I'm sorry to say no probably what She's able to hear from the media and the weather summaries that they get from from radar. All right, moving on to another question. Hi, you're on the air. (00:41:59) I was wondering how often tornadoes occur in the night through the evening. (00:42:06) The favorite time for tornadoes in Minnesota course is late afternoon on through the early evening hours. I don't have any numbers on the percentage of time that it would happen. But I would say probably at least 75% of the time the tornadoes would occur between maybe three o'clock in the afternoon and eight or nine o'clock at night. And the reason is that this is the time that the you have the maximum heating or the warmest temperatures of the lower layers, which is one of the ingredients that causes severe thunderstorms and in turn tornadoes and things are more ripe at that point because of the of the heating of the lower atmosphere after Our 9 o'clock or so at night things are cooling down the atmosphere just stabilizes a little bit and the storms normally tend to decrease in intensity. Of course, we've seen the tornado that came through Wisconsin there that town a few years ago at about one o'clock in the morning and devastated the whole town. So certainly these things can happen and you don't want to be, you know lulled into a false security that they cannot happen at night or in the morning hours. But again, most likely late afternoon through the evening hours. More questions for Ron Willis Deputy meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities. Hello. (00:43:30) Hi, I have in regard to the lady that called in about the lightning. I was reading the Reader's Digest August 87 issue, and they had a article on Lightning. They said that at zip through the air at 90,000 miles per second and it heats the surrounding air up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about five times the temperature of the surface of the Sun and it delivers a full a hundred and twenty-five million volts of electricity. And from what I read. It sounds like the lightning travels from the sky down to the ground about 30 feet from the ground. And then as soon as the ground cannot hold the current any longer it lets go and then returns back (00:44:14) up. Sound possible run sure does all right. Well, thanks for your call and hope the lady was listening. We'll move on to your question now. Hello there. (00:44:24) Hi. I was wondering if there is any indicator between the time elapsed from when you see a lightning flash till you hear the thunder bolt if that is indicative of Miles like we have every second is a mile away that the lightning might have strucker flashed there any validity to (00:44:41) that right? You hear the thunder roughly five seconds for each mile after the you see the lightning Flash. The reason is that the speed of light is something like 186,000 miles per second or some such fabulous number and the speed of sound is more like maybe 600 and some miles an hour. So you see the flash first for every 5 Seconds You Can Count it's roughly one mile that that flash occurred away from you. Hmm. All right. Well, it's interesting though because they re Used to count a thousand one a thousand two and you figured that each one was a mile but it's not that far. No, it's not. Okay four minutes before 12 noon and we'll put you on next Tyrann Willis is listening. (00:45:27) Hi. I was recently on a vacation to Washington State and Southeast Alaska and I had a couple of questions about the weather there. I was wondering why in Southeastern Alaska it is so rainy all the time and I noticed when I was there that it seems that the clouds were even forming at the base of the mountains and going up into the clouds to produce more rain second question was and I was in central Washington. I saw a lot of dust devils that look like tornadoes on a clear day also during if you could talk a little bit about that. Thank you. (00:45:56) The dust devil is an indication of the instability of the atmosphere and basically you'll see them on a warm afternoon when the ground gets quite warm and it starts these convective currents or these upward currents as they rise they tend to spin. And they are right they do look like a tornado and some of them can get big enough that they can cause a lot of dust and the ground and actually look like a tornado with no apparent connection to any kind of a cloud there are tornadoes that the only thing we can see is what looks like a dust devil on the ground. There are tornado is that are invisible as far as the funnel connecting the cloud to where the tornadoes touching down on the ground, obviously the difference between tornado and a dust devil, of course is the tornado is always associated with a thunderstorm and it may have that invisible connection. But nonetheless there's a connection I'm I don't know that great deal about dust devils other than they normally form in an unstable atmosphere and I would suspect In the Heat of the afternoon the southeast Alaskan weather what you're talking about. I'm sure it's true the with the mountains that are that rise abruptly from the water there there the air that is Is pushing up against those mountains is obviously quite saturated because it's been blowing over the Open Water for some number of miles and the air comes into contact with the mountains is forced upward and as air rises it cools and we mentioned a minute ago or several minutes ago that cool air can hold less moisture than warm air. So as this moist air comes in contact with the mountains is forced up up and over the mountains the air cools it cools to its dew point and the water that's in the air condenses out in the form of clouds or fog droplets or even precipitation may be rain and this is normal for Southeast Alaska. They're wide open to the moisture. There's no barrier between the southeast Alaskan Coast and the ocean they're wide open to all that humidity and they have a lot of cloudiness there and a lot of rainy weather the time is getting awfully short, but let's see if we can slip in one more very brief question, please for run Willis. Hello. Yes, please quickly know that person hung up. They had their chance and they missed it. Well, let's try you very (00:48:21) quickly. Okay, we're going to do some canoeing in The Boundary Waters and we're taking longer to monitor our tour guide to clouds and what they mean as far as the weather goes and a fisherman's barometer and we were wondering if there's anything else we can take along or anything you can think of so we can outguess the whether (00:48:40) I go up there every year and I tried out and gets the weather and I never have much luck even as a weatherman, I guess basically a basic rule that I like is during the fall the the normal wind start to shift around to be from the Northwest. So if you're picking a campsite, I would pick a campsite that you're not open to a Northwest Breeze. Usually first part of September you start to get into the first pushes of cool air out of the Northwest and if you're camped on and on a spit or a portion of an island that's open to the Northwest. You can get this cool Northwest flow that Be kind of uncomfortable as far as trying to track weather systems. It's very difficult as a basic rule. If your wind is from the south or Southeast you have a low-pressure system moving your way from the West which could eventually bring you some clouds and precipitation once the wind shifts around to the Northwest in the fall. It's pretty tough in the winter in the summer time. It usually means better weather when you're wind shifts to the Northwest and the wintertime. It can mean almost anything or in the fall, so it's awfully difficult to try to it's hard enough for us to forecast the weather with all the tools. We've got and it's almost impossible with a handbook in a barometer Ron you have proven once again that everybody loves to talk about the weather. It's been very interesting. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you Bob. Ron Willis Deputy meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service Office in the Twin Cities weekend is made possible by Ecolab Incorporated providing products and services for household institutional and Industrial Cleaning worldwide. This is Bob Potter speaking.