(00:00:00) Well, Mark, Seeley is with us Mark. Of course is a meteorologist climatologist at the University of Minnesota. He has heard each Friday on Morning Edition, but has been good enough to stop by today here on midday to spend the hour talking about Minnesota's favorite subject. Glad you could come in today Mark. Thanks. Good to see you Gary Mark. First of all, what is the difference between a blizzard in a regular snowstorm? Well with with the blizzard conditions, you're always a quite aware of the wind speed and you have to have wind speeds in the high range 30 35 miles an hour or something like that where you basically take visibility down to about zero and of course, you've produced some rather high risk of exposure with the wind chill factor, you have to have real cold temperatures and snow to have a blizzard or just would strong winds do the trick while primarily the strong winds are what most forecasters look for with respect. Back to the snowfall accompanied by very strong winds. So we should this would not qualify as a blizzard but we're talking about today. Oh, no, what we're looking at for today and tonight is is a significant snow but by no means blizzard-like conditions at least at least for the moment. How does when we get snow especially snow depth. How does that affect the temperatures than that? We have Minnesota. Well, you know that's going to be an important factor in forecasting the next few days Gary because that's that's kind of an unknown if we get a real high fresh snow cover like six inches or more the forecast of temperatures for the next 48 hours might need to be modified a little bit. They might need to be dropped because that snow cover enhances the loss of radiation from the surface and we tend to see temperatures drop quite a bit so that forecast high of 15 below Mighty might be optimistic. Well, yeah. Yeah, I was thinking, you know, we might actually face a day here in the next few where we don't actually get above zero depending on the nature of the snow cover. We establish in the next 24 hours. How cold how cold is it? Let me rephrase that. Why does it get so cold here in Minnesota? Is it just because we're so far north? Yeah, primarily. We're on were more exposed. If you will then our southerly neighbors to the the polar air masses. And in fact, what we've seen happen here recently is right around Christmas time. We saw major change in the upper air flow the Jet Stream flow and we started to get the polar jet positioned over us. So now we have intrusions of Arctic air mass has pretty much since Christmas weekend consistently dropping down over us and I've noted that the weather service has carried that into their 30-day outlook. For example, the outlook for the month of Now is for below normal temperatures to dominate so they kind of expect that status with respect to the Arctic air masses and the polar jet to kind of remain constant at least for the next 30 days. There's that mean in terms of snowfall for the rest of this month. Well will be with the current path projected for the storms that are passing across the central plains. We're kind of well at least southern Minnesota is crying a kind of right in the middle of that path. So the forecast or the Outlook if you will is for below normal temperatures and above normal snow fall. Hmm. Now that's an unusual combination. Well, we haven't had a January like that since about 1982. So we've gone a long spell without having a January that has that combination of elements boy. We're lucky this year. Huh. Now Dave's ask you one more question, then let's get to the caller's because they're all lined up here waiting to ask their questions usually in January. We get at least one respite the so-called January thaw when the temperature gets up 40s 50s. Does that happen every year that is to say can we count on it for this January? It does happen quite often. I can't quote an exact percentage, but you're quite right. It occurs fairly commonly year to year. Although I think with the current situation I would be surprised if we had a January thaw this this time around good else good strong character to tough it out for two or three uninterrupted months Mark Seeley is our guest today climatologist meteorologist at the University of Minnesota. Let's go to our first caller. Hi. (00:04:39) Hello there. I'm interested in something. I read about in discover magazine that they have discovered bands of humidity that they are calling Sky rivers that. One all across the Earth they used to average out the other weather balloon humidity stuff. And now they've discovered that there are these Sky Rivers. What are they and what can we learn from (00:05:04) them? Yeah, I think what you're referring to references a rather recent development in technology in the last few years with the satellite monitoring of the Earth's atmosphere. They have developed very good systems to view what they call water vapor in the atmosphere and the resolution on the satellite imagery on the what they call the water vapor bands is quite good now so that this has become a routine they routinely look at the water vapor bands on the satellite imagery and they do detect these streams of high water vapor at vetting if you will or moving horizontally across a latitude of primarily you see these streams running from the equator North and they were quite visible. I might add In the height of the floods this last summer the water vapor bands on the satellite imagery consistently showed high high contents of water vapor streaming into the Upper Midwest during the months of May and June speaking of the floods. Are we likely going to get repeat this year? Is there any way to know that yet? No, there's no way to know it. I would say the likelihood of a repeat is almost zero in the sense Gary that some of those floods were obviously hundred or two hundred year floods that we had last year, but that's not to say we couldn't have a wetter than normal year again. Now their callers on the line with the question for Mark Seeley. Hello. (00:06:36) Yes. There's a lot of controversy over whether the changes in the environment are affecting the weather and it does seem to me like there are many more extreme records or records of extreme weather being said now than they used to be say 20 30 years ago. I just wanted to know if you give me a comment on that. (00:06:55) Yes, we have had no noted an increase in some types of Records in recent years. There's a thesis in the climate community in the scientific community at the moment that in the last decade or so. We have evolved into a higher level of climatic noise. That is the statistics are showing that variability is on the increase therefore with variability on the increase. We are being exposed to more extremes of weather much like we were towards the end of last century and the beginning of the 20th century. We had a prolonged spell during this century when our variability was rather low some people call this the benign climate period but in recent years we've seen a if you will reversal back to that greater. Noise that was experienced earlier. The one other factor, I would say in interpreting all this is that we have to be careful because we're monitoring the climate spatially and temporally with much more detail than we ever have in the past and therefore from a sampling standpoint. We may just be monitoring more extremes because we're taking larger samples of the climate, you know, a lot of times we hear about the Pioneer records in Minnesota now where they very accurate I think they were pretty accurate that certainly one of the highest regarded records in the state of Minnesota is the Old Fort Snelling record temperature wise dates back to 1819 and precipitation wise dates back to 18 36 or 37 that's been quality control from the standpoint that's been gone over with a fine-tooth comb for example to remove biases due to the I'm of observation during the day and things like that. But I think for the most part many of our Pioneer records are quite accurate. They were after all taken for the most part with liquid in glass thermometers like alcohol mercury thermometers that we still use today the radiation shielding though the manner in which they were shielded from direct sun may have varied quite a bit and again certain Corrections have been applied to that too. But but even though we don't have official official records going back that far we can be fairly certain that at least they were in the ballpark. Yes. I think that's right. Take another caller with a question for Mark (00:09:32) Seeley. Hi. Hello. Yes, just go ahead Dell Baskin from Minneapolis. I say it a little bit with tongue-in-cheek. How come you guys don't know how to predict whether any more for example the Halloween snowstorm. Nobody predicted it 1988. They kept on predicting that there would be rain there never was and please explain the Doppler radio. I'll hang up and listen. Thank you so much. (00:09:57) Goodbye. Let's start back in reverse order their first of all the Doppler radar. What is that all about? Well, that's a new radar the I believe the Weather Service acronym for not that now is wsr-88d version radar, but it has the ability to not only detect Echoes with respect to a precipitation. But also with respect to the wind field or the circulation within a cloud therefore it can give you an idea of what the wind velocities are along a Squall line or within a Thunderhead or something like That and you can get an idea of their direction as well as their magnitude that is going to enhance the forecasting of severe weather greatly as its implemented. Although I don't think it's scheduled to be implemented with respect to our Weather Service in Minnesota for perhaps another couple of years, but over the next few years. These will be in place all over the US well now is This Woman's impression correct that the fork the art of forecasting has deteriorated a little bit recently that some real big events have been missed. Well, obviously, I think if you look at the history in the United States, you will find Gary that most big events are not forecast most of the extremes. The record Setters greatest snow falls coldest temps hottest temps longest dry periods Etc. The extremes are not forecasted there. We do a very poor job of Forecasting extremes. I think the National Weather Service verification statistics suggest though that they have improved their ability of forecasting for the most part the other types of conditions that we have. For example, I've read one scientific paper here in the last year that suggests that the three to five day forecast The Weather Service gives now with respect to temperature and precipitation are as good as the 122 day forecast of about 20 years ago. So there's been a verification study to confirm that but with respect to the extremes, I think you can you can imagine it, you know, it's hard to forecast 28 inches of snow tomorrow. I mean, even if you saw all the elements coming together, I think the conservative nature of most people you would tend to modify that maybe say only go with 16 inches or something like that. So is it more of a art or a sign? Do you think I would think there come a point? I mean where everybody would have the same information wind speeds and all of that and at that point it would almost become a an art as to how you interpret this stuff and come up with a forecast. Yeah. I think there are elements of both in in forecasting skill everyone certainly all the government service people and and and all the professional meteorologists have the same scientific training know how to use the same scientific tools. But I think where some of the art comes into it is you tend to fine-tune the use of those tools for the particular area or region your forecasting to and the more experienced and familiar you are with the landscape the features of that landscape and how things track across that landscape the better job you do a forecasting lots of callers on the line with the questions for Mark Seeley. Let's go back to the phones. Hi. (00:13:36) My question is why do clouds form and why did why they form as clouds and not just sort of a general Hayes. Okay. (00:13:47) Well, we've got a we've got a variety of clouds forming a clouds generally form in vertical layers of the atmosphere where you have saturation that is to say where the water vapor content of the atmosphere reaches a hundred percent saturation state in terms of the vertical you can have all kinds of clouds. You can have a lowering deck of nimbus type clouds layer clouds, like we're going to experience today as this snowfall moves in on us, you'll notice that the ceiling is going to drop that is get closer to the Earth's surface and become darker and grayer you can have what they call an altocumulus type cloud or a mid layer type Cloud developed. Primarily. We see those in the spring and summer and you can have these tremendous vertical extent clouds like the cumulonimbus. Odds, which may have a base down around 10,000 foot level, but have a height up to say 50,000 feet or better. So there's a whole host of things that are involved in the in the development of clouds. And the and the reason that they it just water just concentrating and want areas that what it is. Basically it's either a convective in nature. That is it's a lifting of a parcel or quantity of air of a given water vapor content until it reaches a temperature layer in the atmosphere where that water vapor can't be held any longer or it's what we call an advanced Dvorak lashing of air masses where cold air mass clashes with a warm air mass and you get development of the clouds along that that frontal boundary. Let's go back to the phone's other callers on the line with the question for climatologists and meteorologists and Radio Star Mark Seeley. (00:15:42) Hi. Hi there. I'm calling from Grand Marais. And my question is it seems that all the forecasting that is done sort of eliminates or the North Shore the northeastern part of the state safe from Duluth up to Portage up here. We never hear what a predicted temperature might be or a snowfall and I'm wondering if you could answer that and I'll hang up and listen. Thank you. (00:16:05) I'm not sure why that would be certainly your Zone forecast zone of which I think now there's 96 in the state of Minnesota deserves just as much attention as the st. Cloud or Minneapolis. St. Paul zones Duluth would be the office with the responsibility for forecasting for your part of the state. And if you have NOAA Weather Radio in that region of the state, I would guess that they would put out as detail the forecast for Grand Marais area as they would any place else in the state. I think perhaps our media television radio around most of the rest of the state probably doesn't give a place like Grand Marais it's do but the forecast elements are there the specific tools are there to give a specific forecast for your area. I think it's just a matter of finding it. Yeah, I think one of the things in just in Terms of trying to get the information out is that it's kind of a different weather situation along the along the shores it not. Oh, yeah. Yes along that area is greatly Modified by the effect of Lake Superior and the topography the elevation along that area as well. So these sweeping statements about snow in northern Minnesota. Well improbably snow there but maybe a whole lot more snow or something you bet young and I think surely the Duluth office of the Weather Service must at least occasionally tailor their weather statements to that particular local effect up there back to the phones now other callers on the line. (00:17:44) Hi. Hi, I think the show is Read it and we should do more of it. Everybody has whether questions. I've got to the first one pertains to windchill and I my my girlfriend frequently will say gee it's going to be windchill down to 30 below or whatever and I better put the truck in the garage and I've argued with her that the truck isn't particularly affected to with windchill below whatever the the the regular temperature is prior to that. Could you explain a little bit about windchill and who and what is affected by it? And who and what isn't great question. Okay. (00:18:23) Well original. What's your other one? (00:18:25) My other question is I used to In Alaska in a little town in the bush that did have a radio station and did have a national weather outfit and on several occasions. I would listen to the radio and it might report that it was there were clear skies in McGrath and it would be snowing and I called a friend of mine who worked with the weather bureau there and he said well they were obligated to to report to the actual report coming out of Anchorage. I guess sort of a regional office in sometimes the radio would report whether that clearly was not happening apparently for some bureaucratic reason and I'm wondering if you could comment on that and to what extent that might be true in Minnesota. Okay. Let's see. Maybe we should take (00:19:12) these in reverse order to do you when you let you turn on your weather radio? If whoever's reading that information, can they look out the window and say what's actually going on outside or are they kind of constricted to what the official information reports? Well, yeah. I don't know that that would ever be done intentionally the the NOAA Weather Radio transmitted throughout the state transmits from different locations and covers a wide range of zones the obviously the meteorological technician or the forecaster. That's putting that out can't always see, you know, what's 40 or 50 miles out what the conditions are, but I think that sometimes the current observations are delayed so that if someone is reporting current conditions and has to update their tape for the NOAA Weather Radio, perhaps they will not have as fresh information as they would like. They A be recording for example a message to be played over the radio for the next hour and they may be using data that unfortunately is an hour or two hours old just because of disruption and transmission or something like this. So I think for the most part they'll report as current conditions as they can get their hands on from the network of observers or automated systems. Now the effect of wind chill on inanimate objects things like your automobile, okay windchill, I think dates back as a concept to the late 1930s early 1940s. Dr. Paul sippel examined the heat loss from human beings. So the initial concept was was a study or looking at heat loss from human skin, and the what he came up with then was an index that suggested that a let's just Ethically say a 10 degree temperature with a 15 mile an hour wind would cause heat loss from the skin surface similar to exposure of say minus 25 degrees with no wind. So that's what they would during term the windchill the heat loss out of an automobile or something that for example, you've just turned off the engines been running the heat loss from that is going to be somewhat altered by the wind if the wind accompanies the low temperature the heat will be carried off but the wind chill index per se was originally tailored to human beings and the heat loss from a human skin. So it doesn't necessarily relate. I don't know how well it would relate to Mechanical things like like a car for example sounds like it might be have some effect though if Had what had a car that as long as you could keep it warm, it would be okay and it would start in cold weather so that if you drove somewhere shut it off. It might have some effect in terms of how quickly it would would get too cold, right? It would with the high wind. You definitely be carrying off heat from that vehicle much faster than say under calm conditions, but once it gets real cold or once the engine cools off, it probably shouldn't make any difference it just gonna not gonna start under any circumstances, right? Let's take another caller. Hi. (00:22:52) Hi. I was just wondering it seems like every year it seems like it's getting colder and I was wondering if if that's just like a psychological thing or if it actually is getting colder and I was wondering if if we've heard a lot about you know, the Greenhouse Effect and if that actually is is a factor in whether now or if like any volcanic eruptions last four or five years has been affecting the weather. (00:23:17) Well, those are all good questions. We did a little piece on Morning Edition here recently where we looked at the monthly values at temperature across Minnesota concerning your first question about having a colder Trend or perceived cold Trend actually from 1986 to 1992 88. Well 85 to 88 percent of our monthly mean temperatures over that period were normal or above normal that is to say they were nor normal with respect to the 30 year average or warmer than the 30 year average starting in 1992. We saw reversal of that Trend and we have had a string of cold colder than normal temperatures for example during the year 1993 just concluded the only two months in Minnesota where temperatures approached normal were January and December of all things so the the global warming issue though was was very much fueled if you will in the late 1980s and early 90s by the fact that across the Northern Hemisphere taken as a whole many of the years during the decade of the 1980s were the warmest this Century. So taken as a whole and primarily from the land base record. I might discriminate between the land-based record and the Sea record or the ocean record because there was some scientific articles that showed a decline in the ocean temperature regime in the northern hemisphere while simultaneously there was this increase in the northern hemisphere temperature as to a recent volcanic activity the most recent example of a significant impact was that during 1992 when the upper West experienced that very cold growing season one of the coldest this Century the measured surface radiation across the Northern Hemisphere was down it was lower than normal and it was attributed to the volcanic debris circulating in the stratosphere as a result of the Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines. But since that time the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration has released a report that most of that debris now has either fallen out or is so diluted. It is only a fraction of what it was during 1992 Our Guest today is Mark Sealy who's a climatologist and meteorologist at the University of Minnesota. Of course, you can hear them each Friday morning on Morning Edition. He comes by to talk about the weather back to the phones. Another question for Mark Seeley. (00:26:07) This is silly will you explain the connections between the national weather service and no other that the national oceanographic and Atmospheric? He and their relationship to the United Nations specialized agency of the World Meteorological organization. I mean, all three of you have satellites that connect to Asheville, North Carolina and who do I finally who do our TV stations subscribe to for their Weather Service that they that we see on the TV I'll hang up and listen Okay (00:26:49) National Weather Service is an entity embedded within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The director of the National Weather Service would report to the administrator of NOAA the within the context of the World Meteorological organization based in Geneva National Weather Service has Representatives. Of that that meet regularly with that organization that organization has a lot to do with what standards are used around the world in terms of observing and measuring the elements of the weather reporting those elements forecasting handling data. So a lot of our world standards if you will procedures data standards and things like that are somewhat a derivatives of the wmo. The National Weather Service is the primary provider of all guidance and forecast information as well as surface satellite and radar observations in the United States so that any private meteorologist including those in the media would subscribe to services that provide them with the numerical model output the satellite imagery the radar summaries surface observations. There's a variety of providers of that type of information that if you will obtain it from the National Weather Service repackage it or tailor it to specific types of products and then distribute that to the media. For example locally here in the Twin Cities. We have of very good company highly regarded Nationwide out at the airport called kovorix that provides services like that to the various TV meteorologists to they each come up with their own forecaster. Does that basically basically come in over a wire to him? Well, the National Weather Service official forecast go out to everybody but I think the a lot of meteorologists take that as guidance if you will for writing or tailoring their own forecast, perhaps maybe trying to get certainly here in the Twin Cities trying to get very specific to what conditions might be like here in the Twin Cities as opposed to say out in the surrounding. Use its take another caller with a question from Mark Seeley. Hi, (00:29:19) good afternoon. I have a very brief question. I was wondering if your guests had read Paul Douglas is Prairie skies. And if he would if he has read it who he would recommend it for like what kind of goals you'd have if you wanted to read that book or to own that book and that's the question. Okay. (00:29:40) Well, I've looked at Prairie skies. I haven't read it in detail. It's got a lot of pertinent information with respect to Minnesota and it has some excellent excellent photographs in it. I think it's a it's an excellent book just from that standpoint in terms of a like a data source or information Source. I suppose it. It would be a pretty good one for well, I'll use the term a lay person or someone who's not a meteorologist. Another good ones by Charles McKean. I believe called, Minnesota. Whether that you can find in places like Barnes & Noble or be Dalton and that one has a very good quantity of specific information to Minnesota in it. That also is a kind of a good reference book for Minnesota weather. Let's take another caller for Mark silly. Hi. (00:30:35) Hello. What is the name of the book by Charles McKean? And also I have a question on I'm writing a family history and their moves may have been due to droughts or floods and crop loss and where would I be able to research whether records to that would be about the mid-1850s to early 1900s. Thank you. Okay, (00:30:59) the name of the McCain book deal. I think it's just called the Minnesota weather book or Minnesota weather that those are the words I'd use though if you're doing a search is look for Minnesota weather by McKean. That's M little cken the A question you had I'd be happy. If you'd give me a call at the University or you could contact the Minnesota State climatology office. The we've just finished a project at the University of Minnesota, which has allowed us to digitize all of the historic records as far back as they go in the state of Minnesota. So that now we have pretty much every piece of data recorded or published in the state is now digitized into a computer database so we can do we can do some searches and look for specific periods of time if you can zero those in as to what might have caused your relatives to move from one area to another or something like that. How long did that take to get all that information into a computer? Well, it's been a it's been across several years, but it's really been intense the last two years at the University. We've had a lot of people contribute to that and it's several megabytes. You can imagine Lord. Let's take another caller. I (00:32:22) thank you for taking my call. I'm calling from Virginia. Yes, and I have a specific question about Grand Marais. It seems that frequently on the weather forecasting and even the weather reports the weather in Grand Marais seems to be milder extremely low temperatures in surrounding areas seem to be modified in Grand Marais. It'll be a few degrees warmer in very very cold weather and perhaps cooler in hot weather and I'm just wondering if there's some particular reason for this because of their location on the lake or what I'll hang up and listen. Thanks for your call. (00:33:08) Thank you. Yes, Grand Marais stands out in our climate records in a number of ways and I think the primary That's going on there is water vapor the because of its proximity to Lake Superior the water vapor content in the atmosphere around Grand Marais stifles the daily range in temperature. What you'll notice about the Grand Marais records is whereas on a typical say a sunny day in southern Minnesota where we might have a 20 or 30 degree temperature range Grand Marais might only have a five or a ten degree temperature range. It doesn't heat up as warm nor does it cool down at night? And that's because with all that water vapor present that tends to buffer the the daily surface heating during the day when the sun's out and it also tends to buffer the loss of long wave radiation at night. So not as much escapes and that's real evident in the historic records that at Grand Marais certainly one of the milder places to be with respect to Minnesota winter temperature conditions. Now, how does the snow fall along the North Shore compare say with the South Shore of the lake where a lot of places in the up' for example are getting 200 inches of snow per year just as kind of an average. Do you have any minute they get that much snow along the North Shore manono they do get more snow up there Gary, but they have to have to get that generally have to have easterly or northeasterly winds coming off the lake and then they can get pretty good amounts of snow the interesting feature with the up' and Michigan for example is that it almost invariably is in position to receive a high amount of snowfall because the air mass has come across the lake. It's on the east side of Lake Superior and it can therefore drop a lot more moisture consistently on the up' of Michigan Now by comparison, we get 50 inches of snow as it in the Twin Cities is usually somewhere around there for for a season. Us. Mm-hmm. Let's take another caller with a question from Mark Seeley. Hi. (00:35:20) Yes. I have a weather guy calendar which gives the average and record highs and lows for every day of the year as well as the dates those records were set and I counted the number of new record highs set since 1984 every day versus the number of new record lows. And the number of new record high is broken or re-broken since 1980 outnumber the record lows by more than three two one. It was what 57 new record highs in about 17 new record lows, which I think is pretty substantial evidence towards global warming. (00:35:54) Well, I don't know because we're obviously looking at one record their that record in the in the weather guide calendar reflects the Twin Cities record. So we're we're focusing kind of narrowly there on the Twin Cities. It's been shown in that Twin Cities temperature record that we have had increasing temperatures this Century at least partially attributable to the heat island effect, because we've been growing so much as a major metropolitan area that we tend to absorb and hold heat better than we would have say in the late 19th century as far as those extreme temperatures that we have experienced. Yeah. That's an interesting phenomena. I would be interested in comparing that with many other sites in the state and see if those relative proportions of high temperature and low temperature records. Hold up for other places. Says say such as the Fargo-Moorhead area or the Duluth or International Falls or Rochester areas back to the phones now, they're callers on the (00:37:02) line. Hi, I travel a lot for business and therefore I fly a lot and I'm intrigued by the windshear phenomena and just wondering if you could discuss that especially phenomenon known as a rotator cloud and I'll hang up and listen. (00:37:23) Well, I'm not very well in tune with that particular phenomena because they don't study the upper atmosphere that much but I'm aware that any pilot is always quite aware of wind shear and it is an element that is if it's to be significant always reported in in Pilot briefings, but the vertical layers of the atmosphere are structured such that under certain conditions. You can have a winds blowing rather strongly from One Direction and within a short span vertically you can have winds of equal or greater magnitude coming from a totally different direction within the structure of a cloud you can have a rotation that is you can have some kind of a per level Vortex around what you have circular win motions. And of course anything like an airplane that passes through that is going to be subject to some rather. Or abrupt shifts in the wind and can be put in Danger real fast the if you want to find out more about that, I would check with either one of the private meteorologists or perhaps one of the meteorologists from the Weather Service that specifically forecast for Aviation. Let's take another caller with a question for Mark Seeley. Hi. (00:38:49) I'm interested in the term Buffalo Ridge. I assume that it's a high point in the prairie in Southwestern Minnesota, and I'm wondering if you could explain what effect it has on weather patterns there and exactly where it is. Is it, you know around Pipestone and where does it go is just describe it a little bit and what effect it has. (00:39:11) Okay. Sure. It. It's orientation is somewhat Northwest to Southeast. It's a higher point in the landscape of roughly from ol yellow medicine. County out around the can be area running a southeasterly down through lion pipestone rock parts of Redwood and down through that Southwestern corner where the elevation goes up several hundred feet above the surrounding landscape and what that provides is primarily a triggering mechanism the lifting of an air mass that occurs particularly one that's moving towards the state's a from the southwest you have say a warm moist air mass moving along the landscape it encounters that higher elevation as it progresses it lifts that are mass and basically Rings more moisture out of it. So that what you see is the Buffalo Ridge serving is kind of a triggering mechanism for convective thunderstorm activity in the spring and summer and that's one of the features its most noted for pipe. Stone incidentally is one of our national weather service Observer sites and it sits up at considerable elevation and because of that it sometimes reports a temperature conditions there that are somewhat different than the surrounding landscape is the Buffalo Ridge responsible for the it seems like southwestern Minnesota really gets whacked with little a lot more bad weather than other parts of Minnesota thunder storms blizzards the whole is that why well, I think that Ridge certainly contributes to the thunderstorm activity in that area of the state as to blizzards. I don't really know to what extent it would contribute to that. There's a wide open landscape out there and wind speeds tend to we've always kidded that in Western Minnesota. They measure wind with a logging chain attached to a fence post and it Seemed like the wind is always blowing rather strong in Western Minnesota. Let's take another question for Mark Seeley. Hi. Hello. (00:41:32) Yes. I'm calling from Pokemon Wisconsin. Yes, and I was wondering if you could explain the difference between the winter weather advisory the snow advisories and the winter watches and warnings and so on because they're kind of confusing and I like to have a little bit more explanation about that. Okay. (00:41:50) Well, I think I think you just had rich neistat on earlier about that but a watch would be that conditions are such that things could develop where we would have significant Snows of say 4 to 6 inches or better but but at the moment are quite uncertain, okay, that that's a watch and advisory is something that's given ahead of time where we know something's going to develop it's just a matter of waiting for it to develop and an advisory would be issued for certain part of the state as has been issued today for Eastern and Southeastern Minnesota, and then I'm sorry. I forgot what the third part of it was a warning. Oh warning is obviously when it's eminent, you know when conditions are deteriorating very fast and head for the basement. That's right. Take cover. Don't plan on going out excetera another callers on the line. (00:42:53) Hi. Yes. Hi. Mr. Seeley. I was wondering if you could explain the current storm system that is passing through the metropolitan area today. What conditions are existing today that would allow significant accumulation to occur despite the fact that the air conditioned air temperature. The surface temperature is not in the range that is conducive for storms of this size. Usually I know that storms that come out of Canada come out of Alberta and come down normal only produce a couple inches of snow and normally for the conditions to exist of where we can get four to five inches to store normally two air masses. And cold in one warm have to mix why is it that we're getting four to five inches of snow despite the fact that they'll temperature the last couple of days has not been warm enough and it hasn't been the mixing of that cold and warm air. (00:43:44) I haven't studied this particular system in detail. Although I think there's perhaps three characteristics that would contribute to the forecast for greater snow than we might otherwise expect one is the low pressure center, which is to the south and west of us and we'll proceed to the south of us. It'll go east but it'll stay south of us is expected to intensify. That's one feature number two is there's a lot of warm moist air that's running up right now along that frontal boundary and is going to overrun the cold air that's near the surface in Minnesota right now that warm moist air must have enough moisture content in it. That is it overruns the cold it's expected to precipitate out at a fairly good rate number three. Characteristic is that I think this low this particular low is not going to go by us real fast. I think it might be a little slower moving. So I think the combination of those three features and there may be a lot of others are probably contributing to the forecast for a little greater snowfall than we might otherwise expect with these very very cold temperatures we have time for at least one more caller here. You're (00:44:58) next. I was looking at the sky and occasionally when I see the clouds, I'll see they have a real straight line across it. Does that symbolize the front? (00:45:11) Yeah what you're seeing there is a sharp moisture boundary between dry air and moist air when you see a sharp delineated line between clear sky conditions and and and cloudy conditions and you see that a lot more often in the transition seasons of Spring and fall, then you do during the wintertime last caller is from Eugene, Oregon. (00:45:39) Yeah, I'm calling about an article. I read recently in Barron's earlier this summer about the weather in the Midwest and the flooding and the weather forecaster who was the subject of the interview talked about Mount Pinatubo and the effects of the volcanic ash in the upper atmosphere and his contention was that we were going to have a horrendous winter due to the amount of debris put out by that volcano in the last two years is this theory of volcanic garbage in the are given much Credence by most forecasters. (00:46:16) Well, officially by the government at least it's a paid rather close attention to the as I mentioned from an earlier question The Piña to Bow eruptions was documented to have some significant effects during 1992. I'm not familiar with the article you're referring to although I will look it up. I think any speculation that still carries a Pina to Bow effect on our current weather is on Shaky Ground though. As far as I know because the amount of debris left from that eruption is is very very much a small fraction of what it once was. So that's not to say other volcanic activity might in the future might have some significant impact though Mark very briefly if people want to become a new Mark Celia if they want to be a meteorologist climatologists. What do they do? How do they what do you have to study? Well, you have to Go go to school and study physical sciences more pertinently. You have to go to a college that has a meteorology program. St. Cloud State currently has a bachelor's program in meteorology that's relatively recent but very good one and at the University of Minnesota, we offer graduate work in in climatology and agricultural meteorology, but we course look for students that already have their bachelor's in that field. So you have to shop around for a college that has a program. Thanks Mark. Thanks. Gary said you could come in Mark. See Lee who is a climatologist meteorologist at the University of Minnesota. And of course Mark is heard every Friday on our Morning Edition program. You'll be back this Friday again. Yes and hint on the weather word. Well, I think we'll talk about a weather instrument Gary. We always have fun doing that how to measure different things. All right that's coming up on Friday.