And good morning. This is midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary acting glad you could join us. Well, summer summer is certainly off to a good start after a warm but fairly wild and wooly spring summer officially began at 9:03 yesterday morning complete with sunny skies and Mild temperatures sign of things to come or just a tease. We will find out this fire going to be taking a look at what we can expect the rest of the summer and yes probably take a look into the future as well. See, how are winter might Shape Up joining us this morning from the National Weather Service meteorologist, Rich neistat who for 15 years was lead forecast for the Twin Cities Office of the National Weather Service. You've heard him on Minnesota Public Radio many many times. About the weather. He is now science operations officer at the National Weather Service office. And of course, we invite you to join our conversation as well or talk about Minnesota's favorite subject the weather and we do invite you to give us a call two two seven six.Star Twin City area number to 276 thousand. If you're calling from outside the Twin Cities, you can reach us toll-free. And that number is 1 800 to +422-828-227-6000 or 100-242-2828. Great chance to get your weather questions answered Rich. Neistat joins us from the Weather Service warning Gretsch. Good morning. Thanks for coming over her age do if you don't have a park or any winter apparel. So I guess we can count on a little bit of Summer weather. I think so now summer actually begins with the summer solstice. Is that right? That's correct. And what in the world is the summer solstice the sun gets the farthest north in the northern hemisphere before starting to return Southward cell. It's about noon about 30 degrees north. So it'd be straight up in the air over parts of Texas. But as we look in our Sky, it's as high up as it ever gets for Minnesota to look at does it actually occur?82 summer anywhere men here. It seems like summer starts earlier than summer officially begins and is it doesn't equate to Summer the start of summer anywhere would really say that I think it's what you're talking about is there's there's all kinds of different Summers one is the increase in daylight. When is the climatological summer and what is when the warmest temperature is really occur, which typically for Minnesota is the third week in July why the lag between the long periods of sunlight? This is the this is as night as bright as it gets light as it gets and the the temperature like right. Well, that's a very good question in that has to do with how warm tis is thrown into the atmosphere. If you will basically the ground absorbs, the solar radiation is input and then re-radiates it to the air and so there's a lag from the amount of time it takes from the the oceans in particular but also the landmass to radiate that back.The atmosphere so it's continuing to put infrared radiation or warmth back into the atmosphere. Even as the solar radiation is starting to decrease which the course starts happening. Once the Sun starts moving back south how much longer are the days this time of the year than they would be say in December when we have the winter when it's wet 5:30 to 9, so, that would be 12.15 and 1/2 hours of daylight and so in the winter, you know, we look at 7:30 to 4:30 or looking at about seven hours. So actually the difference is it's about 8 hours longer about this time of year does the mere presence of additional sunlight daylight? Does that affect our weather at all, or is it just it just occurs in our weather goes on the daylight certainly have to do with the amount of solar radiation reaching the the the ground so yeah, I bet step typically part of it. What do what do your forecast look like for the summer? Are we going to have a nice summer? Well are longer range forecast are basically beyond the two-week period for the rest of the summer is calling for temperatures near normal and precipitation are normal. But if we all know in Minnesota are normals are made up of extreme, so that doesn't really say anything in terms of what it's going to be like on the 9th of July for example, so no rain.No real guesstimate here is the weather. It might be hotter than it usually is or wetter and I cannot really a lot of that has to do with with teleconnections or focusing on anchor points of the atmosphere that determine our weather such as during the past winter. We had a very pronounced El Nino and we had much above normal temperatures. But what everyone kept asking last fall was what does that mean for precipitation? And we said in your normal precipitation people lost interest, but actually that's about what happened.but again as you say it's a kind of a statistical game in a way to come up with that normal you could end up all over the map that's correct very very correct in Minnesota and it always works out that way it doesn't I mean if you if you look at any. Of time what's a 5 years you might have extremes year after year but all kind of balance is out well that's been pretty much true here but if we look at me in terms of the global temperature over the last since 1990 several of our warmest years of the century have occurred since 1990 so there may be some upward bias in temperature and it doesn't take much of a change in global temperature change to really impact the weather as we started to understand in the 1980s and more so in the 1990s things such as El Nino or above normal temperatures in the tropical Pacific have a very pronounce impact on worldwide weather patterns including the jet stream and the jet stream is isPlay. Only two above normal or below-normal temperatures for the severity as weather as well. I guess this hour is Rich neistat who is a science and operations officer at the Twin Cities Office of the national weather service has been forecasting weather here for the better part of a quarter-century now, and if you'd like to join our conversation on this second day of summer, give us a call to 276 thousands are Twin City area number 227-6000 if you're calling from outside the Twin Cities 1 800 to +422-828-227-6001. 800-242-2828.Humidity vs. Dew point now we're going to hear a lot about that during the course of the summer. I suspect if Minnesota weather holds so true to form. Could you explain in layman's terms what the difference is? Well first I'd like to say that it when we talk about humidity. There's relative humidity and absolute humidity young and most people when they refer to humidity that refers to relative humidity and relative humidity is just that it's relative to the amount of moisture that the air can hold. So for example, if the amount of moisture that there the amount of moisture that could be held in the atmosphere today.If only half of that was available, the relative humidity would be roughly roughly 50% but relative humidity is is a measure of both temperature and the other term of use dew point, which is a measure of the absolute humidity in the air. So dewpoint really came into I think usage in Minnesota starting with some of the television meteorologist back in the mid-1970s and a lot of us use it besides meteorologist now because the dew point is I said is a measure of the absolute moisture when we typically have a dew point in the 50s. It's very comfortable in Minnesota 60s. It's a little bit sticky when it gets over 70, it gets very uncomfortable. The interesting thing about relative humidity is if the dew point remains at 70 degrees throughout the day and the temperature starts at 70 degrees in the morning say around 6:30 in the morning when the dew point in the temperature of the same, the relative humidity is 100% so that we report at 6:30 in the morning the temperatureWho is 70 the dew point is 70 the relative humidity is 100% if the temperature goes up to 90 degrees that afternoon and the dew point is 70 the amount of moisture in the air is Remains the Same but because the relative humidity is a measure of the amount of moisture that the atmosphere can hold the relative humidity would be and I don't have a charger in front of me but roughly forty-five to 50% So we might say it's less humid. But in reality, it's just as humid as it ever was so the dew point for a comfort level four people is really a better measure of their comfort or sometimes in summer in Minnesota there discomfort. So 50 Pleasant 60 not so pleasant and 70 and above pretty ugly. Right and once in a great while you have dew points reaching 80°, they're extremely rare in Minnesota before I came to Minnesota. I worked in Oklahoma and then they're more common. They are unfortunately, but I do remember seeing an 80-degree doHere in the last couple of summers at one point Lord knows we've had our share. I think I assume we've had our share of severe weather already this year. What what typically can we expect for the summer here in Minnesota in terms of severe storms? Well interesting Lee enough, maybe I should ask it a question Gary and get you more involved. What do you think is our Peak severe weather month in, Minnesota? I would guess June now you've been talking to Mark Seeley and I'll ask it. What would you say is the second most that's pretty closed May 2nd in July is 3rd. So it begins to wind down after June to July is typically a very active month and we see no reason for that not to occur this this spring as you mentioned. It's been very wild before I came out a check with Todd crowsey who's our warning coordination meteorologist with a National Weather Service in the Twin Cities and also my office mate and he said the number of confirmed tornadoes in Minnesota and then we're still confirming those is somewhere between 20 and 24 at this point and our normal number for the whole year is 20 so and we still got it was summer. So the last two years have been wild last year. We had 47 tornadoes in Minnesota, which tied the record for the number of confirmed tornadoes and at least the old rule of thumb and I don't see any reason. But it's really changed is the number of funnel clouds is much higher than the number of tornadoes on average. So we'll ask you that question to how many for everyone tornado typically how many funnel clouds are reported. Every member a final is just a tornado that hasn't touched the ground or I haven't a clue. Okay. Well, that's that's a good answer to that's probably what I would answer. There are 7 funnel clouds for every tornado. So we see a lot of funnel cloud reports. So if we had like 20 tornadoes already, we we have roughly 140 hundred-fifty funnel clouds, which could have turned into tornadoes here. Sometimes that this is all the severe weather is the result of global climate changes. Is there any evidence of that or is that just rumor and speculation on playing at but I'm not so sure I want to continue to do that. They're certainly when you have the three warmest years of the decade occurring globally since 1990. That's well beyond chance and there certainly is a lot of statistical evidence that there's been an increase in global temperatures and what all the computer models have said for many many years is if you throw in all kinds of Green gas greenhouse gases carbon dioxide methane and whatnot Beyond Nature's natural input in the atmosphere. You rise at the you give rise to a increase in the temperature of the air and with an increase in temperature goes and increase in molecular activity and increase in entropy or chaos if you will so it tends toward a more stormy. And that certainly seems to be happening the other part of the equation though is how many of these tornadoes would have been reported 10 years ago if they had occurred 10 years ago, as you know, we've got the Nationwide network of Doppler radar. So we're a lot more cognizant of circulations that give rise to tornadoes Todd Krause and others in our offensive done a splendid job of training a large number of spiders the sky Warren Community for spotting storms. So if we have the technology to observe possible tornadoes, and we have well-trained Spa Seeing the tornadoes that something that is increased dramatically over 10 years. So I'm sure some of it has to do with with the observing tools that we have including the spotters. But some may also be due to some type of global change occurring rich neistat is our guest this our science and operations officer at the Twin Cities Office of the National Weather Service. He's been good enough to come by today to talk about the weather as we head into the summer officially began the yesterday morning at 9:03 our time and a great opportunity get you whether questions answered if you'd like to join our conversation to 276 thousand is our Twin City area number to 276 thousand. I'll try the Twin Cities. The number is 1 800 to +422-828-227-6000 or one 800-242-2828. If it is a little difficult to look ahead to make generalized generalizations about the summer. Let's look back in the moment at the spring. And how did that pan out of obviously, it seems like we had a lot more severe weather than we normally do the rest of the spring though was ran pretty much the course or what where we did have more of the severe weather than normal has you just alluded to but also the temperatures that we had through May and will specifically because I had a chance to look at that was the Twin Cities, but I think it's true of much of Minnesota made in the Twin Cities was the six months in a row with above normal temperatures. So that in itself is pretty unusual this month were a little bit below normal temperature wise and the next five days. We're going to be above normal temperatures. So it's it's going to be a race toward the end of the month to see whether we reach normal temperatures or or maybe slightly above may you there's been tremendous changes in the amount of precipitation as well. June has been wet. Of course as we know may was not so much we get into the spring and it's really hard to generalize because we get a lot of thunderstorm. Activity and the rainfall variation across a small area is quite large because we tend to go from very large-scale weather systems to the thunderstorm scale which typically are much smaller, you know, there are days when we have scattered showers and thunderstorms in the forecast and you look out and somebody's getting wet and we're not and other times it's the other way around that forecast of the scattered thunderstorm showers and thunderstorms. I've always appreciated that forecast that covers you can't be wrong with that forecast Rich. Well, I've been quoted as saying the best forecast is partly cloudy because you can never be more than half wrong, but in terms of scattered showers and thunderstorms, actually you can we we do is shoot point precipitation probabilities, which is the probability of you getting wet at one particular point over the next 12 hour. And we're still hoping to hone in on that the 1990s and in the science of meteorology and forecasting is the decade Cancel scale forecasting when we we've done pretty well on large-scale. Forecast over the next two to four days 1 to 4 days, but we're really trying to get more specific in terms of of the near-term forecast over the next few hours at least you now cast of that affect but it's we don't really understand the meteorology thoroughly. We don't have all the observing systems we need and so sometimes the best forecast is scattered showers and thunderstorms are there when you have a line of solid showers and thunderstorms moving across your area, they're certainly not scattered. So so we can still be wrong even with that. We were talking about severe weather and I suspect our call her hair has some direct experience with that Jim's on the line from St. Peter. Good morning, sir. Was it came to St. Peter? And it's basically two-part question is I've heard different takes on how many tornadoes cancer St. Peter but I've never heard it seems to vary in terms of number and related to that. Cuz I went on a website somewhere that explain to me and I was curious what your guests thinking was in this that tornadoes. Actually a ranked f 1 2 3 4 5 based on different things to try never known before that. Some tornadoes are ranked because of their with because of how long it on the ground and because of their wind speed and when you look at the length of the time but one of them turned him Peter would have been on the ground and also by its width by the skillet. I was looking at it seems to be enough five other people have rated is lowest at 3 and then there's the complication of seems to be a number of tornadoes on the ground the same Peters. I wonder if your guests can clarify what he understands me the number of tornadoes and how it is today ranks and what they rank the ones in St. Peter and I'll just hang up and listen the first probably is easier to answer but I don't really have those numbers with me in per say what I was told before it came out this morning is we had 13 tornadoes. In Minnesota on March 29th, which is the st. Peter tornado that you're referring to but as far as the number that went through st. Peter, I'm not really familiar with that. It's it's probably a very small number. There are I think it's complicated. It is within a tornado. There are smaller circulations called suction vortices, which are extremely strong winds in these very small scale vortices that's world within the tornado and I would suspect the same Peter probably was one tornado or at most two but you might have had several suction vortices, but we count the number of tornadoes not the number of suction vortices. So I'd be comfortable saying no one through Saint Peter and my second answer would be too if I had to say that but in getting to the second part of the question, that's very interesting actually the f scale that you were referring to as the Fujita damage scale. Named after Ted Fujita of the University of Chicago who pioneered this and it is not enough 1 through 5. It's actually a 0 through F5 and the ranking doesn't have anything to do with the path with or or directly to do with the path with or the path length or even the wind speeds as it turns out it has to do with the amount of damage that is done. And so that's not well knowing or not knowing well enough and that makes it very difficult because what constitutes damage It depends on. Only whether house has been removed from its foundation. But also how and I hate to use the term well-constructed but how well anchored that house was to its foundations if we get away from houses and we look at trees, you know, in some cases a 50 mile an hour tree of 50 mile an hour wind will knock over a large tree because the ground is already saturated the roots. Are they able to hold the tree in the ground very well other times it might take an 85 or 90 mile an hour wind but in getting back to the same Peter storm damage, we ended up I believe ranking that is an F-4 and that was primarily from the small town outside of St. Peter. I believe its name was hanska if I remember correctly and that's really where we thought we saw F4 damage in St. Peter. It was primarily F3 borderline at 4. But because the Same tornado went through hanska, and we rank that is out for the entire tornado. Then becomes an F4 tornado. But most of the damage was below a 4 and mostly it was based on. A review of the damage that had occurred and how well anchored the houses were now I do believe there are some engineering people who are studying the damage in depth and that will be very interesting that it's possible that it could even be changed in terms of of ranking but probably not at this point. It was it was upgraded from F32 F4 just within the last month based on a complete review of the damage that had occurred interesting ly enough. There are wind speeds that Ted Fujita came up with the corresponding to his damage estimates such as over 200 miles an hour over 250 miles an hour, but interesting ly enough those have never been documented in a wind tunnel in some type of laboratory experiment. Those were just kind of his guesstimate. But it isn't based again on the wind speed. It's based on the damage and the from that we infer a wind speed based on the Fujita Scale. But the as I said that's never really been rigorously tested. So if you had some monster tornado that went by and monster in terms of size and wind speed in the rest, but somehow it managed to go blowing through an area where everything was bolted down a concrete block houses and stuff. You could conceivably end up with a real low rating for that tornado. Well, I suspect that if you had the monster tornado you were alluding to it's probably an F5 that that would even take, you know, didn't matter how securely the houses or buildings were bolted to Foundation. They be removed. I mean at 5 would do that. So did the interesting and I thought you were going to come at it from this direction is it's kind of the same old. Question that we asked rhetorically many times, you know, what is sound if there's in a forest and there's no one there and there's Thunder. Is that a sound? Well one bite ask if you we had this huge tornado you were referring to when across field where there was no habitation or buildings and what not. You can have these huge wind speeds and yet probably the ranking would be quite low because there was no damage, you know, you have to have something to document that the damage has occurred Mike your question face crazy sitting somewhere number crunching this stuff and coming up with forecast and stuff. And then how how accurate are your long-range forecast and I'll just hang up and let them there is a large gray crunching away at the one that we called the national centers for environmental prediction in a suburb of Washington, DC. And they've been crunching away for years and we're looking into getting upgrades all the time if you finding permits because it's like everything else with computers, you know, the more you spend the faster the Computer Resources. The model can be predicted. Those models are used for hemispheric and synoptic scale forecast in synoptic scale is meteorological. Jargon or weather systems that are maybe in the 500 to 1500 Mi range these a large troughs and ridges the move across the country the large waves. We see the jet stream type of configuration. What we're really working on in the 1990s is meso scale modeling where we're trying to predict much smaller features say in the hundreds of miles, maybe even tens of Miles maybe even Squall lines say from 10 miles to 500 miles at Large. Range, but mesoscale meteorology really encompasses all of that. So Squall lines cold fronts wind shifts large convective complex is not necessarily the individual storms, but at least the generation of a line of thunderstorms, and those are being operated not yet out of the national centers for environmental prediction, but we're hopeful to have one of those running in our office probably next winter no later than next spring if everything works out beautifully, perhaps even this this fall which would give us an idea of forecasting snow bands and forecasting convective activity next summer in terms of the long range forecast. That's a little bit hard to to quantify in terms of accuracy. I was just a American Meteorological Society meeting in Phoenix will not just it was back in January their annual meeting and someone was saying what are the accuracy of the day today forecast and maybe even some of the longer range forecast and interesting ly enough. If you go back two years 10 years 50 years this number 85% accuracy always seems to jump out of the the numbers and I think my stepfather finally gave up asking me that because he was a structural engineer. He's retired now, but in engineering they tend to quantify that a lot more than ours. And and the question is how do we measure accuracy? If we're measuring in the root mean square error of the location of the jet stream, then that's one measure if we're measuring it in terms of do we forecast that we get a hundredths of an inch of precipitation in the second third or fourth day and it actually occurs. That's another one of the problems in in measuring. The long-range predictions is typically in the National Weather Service is we measure if we mention a chance of precipitation in day three-day four-day five, that means that there's a greater than 30% chance of precipitation occurring somewhere during the 24 hour. So we don't really say well there's a 80% chance in the third day. So it's it's we can't really verify what we don't forecast until we're forecasting in vague terms should people make plans based on those extended forecast. I think it depends on the threshold everyone. I wouldn't say at the real threshold of pain. But everyone your there's a cost-benefit ratio that goes with each decision. And that's something that the people have to pretty much determine on on their own in terms of the the longer range forecast last fall when we went out with saying the temperatures would be you know much above normal for the winter because we have a well-defined El Nino that at least one one month of the winter would have temperature is 10° or or more above normal which is an exceptional forecast and then actually verified we were able to do that because we are able to link that into the anomaly of warm temperatures in the tropical Pacific. We do use other statistical forecasting tools some type of analog series some type of extrapolation from what we have a lot of it is transpiration evapotranspiration all kinds of feedback mechanisms, but when we don't One of those in place that our forecast becomes less reliable. So rather than giving you what you really wanted was an answer in terms of the percentage accuracy. It really depends on what we have to work with since I don't have you on the line and I've got Gary in the studio with me is probably the last time I'll be invited down here. I might say what percentage of the time do we have? El Nino conditions occurring you're asking me that I'm asking Gary that right every 10 years once every 10 years. Okay, so that would be 10% The actual number is 32% percent what percentage of the time do we have Linea conditions, which is the exact opposite. Don't they always follow El Nino La Nina? Well, actually not. Okay. It shows you how much I know. Well, do you know that we have three basically I should have Define the problem better. There's there's three possibilities El Nino which is the abnormally warm surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific. We should 32% there is abnormally cold temperatures in tropical Pacific. That would be Lonnie know what percentage of time that occurs. You know, I wish you were making this up instead of those who were to be much more entertaining normal, which is the absence of abnormally warm or abnormally cold water. So rather than putting you on the spot again, I'll say la nina is 21% of the time. So basically we had those two and there's roughly more than 40% of the time that we have normal so-called normal ocean temperatures which in this part of the country with translate to the normal weather conditions, and I said as our guests this our he's joined us from the National Weather Service science and operations officer. Twin Cities Office of the weather service and I here to take your questions on the weather. Give us a call 227-6002 to 76 thousand outside the Twin Cities one 800-242-2828. By the way a reminder that June is winding down and Minnesota public radio's membership countdown is heating up. Thanks to your tremendous response so far. We're now down to 6400 members needed to reach our goal of 85000 members by the end of this month and we sure hope you will be the next one to join this group of inform listeners who value Minnesota Public Radio, give us a call and that have pledged number fudge number now is one 800-227-2811. And we thank you in advance. Also a reminder that major funding for Minnesota public radio's documentary fund is provided by Phyllis Taylor in memory of Walter stremmel and one other reminder before we get back to our conversation with Rich and I said and that is at over the noon hour today. We're going to among others were going to be tiny Paula. X going to wrap up to our extended their convention coverage and among other things there soon. We're going to hear once again for governor, Arne Carlson who gave quite a rousing speech. You're looking back his eight years in office and talking about the other parties endorsed candidate for governor. Norm. Coleman will be hearing that speech over the noon hour today the official weather forecast from mr. Nice dad's colleagues at the weather service calls for a cloudy sky in northern Minnesota with the possibility of some showers in the Northeast Sunny elsewhere though. There's a possibility of a shower or thunderstorm in the Southeastern corner of the State Heisman 60s in the Northeast low 80s in the South Twin Cities Sunny with a high around 80° right now. It's 74 and sunny in the Twin Cities. Do you folks out at the Weather Service cringe a lot of times when we read these weather forecasts and kind of butcher them read to fast. Do you wish gosh those guys are Would more careful people would would get a better idea of what the weather is really going to be like in should realize that you have time constraints. That is if I don't change the meeting too much. We were very appreciative of the the media, you know enlarging our Audience by using our products Shannon your question for rich and I said, please and very familiar with El Nino informally, I'd like to know how long it really lasted and now I've heard that La Nina which I'm glad you mentioned it cuz all I could remember was sending you a part. I hear that we're going to have a colder-than-normal winter. So how long will you last and why what what does what does it do? That's going to cost us for okay, first of all, El Nino, how long was that around me or really Blossom to the most recent one back in the late spring in the March through May. Of 1997. And here we are in June of 1998 and the Sea surface temperature anomalies have just about disappeared off the South American Coast. So we're probably within a month of saying goodbye to El Nino. So that gives it roughly 15 months duration and then let me know what will that in fact result in a colder and snowier winter than we're used to well that seems to be what we hear if we listen to all the reports coming out, but actually I checked the long range forecast issued by the national centers for environmental prediction, which is part of the National Weather Service. For really starting July seasonal forecast all the way through early next summer of 99 and what they are forecasting and they're as good as anyone so we'd certainly endorse it is near normal temperatures in your normal precipitation for Minnesota. So what we will experience, of course, the coming winter is with near normal temperatures will have temperature is far colder than last winter, but that's you know, anyone can make that forecast because that was so incredibly warm. We are I suspect although this isn't part of the official forecast that will have a more normal distribution of snowfall. You know, those who really watch Minnesota winters year after year realize that marches are snowiest month in November is right on the heels. And then we kind of have a cold. In-between with with not that much snow. That's a normal season. Whereas this past season most of our snow in the Twin Cities fell in January. Actually. It was the week. I was in Phoenix and I heard from it from the rest of my family fortunately. There was a working snowblower and it got quite cold, you know, we had blood 22 below. I believe that week but this should be a more normal winter and that has to do with really the jet stream during El Nino The Oceanaire interaction causes the jet stream to split over the Central Pacific and it splits because of all the large and persistent thunderstorm activity the Is in response to the warm sea surface temperatures just like in the summer here when it's warm and moist near the ground often times. We get more thunderstorms. So we get this recurring large complex of thunderstorms across the equatorial Pacific Pacific that forces the jet stream to split one branch goes into Northern Canada and is relatively weak. That's the Polar jet and the subtropical jet which is a southern Branch goes roaring across the Southern United States and is quite strong. So what happened during the past winter during El Nino is we had a very wet pattern across the Southern United States you heard about the Southern California huge rain storms, which people gave up too soon on. In fact, I know a writer for the LA Times said August forecast of El Nino. It's a total bust because he kept you know, what have been played up so far in advance that he had basically given up on it and publish something in the paper and the very next day the on Florida flood producing rain started in in Southern California in late January or early February that strong jet stream gave rise to the tremendous number of killer tornadoes that we've had across the Southern United States because we always have to warm humid air. They are since that because of the proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, but it's the strong winds interacting with that that generate the environment which is conducive for the generation of tornadoes, but it are part of the country. We ended up between the two jet streams. So, what did that mean? It meant a Dryer or a warmer than normal. Near normal precipitation or cloudy or. And also the wind was notable by its absence, you know across the central United States including Minnesota. The wind is blowing almost all the time and we didn't have that much wind which of course also gave rise to a large increase in clouds. So what happens with lenina? Well, the Jetstream doesn't split and it moves back of the Northern Jet Stream, which is normally they are the polar jet stream becomes the dominant Force. It's much stronger than the southern jet stream and its Northern Jet Stream in Canada, which is where it resides during a normal summer and probably within the next 10 days will finally move up into Canada. Is it off and doesn't July will pretty much stay there across the Northern Tier of states are southern Canada through the rest of the summer and then is the Cooling becomes an Earnest across the Arctic Circle and North Pole. The Jetstream will start its dreaded Southward sag for those who don't like extremely cold Winters and as a result, it will probably be undulating back and forth across the Northern Tier of States during the fall and then across The winter time it'll be primarily south of Minnesota, but periodically because of the wave structure of the atmosphere it will move back across here. So that means normal precipitation, but probably more typical storms again occurring early in Winter and again in the spring and for next summer, is it going to have an impact probably not because the Northern Jet Stream will be back in Canada. Just the way it normally is but no reason to believe that the winter is going to be just on you unreasonably brutal not at this point. I think one of the problems with his ideas as we pointed out to not occur is off it is El ninos. And so we don't have the good statistical evidence or statistical correlation. It's still not you know, a sure thing that we're going to end up with my Nina and how strong is going to be I think a little bit of our confidence is less than it might normally be in terms of what's going to happen because of the dramatic shift. Is occurring the sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have kiraly have cooled 15 degrees Fahrenheit in the last month, which is virtually unheard-of. And so the magnitude of this change is quite large and so we may be back in a few months. They're at least our products will and saying that you know, it's going to be different but this is our this is our best estimate at this point Beverly your question for which neistat place a question. I just wanted to say you guys get so much grief from the public. I wanted to give you a little of the opposite last fall. I found out I needed the surgery and I'm absolutely devoted to cross country skiing and to bicycling in season and I looked at your long-term forecast for last winter and said this is going to be a rotten cross country ski season schedule the surgery. They're four for the the at the end of January cuz I figured this Season was not going to be worth it anyway, and it just worked out perfectly by the time my Nev had healed and I killed just in time for Vikings season and I didn't miss a thing from the skiing season. It was rotten. Anyway, thank you satisfied customer Rich all that's great to hear from you Beverly. Actually, I think there's a lot of satisfied customers and it's like in any other organization the few complainers get the airwaves or or print or whatever but I think there's a lot of people that are happy. I we have a minute just to share what's interesting is we were our family was going to take our first-ever downhill ski vacation and because of the family were trying to link up with we were going to do this in Montana and because of El Nino and this was I think supposed to occur during Thanksgiving week we were going to do this and I looked at the statistics that I said, you know, it's going to be less snowy than normal east of the Divide. I don't want You spend all that money on non-refundable tickets and go out there and not have the snow. So our family basically did the same thing as Beverly alluded to we decided we didn't have knee surgery fortunately. I'm glad that went okay, but we decided not to do it this year based on that information. I actually wrote the ski resort and I said, would you be willing to send me data on the amount of snowfall that you had during the previous aldeanos and I actually listed the seasons and not surprisingly I didn't get a response because they wouldn't want people to know that Ted your question, please. Over the last 30 years. We've been sending planetary probes to places like Mars and Jupiter and Saturn and observing some of the weather that takes place there and I'm wondering if we really learned anything from these probes. It's been applicable here on Earth. I know the satellite system we have here is been a wonderful over the last 30 years. A wonders for weather forecasting in for just me of somebody to watch his TV a lot. I learned a lot from serving that so I wondered if anything is really, this you always hear about the the but this is going to teach us more about Earth weather. Well, I think in the near-term now, but I think we have to look at the difference between applied research and basic research and what I think we're learning and outer space and in the Jovian atmosphere in the Martian atmosphere is basic research which will help us probably in the longer-term what I specifically focus on in my job. And we in the Weather Service try to do is applied research where we get we investigate maybe forecast that didn't work out so well so we could do a better job next time and I think in the in the ear of VCRs and computers and you see a whole generation of people now that one almost instant gratification because the computer processors are so fast, we have to realize that basic research has its has its place and inevitably it will help us, but I don't think of the immediate term time for at least one more color Jean. Hi, ho the last you a lady was that we've had I've always heard that we had a drought for the next one or two summers following and El Nino. So now it seems to change completely. What would be the reason for that? Well, but I guess the first question if you were still on the line I would have asked is where have you heard this there's a lot of information out there, you know between radio and television and newspapers and the internet the information is is unbelievable. It's available to people some of it is true. And some of it is not some of his comes from the National Weather Service. Some of it does not I think there was a you know, I've heard it both ways in the in the lane media that we have a drought following El Nino and we have a drought following lanina and in Minnesota the evidence at this point statistically speaking is that neither is really correct that in terms of Minnesota weather we end up with basically a normal pattern. But I think what happens is if you're listening to the National media, they may be referring to some other part of the country. When one of the things I haven't said on this program and I did look ahead for the next 12 months in the long-range predictions is assuming lanina comes into being and we think it will if there's a very high probability of below-normal precipitation and above normal temperatures across the Southern United States, which is the complete flip side of El Nino, but in our part of the country, the response is different so we cannot it automatically assume that whatever I came with El Nino just the reverse is going to happen with lenina. There's no evidence to indicate that we would either automatically have a drought now or not have a draw to just come back to normal not not in terms of a drought you have to remember during El Nino we did not We did not have a drought we had normal precipitation. And I know I heard all winter long to various and Sundry sources. None of which were the National Weather Service that El Nino was coming El Nino is here to stay. We will have a drought next summer and the National Weather Service never said that for Minnesota. So there are other sources and you know, you probably heard from one of those. Are we ever going to get to a point when I have a lot of time left, but I need to ask you this is where we get to a point where we'll be able to manipulate the weather. I rather doubt it the it's been a long time since I've investigated that but you know, we always harken back to the days of hero showing at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the tremendous damage from those nuclear weapons nuclear bombs the amount of energy in a hurricane for example is probably thousands and thousands of massive atomic bombs. And so I don't think that we would be using that type of energy not to say that we're going to go out and bomb hurricanes that we do get some strange letters from the populist from time to time, but even even in terms of modifying Rainfall across the United States. There's been some success with that because of funding issues. I thought I believe a National Weather Service are apparent agency. Noah has pretty much gotten out of that and we're one of the few nations in the world that isn't proceeding with that and I think it's primarily funding rather than our ability to influence the weather but I don't think we'd be ever able to modify it that much and it opens up the open-ended question is if you could modify the weather, how would you decide who determines what the weather would be today be a powerful weapon? Yes, it would or potentially great benefit to people some of our forecast is out of a job. I sensed that people want to be a weather forecaster like you rich what do they do? If young people are listening while I decided I wanted to be a weather forecaster when I was in second grade until I had almost tunnel vision, but the advice I got back in second grade goes for those who want to be weather forecasters today in school again. All the math and science you possibly can it seem sometimes like it's an art but it's basically physics of the atmosphere so math science and computer science. Those are the three things that you really like and that's for basically the forecast in part of it. But in our business communication is important as well. And so, you know don't avoid things like developing communication abilities both orally in and writing those are very important as well and just to summarize of her people who tuned in late summer looks like it should be pretty normal in terms of weather correct normal, but Dark Horse made up of two extremes. Thanks for coming in today registry. Welcome our guests this our rich nice did meteorologist rich nice Dad who is science and operations officer at the National Weather Service Twin Cities officer course, he's been around here for quarter of a century forecasting weather good enough to stop by today to talk weather as we start summer here in Minnesota. I'm Ray Suarez in recent years the Orthodox church has found a surge of converts among Protestants American this new wave of Believers wants to be part of what's called a historic purity of the the head of the US Greek Orthodox Church Archbishop spyridon joins us to discuss Orthodoxy worldwide and how new church attendees in North America might affect the so-called Unity of the faith on the next Talk of the Nation from NPR news here on Minnesota Public Radio over the noon hour. Today. We're going to focus on politics case you missed the governor ardy Carlson gave a pretty interesting speech their Publican party State Convention on Saturday that will be part of our coverage coming up over the noon hour. Now for The Writer's Almanac