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RACHEL REABE: MPR's Mainstreet Radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant making, leadership training, and convening.

[LIVELY MUSIC]

I'm Rachel Reabe and you're listening to a special Mainstreet broadcast from the lobby of the historic Nicollet Hotel in downtown St. Peter. We're now going to turn our attention to one of Minnesota's favorite topics, the weather. My guests are Rich Naistat from the National Weather Service, WCCO meteorologist Paul Douglas, and Mark Seeley, professor of meteorology and climatology with the University of Minnesota Extension Service. They are standing by to answer your weather questions at 1-800-537-5252. Good afternoon, gentlemen.

PAUL DOUGLAS: Good afternoon.

MARK SEELEY: Hello.

RICH NAISTAT: Good afternoon.

RACHEL REABE: Let's start out talking about the tornadoes that ripped across this part of southern Minnesota a year ago today. Mark Seeley, you've said March 29, 1998 will go down in the record books. Why?

MARK SEELEY: Number of reasons, Rachel. It was only the sixth episode of tornadoes that's documented in state history in Minnesota. And it was by far--

RACHEL REABE: You mean, in the month of March?

MARK SEELEY: In the month of March. And it was by far the most intense outbreak with 14 confirmed tornadoes. And it was also unique for having both an F3 and an F4 tornado. None of those characteristics appear in the history of the state in the month of March.

RACHEL REABE: Translate an F3 and F4 tornado for the rest of us.

MARK SEELEY: Well, those are on the end of Fujita damage scale. Those are getting up there where there are very few structures that can withstand the force of an F4, for example. So they're very unusual. F3, F4 is more associated with the peak of the tornado season, which tends to run June into July.

RACHEL REABE: So unusual from that standpoint. I understand it was also a huge tornado. Some of the newspaper accounts said that it was three miles high. Is that possible?

PAUL DOUGLAS: Well, I saw the reports half a mile wide, and that would be consistent with an F3 or F4. These are Kansas-sized, Texas-sized tornadoes. Here in Minnesota, we're used to seeing F0, F1s. They last 5, 10 minutes, maybe the size of a football field, and they dissipate. One of these was on the ground, Mark and Rich, I think for what, 67 miles--

RICH NAISTAT: That's correct.

PAUL DOUGLAS: --the F4. You would expect that in Wichita, Oklahoma City, outside of Dallas. You don't expect the size and duration and ferocity of tornadoes like that here in Minnesota. So I think that was eye opening for all of the meteorologists.

RACHEL REABE: Perhaps the only good thing that could be said about these tornadoes, Mr. Naistat, is that you predicted them. They were easy to predict.

RICH NAISTAT: They were very well predicted. The National Weather Service and the media, of course, we use them to disseminate this. On the Saturday before, on March 28, was already alluding strongly to this threat of severe weather.

3:45 AM Sunday morning on March 29, Bill Togstad, one of our lead forecasters, put in his state forecast discussion that we're looking for F3 tornadoes this afternoon. And as Paul just alluded to, and I concur with that, they're very rare in Minnesota. And so to forecast the rare event is a spectacular success. And the warnings were equally as successful in lots of lead time. Getting back to your previous question, though, I'd just like to say that at one point the tornado was one and a quarter miles wide, which is absolutely phenomenal in Minnesota.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone number this afternoon is 1-800-537-5252. If you have a question about tornadoes or anything else about Minnesota weather, feel free to call because we have the experts here to respond to your questions this afternoon. 1-800-537-5252.

I've heard people in St. Peter say it's not a surprise that the tornado hit here. We're in Tornado Alley. What is a Tornado Alley and are we in one here in St. Peter?

MARK SEELEY: I guess I'll take a stab. The historical documentation of tornado tracks in the central part of the United States goes back, oh gosh, I think over a century, Rachel. And they look at zones of relatively high frequency.

So I think most of the time when you talk about a Tornado Alley or something like that, you're talking about an area that relative to the surrounding landscape has a little higher frequency of occurrence of tornadoes. But bear in mind, too, that historically around Nicollet, and Brown, and Sibley, and Scott, and this kind of South Central Minnesota County area, it's nothing whatsoever in frequency compared to what it is in the central and southern plains. The numbers are very minuscule compared to what they have down there.

RACHEL REABE: Although Minnesota sounds like they're moving up in the rankings. And some of the things you faxed me, we were in the top 10. We were in the top 5 at one point.

MARK SEELEY: Right. We did have 57 in the year 1998, 57 confirmed tornadoes, which was an annual record. However, I think part of that is-- one point maybe we should discuss among the three of us today is the fact that our detection technologies have improved so much that probably you could safely say we don't miss tornadoes anymore. And a lot of what's been documented historically back many decades about tornado activity in the state of Minnesota may, in fact, have been multiple tornadoes rather than just one singular tornado.

RACHEL REABE: Gentlemen, would you agree with that?

PAUL DOUGLAS: I would agree with that. I mean, we certainly don't live in Tornado Alley. I tell people we live in tornado cul-de-sac. We get a fair number. I think the long-term average, and Mark, back me up, isn't it give or take 20?

MARK SEELEY: Yes, it is.

PAUL DOUGLAS: 20 give or take. But since 1991, I think every year, we've had at least 31 observed tornadoes. And three of those years, we've had 47 or more. And of course, culminating in last year's record 57. I think it's a fair question.

Are there, in fact, more tornadoes forming or are we just doing a better job of observing them? Do we have spotters that are more cognizant? With NEXRAD, the new generation of Doppler radar, we're seeing circulations and thunderstorms that we simply didn't see 5, 10, 15 years ago.

RACHEL REABE: Well, in January of 1999, more tornadoes reported in this country than ever before--

PAUL DOUGLAS: That's right.

RACHEL REABE: --on record. So what's your opinion? Are there more or we're just reporting them more?

PAUL DOUGLAS: I will hedge my bets. And I think it's both. I think that, I've gone on record as saying I think that there are some things taking place climate wise. And we could spend hours on that topic.

But my hunch is that our detection technology is better. We have better trained law enforcement and SKYWARN spotters. But I think there are things happening climatologically that perhaps increase the odds of tornado formation.

RACHEL REABE: Rich, how would you respond to that?

RICH NAISTAT: I'd agree with Paul. I think what we have to keep in mind is the National Weather Service deployed in Minnesota, Doppler radars beginning in 1994. And when we at the Weather Service issued tornado warnings or any type of warning, we make a concerted effort to try to verify that warning, both in terms of our own use for research and verification, but also for the users to say, what is the false alarm rate? Are we doing a good probability of detection?

So when we issue a tornado warning after the fact, we make a lot of follow-up calls. And so we're probably able to detect or find some of these tornadoes that verify the warnings that in the past might have gone unnotified, especially the F0s and F1s that hit in open country, that do very little damage. Nobody really cares about except for the record keepers. Now, the big ones such as the F3s and F4s, I'm sure those haven't been undetected in the past because they cause incredible amount of damage.

PAUL DOUGLAS: And I think it's important to point out that Doppler, the technology will not save us. But in this case, the technology worked and technology works best on the big tornadoes on the F2s, the F3s, the F4s.

The Weather Service did a masterful job of getting the word out ahead of time. 45 minutes advance time. I think the sirens sounded three times here in St. Peter. So nobody can come forward and say there was no warning. That simply wasn't the case.

The problem that I see is that it almost sends out a false sense of security that NEXRAD is going to catch every tornado from here on out. And again, the small brief tornadoes, especially the ones that are 50, 60, 100 miles away from Chanhassen, where the Doppler radar is located, those are still going to be very, very difficult to observe. And we need spotters in the field.

We need trained professionals who can provide ground truth, stand there and point and say there's a wall cloud, there's a descending tornado. We do, in fact, have a tornado on the ground. So I'm a little concerned that there's almost a false sense of security, that Doppler worked well in this case, and it's going to catch everyone. It's not.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone number this afternoon, 1-800-537-5252. And our phone lines are full. Let's go to the phones. George from Lakeland is on the phone with us.

AUDIENCE: Hello.

RACHEL REABE: Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: I've got a question related to sort of a basic question, but I'm just curious why the newscasters don't generally give you the four basic record temperatures of the high-high, the high-low, the low-low, and the high-low? And that's one. Where a person might be able to avail themselves of that type of statistics easily?

RACHEL REABE: You would like those, George, on a regular basis?

AUDIENCE: Well, that would be wonderful, yes. The record high, the record low, the record high-low, and low-high.

RACHEL REABE: Boy, is anyone else having a hard time following that gentleman. You know what he's talking about, the low-high, the low-low, the high, low, low.

MARK SEELEY: I understand what he's talking about. The Minnesota State Climatology Office produces those for most communities in the state of Minnesota. And I would suggest that you call or check their website among other things.

There's also published versions of that on some of the weather calendars. Now, I don't know that we can cover all communities in the state of Minnesota. But sooner or later-- as I said, a starting point might be the Minnesota State Climatology Office website. But sooner or later, you're going to be able to find those kinds of historical numbers for most communities in the state of Minnesota.

RACHEL REABE: And I understood what he was saying, the high on this date historically. But what's a high-high and a high-low?

MARK SEELEY: A high-high is the maximum temperature recorded for a given date. The high-low is simply the highest overnight minimum recorded for a given date. And it's not always an overnight minimum, but that's how it's inferred. So typically, for example, in St. Peter today, you might have an all-time high minimum for today's date of, say, 43 degrees. It's just never been warmer than that as a minimum temperature on this day.

RACHEL REABE: So that's a high-low?

MARK SEELEY: Yeah.

RACHEL REABE: OK.

PAUL DOUGLAS: I'm going to lobby for more time, though, with my boss to see if I can--

[LAUGHS]

I mean, if you throw out 100 bits of information-- and I understand his frustration. I'd like to go into more depth in terms of pollen information and people that suffer from allergies. Where do you draw that line? We get people who say that we're discriminating against Canada and Mexico. And why don't you show European temperatures?

So there's really no limit. And I guess the answer I would give is that all we can do is at least on the broadcast side, at 5:00, 6:00, and 10:00, we can give the headlines. And I show the web frequently. Almost every weathercast I'll show a web graphic of some sort. And that is the mother lode of information. If you want personalized information, the web is where it's at right now.

RACHEL REABE: We're going to Len now who is standing by in Duluth. Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. Great topic. I'm glad that you're covering it today. My question has to deal with this winter that we just lived through. Living here in Duluth, I've been pretty used to some pretty strong winters.

But from what I understand, it was the fifth warmest winter on record. I thought that listening to some of the weather forecasts and weather predictions in September through November, that it was supposed to be a cold winter and quite a bit of snow. So I'm just kind of wondering if the experts there could give an explanation on why, at least in the Duluth area, Northeastern Minnesota, it was quite warm and didn't have a lot of snow. And I don't know if that was the trend all across the state or not.

PAUL DOUGLAS: We should point out that the term weather expert is an oxymoron.

[LAUGHS]

So a little like airline food.

RACHEL REABE: Who would like to respond to that question?

RICH NAISTAT: I can give it a try. We actually did a little study, as your listeners probably aware of and many of your listeners, that this is a La Niña winter that we've had, which is the opposite of El Niño. And we won't go into El Niño. But in much of the information that was put out on the web, through the media, through the different sorts of information, he's right.

What a lot of it said was we would have a snowy winter and colder than normal temperatures. I was actually invited to give a talk back in October. And I looked back through the records in cooperation with the state Department of Natural Resources, the climatologist over there, Jim Zandlo and Greg Spoden. And what we found is that in Minnesota, since 1975, during every one of the La Niñas, the temperatures have averaged either normal or above normal. That prior to 1975, they by and large averaged below normal.

So one has to be a little bit careful in these long range forecasts where we don't have really good statistics and we don't have them in La Nina's. And why there was a switch or a change in the temperature departures from normal starting in the mid-'70s is certainly open to question. And I suspect sometime during this hour, Paul will probably elaborate on how he feels about that, because I did see an article that he wrote on that.

PAUL DOUGLAS: I prefer to dwell on the past, actually.

RACHEL REABE: It's a lot easier.

PAUL DOUGLAS: It's much easier looking backwards than looking forward. The public wants to know. And we want very much to try to please the public and give them whatever shreds of information we have, even if it's tenuous at best. And you can go back and say, well, statistically, odds favor colder than normal, wetter than normal, drier than normal.

You can paint broad brush strokes. But I've seen no skill really beyond 8, 9, 10 days trying to predict specific temperatures, specific moisture for a specific location. It becomes chaos theory. So I think a word to the wise buyer, beware any forecast.

Even the five-day forecast can be a farce. The tomorrow forecast we have problems with depending on the situation. So I think the lesson to be learned is, yes, we all want to know what's going to happen in the summer. Will it be a dry summer, a wet summer? How will it affect farming? How will it affect my weekend plans?

But be very wary of any forecast really beyond five, six, seven days. The state of the science, the state of the art just hasn't progressed to the point where we can predict with any accuracy out that far. And yet, we try. It's a slippery slope. And when people ask us, well, take your best stab at it and we do. And many times I think we regret doing it.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone number today, 1-800-537-5252. We're broadcasting live from St. Peter. And we have a trio of meteorologists standing by with us to answer your weather questions-- Rich Naistat from the National Weather Service, Paul Douglas from WCCO, and Mark Seeley, professor of meteorology and climatology with the University of Minnesota. We go now to Perham, where Joan is standing by. Good afternoon, Joan.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. I'm one of those people who would like to know if there's going to be a dry or wet summer. I live on a lake in Northern Minnesota. And there's many people who live on lakes around here where the water levels are rising year by year since 1993. Particularly, we've had a succession of wet summers. And I'd like to know in the spirit of looking back rather than looking forward to what extent this kind of wetness is cyclical and something that we can look for an end too or if you think that maybe things are changing so fast that we don't know if it's going to end?

RACHEL REABE: Who would like to respond to that?

MARK SEELEY: I'll take a try.

RACHEL REABE: Mark Seeley.

MARK SEELEY: Otter Tail County, you guys got about 2 inches of rain on Saturday, didn't you? At least our Fergus Falls site reported that. Yes, it's been wet. And of course, it's wreaked havoc on the agriculture up there in recent years. It's been wet really since about '86 if you look at a time course or a trend.

RACHEL REABE: And you're talking statewide, Mark, or you're talking that part of the state?

MARK SEELEY: Yeah, northwestern Minnesota since 1986 has been in a wet trend, even despite the 1988 drought. But on the other hand, you can find a trend if you go back. Sometimes we tend to be too short sighted. We think that things that occur in our lifetime should therefore be extrapolated to multiple generations, and that's not the case.

For example, if you go back to late 19th century, you can find some rather long-term wet patterns in the Red River Valley as well, beginning in the late 1860s and persisting well into the 1890s. So it's hard getting back to support what Paul and Rich said. It's hard to project that ahead, truthfully. We don't really have a good handle on how long a cycle is going to last, how long a trend is going to last. Some of them end rather abruptly.

So it's real hard to say. I know the groundwater levels of shallow aquifers in Otter Tail County have come up. Lake levels have come up. Certainly discharge from tile line fields has been substantial in recent years.

Thank goodness in some respects for agriculture, that some of the landscape is drained up there. But it's hard to project when this wet trend that I see has gone on since about 1986, when that's going to taper off. I really don't know.

RACHEL REABE: Because we're in the 13th year of it. And you've talked about historically, there have been some that have lasted 30 years.

MARK SEELEY: Right. Right.

RACHEL REABE: Let's go to St. Paul where Gary is standing by with a question. Good afternoon, Gary.

AUDIENCE: Yes, good afternoon. I had a question regarding long range forecast and some historical things. Regarding the Farmer's Almanac, I don't have a copy in front of me right now, but do you recall reading them and sort of getting a feel for what the seasons may bring? And I wanted to know if any of your guests have looked at the accuracy of the Farmer's Almanac over the years, or if they had any insight on how those predictions were derived, given that they didn't have a lot of technology available to them?

RACHEL REABE: That's a great question, The Farmer's Almanac. Paul, do you use that when you put together your forecast?

PAUL DOUGLAS: I would never publicly admit it.

[LAUGHS]

I think I have a bootleg copy under lock and key in my drawer. And I look at it and it's interesting. And sometimes they hit it, and sometimes they don't. I tell people-- I think one of the major eastern universities did a study looking into that very topic. And I think they found that it's about 50/50. And so when they hit, people tend to remember. When they don't hit, well, never mind.

I think you have to be a little careful there. Again, any time you get into a long range forecasting situation, I guess they keep it a secret. It's proprietary, actually, how they come up with the forecast. And it's been that way, I think, for what, a couple of hundred years.

RACHEL REABE: One of the things, though, when I spoke to the editor of The Farmer's Almanac in the last week, and one of the trends he talked about is getting into a more violent period of weather. And he was talking about decades. It was a quiet decade. It was a turbulent decade. We're going into a more violent decade. Would you agree, gentlemen, that the weather in Minnesota is getting more violent, more turbulent? Are we in a suppose you'd call it an exciting phase in your line of work?

PAUL DOUGLAS: It would certainly seem. I mean, I saw statistics last year that Minnesota perhaps had more damage. And Mark, I don't know if you saw this, but we were at or near the top of the list in terms of state by state breakouts of damage estimates. I saw between $1 and $2 billion worth of insured losses. Most of that hail, certainly some of it wind damage from the March 29 outbreak. But it would certainly appear.

I saw a staggering statistic. I was in Des Moines for a Severe Weather conference this past weekend. Nationwide, there's now an average of $700 billion worth of damage every year. It's roughly 10% of America's $7 trillion economy. 10% of a $7 trillion economy is impacted on average every year.

$10 billion on average for agriculture. These numbers are just unbelievable. And I think the numbers are on the increase. So certainly, the data that I've seen, I think, suggests that, yes, since about 1980, give or take, we certainly seem to be seeing more outbreaks of severe weather, not just here in Minnesota, but globally.

RACHEL REABE: Rich Naistat, would you agree with that?

RICH NAISTAT: I would agree. It's almost cyclical. I've been in the Twin Cities since 1974. We had some lulus back in the '70s and early '80s. And then it seemed to get relatively quiescent for about five or 10 years. And since 1994, it's gone gangbusters again.

RACHEL REABE: Those years Paul Douglas was out of town, picked up when he came back. Let's go to St. Paul. Doris is on the phone. Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: I finally recognized Paul's voice. He is one of my favorites. My question is weather.

I'm in a wheelchair. And this is the first year in 10 years that I have not had to put a ground wire on my wheelchair to avoid static shocks. Now, I'm blaming the weather. Is it because it's been a damper weather outside? Why am I getting less static electricity?

PAUL DOUGLAS: Well, that would be tied directly to La Niña, ma'am.

[LAUGHS]

And thank you for your nice words. I appreciate that. I don't know. Mark, do you want to help me with this? Rich?

RACHEL REABE: Anybody?

MARK SEELEY: I certainly can't see that we've had moisture, more moist air. In fact, we've had extraordinarily dry. In recent weeks, we've had unbelievably dry air.

PAUL DOUGLAS: Right.

MARK SEELEY: So maybe something locally is going on there to diminish the static electricity. I don't know, ma'am. Are you still on the line? No, she's not.

AUDIENCE: I am.

MARK SEELEY: Oh, have you--

AUDIENCE: Are you there?

MARK SEELEY: Have you changed anything locally? You put more plastic on the floor or--

AUDIENCE: No. Everything is the same. I've asked several people if they have noticed that there's less static electricity this year.

MARK SEELEY: Changed shoes or wardrobe?

AUDIENCE: No, no, no. Nothing with me. I'm not the one.

[LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: We're talking today about Minnesota weather, which you know is much more than tornadoes. Maybe that's why we enjoy weather as a conversational topic. It has endless possibilities-- droughts, floods, blizzards, heatwaves, Alberta clippers, and everything in between.

Our phone lines are open for your questions. You can call us at 1-800-537-5252 and talk to our trio of meteorologist-- Paul Douglas, Mark Seeley, and Rich Naistat. We'll be back with more of Mainstreet and your phone calls after a look at news and weather.

IRA FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. Last week, President Clinton justified NATO airstrikes against Serbia through various references to European history and both world wars. A number of critics and historians have protested that the president was a little sloppy with his use of history. Join guest host Lynn Neary and a panel of historians for a look at the difficulties and dangers in interpreting and explaining history on the next Talk of the Nation, from MPR News.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Good afternoon. It's 12:30. With news from Minnesota Public Radio, I'm Greta Cunningham.

Refugees by the thousands are streaming out of Kosovo. Officials estimate as nearly as 100,000 ethnic Albanians have fled to Albania. Montenegro has absorbed 5,000 while Bosnia took in 4,000. Most have left their possessions behind, and many have lost touch with family members.

Some had their identity documents taken away by Serb authorities. Along Kosovo's border with the small Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro, police have been charging refugees $60 per car to cross. International agencies have been scrambling to get aid to refugees.

President Clinton is back at work and is following the crisis in Kosovo. Clinton returned late in the morning from a quick trip to Camp David in Maryland. The president is meeting with his national security advisors.

The navigator on the marine jet that clipped a gondola cable in Italy has agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice and conspiracy. A marine spokesman says Captain Joseph Schweitzer will enter the plea this afternoon. The charges relate to the disappearance of a videotape shot during the flight.

20 people died last year when a marine plane clipped a ski gondola's cable, sending it plunging to the ground. Schweitzer was a navigator aboard the plane. The pilot was acquitted of manslaughter charges in a verdict that outraged the victims' families.

New home sales fell 2% last month to a five-month low. It's the third straight decline since sales hit a record high in November. Even with the decline, the overall rate of sales remains historically strong.

In regional news, Grand Forks mayor Pat Owens says she's cautiously optimistic about this year's flood plan. Owens says crews meet every morning to make sure the emergency plan is working. They're at what's called warning level 4, which is the highest level in the city's flood plan. The city has flood protection up to 50 feet. Red is expected to crest in Grand Forks at around 44 and one-half feet to 45 and one-half feet on Friday or Saturday.

The forecast for Minnesota today calls for sunshine statewide. There is a possibility of a brief afternoon shower in the northeast. High is from around 50 in the north to 60 in the southwest. Right now in the Twin Cities, report of sunshine at temperature of 55 degrees. That's the news update. I'm Greta Cunningham.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you, Greta. And it is lovely in St. Peter. I'm Rachel Reabe. You're listening to a special Mainstreet broadcast from the lobby of the historic Nicollet Hotel in St. Peter.

We are talking about weather today. My guests are Rich Naistat from the National Weather Service, WCCO meteorologist Paul Douglas, and Mark Seeley, professor of meteorology and climatology with the University of Minnesota. Our phone number for your questions and comments 1-800-537-5252, 1-800-537-5252. We are going now to a phone caller from Bloomington. Zoney is on the phone. Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: Hi. My question is, I was wondering, when we were kids, we always were told to go in the north corner of the basement when there's a tornado. And I'm wondering if that is still true, if we should go to the north side when there's a tornado coming or where to go?

RACHEL REABE: Now, that's a good question. I grew up in Kansas. And it was always southwest. southwest, southwest. What are the instructions?

PAUL DOUGLAS: I've heard now-- I mean, all the statistics that I've seen are under the stairs, under the stairs in your basement.

RACHEL REABE: So quit trying to figure out where you are and just get under the stairs.

PAUL DOUGLAS: Many times the debris from your house winds up in the southwest corner. So I tell kids of all ages, go under a table, go under a desk, if you have something under the stairs in your basement. Statistically, even if an F3, an F4, an F5, god forbid, hits that you should be able to walk away from it.

It's the people that don't have basements, that's more of a challenge. But under the stairs, away from windows, away from outer walls. And you may be bruised. You may be cut up a little bit, but you'll probably live to tell your grandkids about it.

RACHEL REABE: Growing up in Kansas, we had regular tornado drills in school every year. We'd line up in the halls, sitting on the floor cross-legged, and put our heads down. I mean, it was just an annual sort of thing. We don't do that in Minnesota. My kids have never had a tornado drill at school, and yet we are having a statewide tornado drill coming up, Mark.

MARK SEELEY: Yes. The week of the 19th through the 23rd next month will be Severe Weather Awareness Week. There'll be a lot of broadcasts on NOAA Weather Radio about severe weather safety tips, not only for tornadoes, but other kinds of severe weather. And everybody might want to be aware that all the sirens will be going off on Thursday, the 22nd.

Now, that's a little different than the usual monthly drill. And so people hopefully shouldn't get too upset if they hear the sirens going off on a Thursday. But that's for tornado awareness day. And that's just a way to promote it statewide. And I suspect a lot of schools and other places will probably be doing drills that day.

RACHEL REABE: So an important thing to think about where you're going to go in case of whatever it would be.

MARK SEELEY: I think every family should have a plan, just like you go through a fire drill plan with your kids. I think you should sit down with your kids and say, I don't want to scare you. I don't want to alarm you. Odds are we'll never have to use this information.

But if we were to get the warning now, if you were to see threatening weather, what would you do? Where would you go? Let's go through the motions. Let's go to the basement. Where in the basement?

Take them downstairs. Try to remove some of the terror from the process. And I think the more that you can do in advance, I think the better it's going to be if and when the real thing strikes.

RACHEL REABE: We're going to Duluth now where Tom is standing by. Good afternoon, Tom.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. I have a couple of questions. One, regarding tornadoes up in the Duluth area around Lake Superior and what effect it has. And if these men know anything about the numerous tomatoes down in Alabama. I spent the winter down there, and they have hundreds of them in those southern states. I'll listen.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you so much. Let's talk about tornadoes over Lake Superior. Do you still call that a tornado when it's over water?

RICH NAISTAT: Well, it would be called a waterspout if it's actually over the water. I think what the gentleman might be referring to is whether there's any interaction, whether there's genesis or decay simply because of the land-water interface up there. The cool air near the lake, obviously, tends to stabilize the lower atmosphere a little bit and so there might be somewhat of a decrease. And I don't want to say that you're safe if you're on the North Shore and there's a large tornado coming in, because the tornado creates its own environment.

PAUL DOUGLAS: I think Cook County has seen something like two tornadoes since 1960. So the eastern part of the arrowhead, I mean, I think you could make an argument that the cooler water does negatively impact the spinning up of the mesocyclones, the severe rotating thunderstorms that go on to produce tornadoes. Whereas many counties in southern Minnesota have seen 30, 40, 50 tornadoes over that same period. So I think there's probably something to that.

RACHEL REABE: I remember a summer we had a huge tornado, which I guess you would call a waterspout, over Mille Lacs Lake. And people were so befuddled by it because it was not black, it was white. And so they couldn't quite grasp that it was just as dangerous, the blackness caused by the stuff spinning up in it. So our tornadoes, are they attracted to water? Or are they really no respecter of whether they're over land or water?

PAUL DOUGLAS: They're really swept up by the upper-- whatever the winds, the prevailing winds aloft, whatever direction they're blowing, they're sort of captive to the jet stream winds. And it's amazing still today, 1999, there's still a mindset that, well, I live in a major urban area. I live in the Twin Cities or I live in Duluth, or I live in a hilly area or tornadoes can't come across the river. There's still that mindset.

If it's a big enough tornado, it's going to go wherever it wants to go. And a hill or a river or a small lake or pond is not going to impede the forward progress of this thing. So I think you have to keep that in mind.

RACHEL REABE: We have Philip standing by in Edina. Good afternoon, Philip.

AUDIENCE: Hello?

RACHEL REABE: Hello.

AUDIENCE: I'd like to know about the hailstorm that struck this area on May 15, 1998. It didn't last very long, but it did lots and lots of damage.

PAUL DOUGLAS: It struck at the worst time possible, late afternoon, hundreds of thousands of people, commuters out. And it was amazing. I guess a number of people just decided to stop on the highways underneath the bridges to protect their vehicles. And in the process, backing up traffic, stopping traffic behind them. And everybody was just a sitting duck.

I tell this story, and I'm going to get in trouble for telling this story. My wife was on her way to the dentist with my two children. And they were stuck on the Crosstown Expressway in Edina when these hailstones hit. And I think they were certainly ping pong size, at least, walnut-sized hailstones. And she handled it very coolly. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands and started yelling, "We're going to die. We're going to die."

So now, every day my kids wake up, even today, they quizzed me. They said, dad, are we going to have any weather? Is it going to turn severe? What time is it going to turn severe? Where will you be?

RACHEL REABE: Do we have to go to the dentist, dad?

PAUL DOUGLAS: Please don't make us drive with mommy. Yes. So, I mean, yeah, my kids were traumatized by that, that particular hailstorm. And it was a wild year. And statistically, I don't know what you guys think. I can't imagine. I have to hope that it's not going to be that bad again this summer. I can't imagine it will be.

RICH NAISTAT: Well, it was an extreme event. And I think what contributed a lot to the damage was not just what happened with Paul's kids and wife great story was the high winds that associated the hail. It was basically a bow echo, a squall line moving rapidly north.

It was oriented east to west, moving rapidly north across the entire Twin Cities metro area. And I happen to be home at the time. I left some good people at the office to take care of things. And the roof, the siding, it was absolutely pummeled because you not only had these large hail stones, but they had high momentum because of the strong winds. And it was the combination of the wind and hail occurring at the same time that I think damaged so many roofs and cars and other things.

RACHEL REABE: We have Bill on the phone in Bemidji. Good afternoon, Bill.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. I had a question relative to the minimum/maximum temperatures that we see reported every day in the newspaper and on television and the radio. Right now, it's running for this time of year the maximum record temperature would be in the 70s. The record low temperature would be negative 5 or something like that.

If you aggregate those absolute values to come up with some value 80 or greater, I'm wondering how that compares, and I'll hang up and listen, to other major Metropolitan areas. We Minnesotans like to believe that we see the wildest weather. But I'm wondering how that compares with other major metropolitan areas. I'll listen. Thank you.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you, Bill. How extreme, how varied is Minnesota weather? Probably because we live here, we think, well, this has got to be the wildest weather anyplace on the globe. Is it?

RICH NAISTAT: Actually, the whole central part of the country is susceptible to those huge swings in temperatures. I've worked in Austin, Texas, Fort Worth, Tulsa, and Bismarck, as well as the Twin Cities, at least in the central part of the country. And every one of those places that I've lived in, at least somebody will say to me, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute and it'll change. And that's true up and down the plain states. So there are huge swings in Minnesota, but there's a lot of other areas in the central part of the country that experience wide swings as well.

PAUL DOUGLAS: Right. Water has a moderating influence. I mean, the closer you are to an ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, the more moderate temperate the climate's going to be. It's near the center of large continents that you tend to get the biggest extremes. I've always been under the impression that-- Mark, maybe you can, maybe you can back this up, that you would have to go to Siberia to find greater extremes in temperature and moisture. And we have better shopping.

RACHEL REABE: Address that, Mark, because that was something you and I talked about, which really surprised me.

MARK SEELEY: Right. I think continentally in the Northern Hemisphere, to look for a place that's similar to us, you do have to go where Paul said probably to Siberia or someplace like that. The extremes that we experience are phenomenal, especially in the transition months. You'd be hard pressed to find areas that have greater extremes, for example, in the months of November or the month of March.

88 degrees in March, minus 45 in March. A 20-inch blizzard in March, an F4 tornado in March. You can find the same kinds of scale in the month of November. And there aren't very many places. In fact, that's even difficult to match in Siberia. But we don't know very well because many of those countries don't have the same quality of historical records to go back and look at extremes as we do here.

RACHEL REABE: So is this a dream assignment for somebody in your line of work?

PAUL DOUGLAS: Working in Minnesota?

RACHEL REABE: Mm-hmm. Is this the epicenter of the weather world?

PAUL DOUGLAS: Not only-- and one of the things that I've really come to appreciate, especially in recent years, is that, I mean, not only is there a lot of weather here, but everybody in Minnesota is an armchair meteorologist. You have to be. It's a matter of survival. People know their weather in this state.

And so you can talk about the weather in ways that you couldn't do in Chicago or Boston or Los Angeles. There's an appreciation for weather here because we get so much of it. I tell people this is the Super Bowl of weather and I absolutely stand by that.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone number, 1-800-537-5252. Good afternoon, Scott, from Superior.

AUDIENCE: Thank you. Excellent show today, by the way. I have two quick questions here and then I'll listen. One has to do with the supercell, if you would define what that is. And the second has to do with what I believe is called a triggering mechanism.

Sometimes in the summer time when I'm watching my local weather, they show the national satellite view and we've got like a strong southerly flow of moist air coming up through the central part of the country. And I think I also heard the term like lighting a match where the clouds just plume up all of a sudden and sometimes like cover half a state. What are the mechanisms that cause that eruption like that? If you could just give me an example of that. Thanks.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you, Scott. Let's start with the supercell.

RICH NAISTAT: Supercell is really a thunderstorm that has a rotating updraft as opposed to an updraft that is not rotating. And conditions that favor that are a very unstable air mass and a lot of change of wind with height or what we call vertical wind shear.

RACHEL REABE: So what would that mean to me?

RICH NAISTAT: A supercell typically produces severe weather, large hail, high winds, sometimes tornadoes. So the supercells are the ones that typically are very well forecast in terms of maybe not a specific location. But supercells usually have severe weather or tornado watches issued before them. And the warnings are usually quite in advance.

RACHEL REABE: So more potential for violence?

RICH NAISTAT: Right. I would say the St. Peter tornado, since we're here, there was one giant supercell that went all the way from southwest Minnesota into East Central Minnesota producing multiple tornadoes. Paul alluded to earlier, we're not always going to be able to issue tornado warnings before there's a tornado. That there are a lot of tornadoes that are not produced from supercells. Fortunately, they're typically F0 and EF1, and do much less damage. But the supercells are the really big ones that you see.

RACHEL REABE: Let's go on to triggering mechanism.

PAUL DOUGLAS: I think there's some telltale signs. One of the things that I think you look for is a strong frontal boundary in the spring. I mean, they can certainly, as we found out last year, they can occur in March, much more likely April, May and June, likely late in the afternoon, right around the dinner hours when tornadoes are most likely to spin up. But usually in the vicinity of very strong warm fronts.

Last year, it was in the 40s and 50s in southern Minnesota. We got a lot of people who came up and said, how on earth can you get an F3 tornado with a temperature of 50 degrees?

Just to the south in Iowa, it was in the 70s and 80s. The atmosphere was juicy, very moist. The winds aloft, the jet stream winds were very strong. And we had an area of low pressure coming in from the west, from the Dakotas. So all those things converged.

And as Rich said, we had a very strong sheared environment, where the winds were changing dramatically with altitude, different wind speeds, different wind direction. And that can cause these thunderstorms that normally form and dissipate within about 30 minutes to go on for hour after hour after hour. And eventually, these spinning mesocyclones can spawn tornadoes. Very rare, but they do, in fact, happen. And again, if you're in the vicinity of a violent warm front, that's where you really want to watch out.

RACHEL REABE: I like that weather term juicy.

PAUL DOUGLAS: Juicy.

RACHEL REABE: We're going to Frank now in St. Paul. Good afternoon, Frank.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. When I was a kid about 40 years ago, growing up on my grandpa's farm, before anybody that I knew knew what a meteorologist was, I can remember my grandmother looking out the window and saying, it looks like rain or it's raining. But now, to listen to the weather people, the meteorologists on television, they talk about it never rains anymore. We have, quote, "shower activity," unquote.

And I think there's so many technical terms now with their maps and their radar. I think to be consistent, perhaps we should say today that we're having solar activity. And another thing I noticed is that these warnings and alerts that are, for example, the wind is 23 miles an hour, gusting to 40. Wind advisories have been posted. I wonder if that isn't being redundant. Once you give the wind speed, why do you have to say advisories are posted? OK.

RICH NAISTAT: Well, the wind advisory, a lot of this goes back to the National Weather Service, so I'll start to answer it. We have different advisories for different criteria. For a wind advisory, the sustained wind has to be 30 miles an hour or greater or we have to have higher wind gusts. And it's really just to provide information.

You as a user may choose to react to a wind advisory. You might say, I don't need that. And that's fine. We're providing the information to our customers. And it's a very varied base. So some people would find that useful. You may not, and that's perfectly all right.

RACHEL REABE: Paul, what about all these different words for precipitation? Is it like a sports announcer? You can't just say so-and-so beat someone. They had to squash them. They had to choke them. They had to--

PAUL DOUGLAS: They're actually-- much of the challenge is trying to communicate with what's in my small cranium to viewers at home and trying to make sure that people at home have the same understanding of the weather that I do in terms of the words that I choose. But there is a difference between showers and rain. Rain assumes that everybody is going to get wet, and that it's going to be more than an hour or two. It applies to the duration. And it applies to the coverage area.

In the spring and in the fall and in the winter sometimes, everybody gets wet. And it'll rain for 10, 12 hours or more. In the summer, it's more hit or miss, more the popcorn convection, the showers that pop up.

It rains hard in one neighborhood a mile down the road. The sun is out. That would be a shower. Small, brief, localized. So I think we do try to choose the words with care that communicate what we think the sky will look like or what percentage of the area will actually get wet.

MARK SEELEY: I would add one other thing, Rachel. I think the expectations of the public have grown over the years. The caller referred to a generation or two ago. And I think that people are keep raising the bar of what's expected for a meteorologist because so many decisions about what to do or what to plan are based on his or her words. And I think just what Paul said, looking into the differentiation between showers and rain in a forecast, that can mean a fairly hefty decision for somebody. So I think the expectations by the public keep getting higher and higher.

RACHEL REABE: We go now to John in Burnsville. Good afternoon, John.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. I've been noticing it seems like we are constantly hearing about extremes in weather around the world. Is this a trend? Or are we also caught up in more information, more data coming in that we just hear about more of it?

RACHEL REABE: OK. Record setting weather. Has it gotten more extreme?

PAUL DOUGLAS: It certainly-- my confidence level is not 100%, but just based on what I've seen, it certainly would appear that there are more severe episodes of weather on a global scale. But again, part of me goes back and says, well, are we just doing a better job of isolating this and reporting it? Are we more sensitized to severe weather now than we were 20, 30, 50, 100 years ago?

My hunch is that something is taking place and that we do seem to be seeing more intense hurricanes, more numerous hurricanes. Look at what Mitch did in Central America. A death toll of, what, 16,000 people. It staggers the mind some of the losses that we've had.

It would appear nationwide that we are seeing more tornadoes. I think even the skeptics would acknowledge a 20% rise in flooding, flash flooding since about 1900. That's the statistic that stands out in my mind.

So I think something is going on. And I think it's been accelerating since about 1980, 1985. And as Rich mentioned, especially in the '90s, it seems like every year is warmer than the preceding year. '98 on a global scale was the warmest year ever observed. And I tell people, either it's the mother of all coincidences or there are some trends here that we have to look at and evaluate.

RACHEL REABE: Let's go back to the phone lines. Gina in Elk River. Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: Hello there. I have one question. I don't know if you guys remember the storm in July with the tornado warnings out in Wright County when we had straight line winds about 60 miles per hour to 70, and it knocked down some like 50-year-old trees. We lost about eight of them ourself.

My question is, I was sitting down with my daughter watching the warning and the warning was like for about 20 minutes. And technically, we're right on the border of Hennepin County and Wright County, right on the Crow River there. And what had happened was as the warning was done, taken off the air, and I got up to go call my mom to see how she was doing. Right when I did that, I saw the tree touched the ground. And my question is, what does the radars and stuff tell you at the time when you finally decide, OK, we're in safe zone, there's no problem here?

RICH NAISTAT: Well, it's a very difficult situation because radar does not see the tornado. What it sees as circulations that are often precursors and sometimes occurring at the same time as the tornado. So when Paul mentioned it before, I mean, having a spotter network is vital. So the warning decision is knowing what the environment is, what we're seeing on radar, and most of all probably is getting real-time reports from spotters.

I would just incidentally go back to St. Peter. I think you were referring to July 1, 1997. But the St. Peter tornado, which was massive that came through here and went through Comfrey, it wasn't until after the tornado went through St. Peter that we knew that it was a massive tornado. Now, we had good spotters and we knew that there was a tornado, but we had no idea that it was a mile and a quarter wide until after it had gone through St. Peter.

RACHEL REABE: We go now to Plymouth where Hugo is waiting to talk to us. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Hugo. You're on the air. Our phone number 1-800-537-5252. Let's go to our next caller. Good afternoon. OK, we'll skip a call and go down to Mary in Hopkins. Are you with us?

AUDIENCE: Hello. I just have a quick question about the safety issues of when you're camping when all you've got between you is a little thin piece of nylon. What's a good thing to teach your kids where to go? So you get in your car, stay out of your car. If you could address those issues, I'd appreciate it.

RACHEL REABE: When the get under the stairs doesn't work, then what?

PAUL DOUGLAS: And Minnesotans, I mean, we're an outdoor state. We pride ourselves on getting out and embracing the great outdoors. And that's something that keeps me awake late at night. That if you have a tornado coming through a campground, I guess the first thing I would do is make sure that the campground has a shelter, preferably with a basement.

Second thing I would do is go out to RadioShack, and I'm not a stockholder in RadioShack. Buy yourself one of these little portable weather alert radios that they cost $30, $40, $50. And the NOAA Weather Radio sites around the state will activate these. And it sets off a tone that will wake the dead. I mean, you will be wide awake if a warning is issued for your county.

And I believe, Rich, I don't know if this has come out here in the past couple of hours, but there's a bill right now before the state legislature, $1.4 million to fund 23 more of these NOAA Weather Radio transmitters around the state so that there are no gaps in coverage. So that everybody in the entire state of Minnesota can get the warnings.

I think the best we can hope for is layers of safety nets. One safety net is the media, television, and radio. Another safety net are the sirens. Another safety net is this NOAA Weather Radio.

And I think the best thing you can do for your family is go out and buy one of these radios, set it up. They're battery operated in case the power goes out. And even if you're not watching TV, listening to the radio, if there is a warning issued, you will get that information. And so I would-- and they have them portable now. You can take them out just like regular radios. And I would definitely take one of those while camping.

RACHEL REABE: Any predictions for the weather this summer? In our closing minutes, gentlemen, tell us what we can expect.

PAUL DOUGLAS: Changeable.

MARK SEELEY: I think we're going to have an early spring.

[LAUGHS]

We're already driving the frost out of the ground. In fact, we may even have convection this next week. So all the signs are pointing towards moving into spring a little bit early.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you Mark Seeley, Rich Naistat, and Paul Douglas. Thanks for being with us today. This special Mainstreet Radio broadcast is a production of Minnesota Public Radio. Our engineers are Cliff Bentley and Rick [? Kaczynski ?] in St. Peter, Alan Stricklin in St. Paul. Our producer is Sara Meyer. executive producer Mel Sommer, site producer Mark Steil.

We'd like to thank Tom Blank, Lee Nelson, and Phillip Friedland for allowing us to bring you this show from the lobby of the newly restored Nicollet Hotel in St. Peter. MPR's Mainstreet radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant making, leadership training, and convening. Minnesota Public Radio's Mainstreet team consists of 12 reporters at MPR bureaus across Minnesota. I'm Rachel Reabe.

[COUNTRY MUSIC]

FEMALE REPORTER: Monday on All Things Considered. In the age of horse and buggy, an Northfield teen was building his own automobiles. Our Minnesota Century series continues on Mondays All Things Considered, weekdays at 3:00 on Minnesota Public Radio KNOW FM 91.1.

RACHEL REABE: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. It's 55 degrees at KNOW FM 91.1 Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Twin Cities weather for today calls for sunny skies, a high of 58 degrees. Clear skies tonight. Temperatures dropping to 32. Windy and warmer for tomorrow. A high of 65. The time, 1:00.