{"id":19728,"date":"2014-06-18T09:51:46","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T14:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=19728"},"modified":"2014-06-18T09:51:46","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T14:51:46","slug":"minnesotas-current-weather-disaster-dont-worry-well-be-fine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/18\/minnesotas-current-weather-disaster-dont-worry-well-be-fine\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota's Current Weather Disaster — Don't worry we'll be fine."},"content":{"rendered":"

I woke up this morning to find about a dozen reports on my iPad Damage app indicating trees down and hail damage in many communities from Mankato to Edina, south of the Twin Cities. More of the same. We have been having severe weather for about a month now, or a bit less. One day in late May, Julia and I were taking pictures of people driving too fast through the lake that formed in front of our house form a major downpour. Early in that storm we witnessed a ground strike not too far away. A short while after that an ambulance came screaming by our house, coming from the direction of the ground strike to the hospital just south of us. Later we heard on the news that a woman at a little league game (which, frankly, should have been cancelled) was struck and transported to the hospital … that was certainly her. This morning, Mankato was flooded, a day or two ago a woman was rescued from her car that was eventually swept away by a river that does not normally exist. Flooding up on the Canadian Border has been epic. The entire state is under a Meteorological Siege.<\/p>\n

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Not exactly a Turn Round Don’t Drown situation, but perhaps a Slow Down So As To Not Crack Your Engine Block situation .<\/figcaption><\/figure>Yet, somehow, CNN has not taken notice.<\/p>\n

I believe that what is happening here is an expanded, intensified version of what we usually get around this time of year. The Norther Plains has storms in the late Spring and early Summer for various meteorological reasons. But this Spring, the jet stream continues to experience it\u2019s kinkyness, not the good kind of kinkyness, and we are having stalled weather systems. So, instead of having a storm front move through the area every few days, we have a big huge stormy thing hanging over us for weeks on end.<\/p>\n

This is a similar phenomenon, most likely, to what brought epic floods to Central Europe, the UK, Calgary, and Colorado over the last two years. But, since we have no mountains to speak of and the state is full of more swamp and pond than arroyo and river, we don\u2019t have the same kind of result. The rain that fell over the last 24 hours in southern Minnesota, falling in Colorado\u2019s front range would have wiped out towns and people would be missing for days. Here, we have different results. Same weather phenomenon (more or less) likely caused by the same changes to the environment resulting form global warming<\/a> (most likely<\/a>) but spread out a bit in time and space so it becomes, rather than a single big huge national news story, this string of little local news stories (listed by day of month for June):<\/p>\n