Hours of Daylight – 15:40

Notice the days have not yet begun to shrink. Actually they have, but the consumer level timekeeping source i’m using doesn’t relect the modest changes that are now occuring.

Today my focus is the weather of the upper midwest. There is an old saying in and around New England (probably started in Maine), “if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute.” It took me a minute to figure out what that saying meant. Basically it alludes to the weather of, espcially coastal, New England being highly changeable. But i would argue the weather of Maine is actually pretty stable. It rarely gets super hot, along the coast it rarely gets super cold, it is frequently foggy in the morning, giving way to either sunshine or rain later on in the day.

I would suggest the weather of inland states is actually more unstable, unpredictable, dramatic, and downright dangerous. First of all the plains have tornadoes. Sure, the coast can be ravaged by hurricanes, but hurricanes are seasonal and easy to track. Out here on the flats of North America we sit basically on the “weather highway.” Minnesota is a speed bump for weather fronts spawned in the Pacific or in the Arctic. A cold front comes racing across the prairies of the Dakotas in the early morning and begins to cross Minnesota as the summer sun is heating the moist air over the fields. Pockets of air begin to rise and form cells, the cells coalesce and gain strength ahead of the front which adds energy and eventually swallows the cells and suddenly a massive storm is marching across the prarie extending to upwards of 48,000 feet.

But the real magic of the weather here is what exists behind the fronts and the storms. Two days ago a massive cold front crossed the twin cities. The day dawned cool and pleasant, but by 3:00 PM the sky was dark as twilight. The rain started by 4:00 PM, as heavy as any monsoon in India or the Philippines.

By 6:00 PM the storm had moved on and by 6:30 the sky was crystal clear. But the best part was the temperature and the “feel” of the air: 10 to 15 degrees cooler and much lower humidity. It’s hard to describe the full effect of the change. It is much more pronounced than anything i can remember growing up on the East Coast. What’s even better is the ocean of cool, dry air behind that storm is still here bringing record-setting cool temperatures and crystal clear days.