Brian D

It's a stretch I know, but interesting that some would think that

The last couple years or so has seen a lot of these types of fires around the world. Infrastructure getting old? Some have posited the increase in cosmic rays during solar min destabilizes some chemical concoctions. But human error is the usual suspect. Dangerous stuff. Superior WI, just 25 miles S of me, had an incident a few years ago at its refinery.

Something possibly brewing for Father's Day. Few days to go.

It was 55/48 yesterday, and now we have low 80's in town with breezy west winds that are gusting up to 30 mph. Chance of stms tomorrow with a trough moving through, highs around 80 again.

Mid 50's and thunder with fog. Last day of colder temps here in town. Looks like upper 70's - lower 80's on tap for the next few days.

Another day near the lake with 65-70 temps. Foggy skies starting to clear up a little. Storms last night put on a good cloud to cloud lightning show. About 0.45" of rain fell.

I have seen metro only heat advisories for the past few days down there. Sucks to be you. Ish!!

The weather info from those instruments is meant for airport ops, not climate. And besides, almost the entire record is UHI contaminated, anyway. I've seen small town readings higher like airports because of infrastructure, compared to the truly rural sites. NOAA has invested in the US Climate Reference Network to get a better handle on this issue. Don't know how that is going at the moment, but even they know through studies in recent years how much infrastructure contaminates temperatures. Anthony Watts really brought that to light with his study a decade ago, and NOAA acknowledged his work, and confirmed it. NOAA even did a study on site placement near and away from structures, and found significance there. But no matter what, a cooling/warming signal will always emerge from that noise. Just takes a while.

Lake Superior is calling you. It's actually feels chilly here with the stiff Lake wind. Around 65-70 here in town.

Here's the station thread, plus my analysis of the max/high min records I did a while back. It's up to date till May 2021. Station Thread for La Crosse Area, WI Name Period in Thread 1 LA CROSSE MUNICIPAL AP 02/1986 to 12/2020 2 LA CROSSE WSO 10/1985 to 01/1986 3 LA CROSSE MUNICIPAL AP 01/1951 to 09/1985 4 LA CROSSE 03/1903 to 12/1950 5 LA CROSSE (supplied by NWS) 02/1903 to 02/1903 6 LA CROSSE 11/1896 to 01/1903 7 LA CROSSE (supplied by NWS) 10/1872 to 10/1896

I think LaCrosse was in the valley in the past, too, probably just not in the middle of the river. Just across from the airport is the La Cresent dam, and they have a 7 day avg of 73.4, and Trempealeau dam up the valley has 74.5, so I don't know what say except that the airport is just running warm.

I looked at Duluth, and LaCrosse. They have NWS records and Arpt records that are in close proximity to each other. Here's what the difference is in the first 7 days avg. Duluth Arpt: 71.0 Duluth NWS: 68.7 LaCrosse Arpt: 78.6 Lacrosse WFO: 73.5 I also looked at Mpls Arpt, and Chanhassen WFO. They are further apart, and the NWS office is in the burbs W of the Arpt. Mpls Arpt: 80.3 Chanhassen WFO: 76.5 Edit: Looked at Madison Arpt, and UW of Madison. They are a little further apart, as well. Madison Arpt: 74.4 UW of Madison: 71.8 Airports seem to be running a little hotter than other sites.

Some new changes I'd like to see is... Snow/ Winter stm W Ice/ Ice stm W Wind chill/ Svr wind chill W Heat/Svr heat W Travel alert and warning for the more dangerous conditions. Basically just change from advisory to warning for some, drop others, and tweek triggers. Advisory is a softball term for much of what is really just ordinary weather for a region. Besides, travel alerts are really just shifting from the advisories to that anyway, if they would do that again. And when a warning is issued, people will really take notice. Things getting serious.

I took the survey for this, and I'm ok with no advisories. People are pretty used to the weather for their area. 2-3 of snow is just normal around here, but not down south. Use the word "Warning" to get their attention to something very impactful for the region, like dense fog, ice/ice storm, wind/high wind, small craft/gale/storm, winter storm, frost/freeze, flood/flash flood. If advisories are gone, then tweek the triggers for warning down slightly, if necessary. The one advisory or alert I would like to see used is the travel one. Alerting those who are on the road or going to be on the road to road conditions is a good idea. So travel alerts are ok in my book.

Yep, 7/13/95. Tied with 7/14/36 as the all time high at that station. BTW in 5/31/34 it was 107. Early June heat up here got nothing on that one. That region has a topo of bluffs and valleys, so very possible.

Records 6/4 & 6/5 Duluth 93 (90 1968); 94 (88 1925/1988) I-Falls 98 (92 1988); 91 2nd to 94 1988 Brainerd 100 (89 1988); 96 (92 1952) Hibbing 95 (88 1988); 94 (90 1988) Ashland 93 (92 1968); 94 (93 1988) Grand Forks 103 (96 1961); 99 (95 1988) Fargo 102 (95 1959); 98 (95 1939) Impressive stuff last couple days. More near record to record heat possible tomorrow as well. Staying above normal well into next week, so top 5 heat still possible.

My great big AC just a mile away keeps me cool. For now at least. Inland has been in the low 90's the last 2 days with temps 10-15 degrees cooler here by the Lake. With the Lake still pretty cold, just like the ocean sea breezes of the afternoon, we get that here too until the water warms up later in July. Then AC is needed off and on.

Here's the Spring chart for our region with a look at the 3 months that comprise it. Warm March to a near avg April to a cool May.

Well, prelim May data is in, and looks like another cool May for the region this year.

Using NOAA data at 61-90, 71-00, 81-10, and 91-20 norms for the south central US for the avg anomaly (in K) for Jan-Apr. () is the difference from previous norm. 61-90: 0.221 71-00: -0.091 (0.312) 81-10: -0.374 (0.283) 91-20: -0.535 (0.161) (0.756 from 61-90) Maps above are in F, so can't compare these with those necessarily, as F uses smaller units compared to K/C units (which are the same size). Have to use lat/long here, but basically its CO, KS, OK, NM, and TX. I already have data downloaded (1981-2010 base) for 7 sections of the US from a while ago, so I plugged in the coordinates I have for this section. When using lat/long, the area is bigger in the south, than the north areas because of the arc of the Earth. Unfortunately, I do pick up some of MX and CA in those sections, but it's all good. https://psl.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.pl Hope this helps.

Or we could use these maps. 1988 was much drier overall. The scales are a little different, but stills shows the big difference.

Looks like Devil's Lake, and Moorehead hit 102 as well. GF down to 101.

I looked at some drought index (KBDI) values for some stations, and they are as much as twice as high as they were in 1988. That's definitely allowing temps to rise a bit more. Impressive heat indeed. 1988 had lots of moments in the spotlight within the records around here.

Quick look at temps around the E ND/NW MN region.

Mid 70's here by the Lake with mid 80's inland. TY Big Water!