Weather update: warm, sunny weekend to follow Thursday rain
Spring buds in years past. Wednesday has brought remarkably warm and sunny weather to Minnesota. Thursday may counter with clouds and rain showers.
Paul Huttner | MPR News 2018
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Wednesday has brought remarkably warm and sunny weather to Minnesota. Thursday may counter with clouds and rain showers. MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner joins MPR News host Emily Bright with details on the forecast, plus the latest on funding for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate centers.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
EMILY BRIGHT: This is Minnesota Now. I'm Emily Bright in for Nina Moini. It is shaping up to be a remarkably warm and sunny spring day today. I hope you get the chance to spend a little time outside, enjoying the sun and this pleasant temperature. Well, here to share some more with us about what we can expect this week is MPR's chief meteorologist Paul Huttner. Hi, Paul. Have you gotten a chance to get a walk today at all?
PAUL HUTTNER: Not yet, Emily, but I'm hoping to do that here in the next hour or so. Pretty nice out there in most of Minnesota today. A little cloudy and chilly in the Northwest, though.
EMILY BRIGHT: Well, it's been great weather for Earth Day, people out doing park cleanups and all of that. And I know Earth Day was founded right here in the Midwest in 1970. What have we learned? What have we accomplished since then?
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, and some of us are old enough to remember that first Earth Day, Emily. Listen, no matter who you are in Minnesota, we love our environment. If you're a boater, a camper, a hunter, or a fisher person, we just love our natural environment, Minnesota. And I think Minnesota has done a lot of things right since that first Earth Day. I wrote about it this week in Updraft. I'll pick a couple of things. One, cleaner water. In the '60s and '70s, we used to dump raw sewage into our lakes, Emily, like Lake Minnetonka--
EMILY BRIGHT: Ugh.
PAUL HUTTNER: I know-- in the western suburbs. Our lakes are much cleaner since then. In fact, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has a list of impaired lakes, and they've removed 64 lakes from that list since 2004. So that's good news. Our water is getting cleaner in Minnesota.
We've also had a renewable energy boom. We've gone from 0 to 33% renewable energy in about the past 25 years. And Minnesota's power emissions have dropped 52% from 2005 levels. So that's pretty impressive.
And then one last thing I would say for having done 12 years of our Climate Cast series, 600 episodes, Minnesota's attitudes on climate change awareness have improved, and in fact, so has the country. Yale does a study on this, and now 54% of people are either alarmed or concerned or really active about climate change. Only 10% dismiss climate change. So interesting how those attitudes have shifted in the last 20 years or so.
EMILY BRIGHT: Yeah, I really appreciate that, have we come from-- like, "how far have we come" perspective. So what can we expect this week, this weekend, rain?
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, a little bit of everything. Feeling more like spring out there today in Central and Southern Minnesota. We hit 70 in the Twin Cities yesterday. That was the fifth time this spring, and I think we'll get there again today.
There are some scattered light showers, some of it not reaching the ground, Montevideo, Redwood Falls, into the Southern Twin Cities south to the Iowa border. But it won't be much today. So around 70. Northwest Minnesota, you're going, yeah, it's chilly and cloudy up here. I get it. It's in the 40s and 50s.
Then tomorrow, that rain you mentioned, a pretty good system coming in. It will start in the morning, but mostly in the afternoon. We'll top out at 57 in the Twin Cities. We'll get an inch of rain, Emily, from the Twin Cities south and east through Rochester to the Iowa border. Maybe a little band of 2 inches from about Owatonna up to Redwing on the European model.
And then that ends early Friday. We clear out. 61 in the afternoon. Saturday looks nice, the better day of the weekend, I think, mostly sunny and 65. Sunday some clouds, a chance of rain, and we'll be up about 69.
EMILY BRIGHT: And any signs of warmer weather ahead? I know, I guess, we're already above average.
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, next week looks like we could see more 70s, potentially, and maybe 80 degrees on Monday in Southern Minnesota. We'll have a chance of thunderstorms Monday. Some of those will be strong. We'll have to keep an eye on that. And then drier, it looks like, later the rest of next week, mainly in the 60s. But Emily, that weekend of May 3 and 4, that first weekend in May, some of the models are cranking out 70 degrees again for Central and Southern Minnesota.
EMILY BRIGHT: That sounds pretty much amazing. So Paul, I want to ask you, because late last week, NOAA climate centers had their funding cut. The Midwest Region website went dark, and then funding got restored. So catch people up. What are climate centers, and what is going on there?
PAUL HUTTNER: They're really important for a lot of different sectors of society and people who work with weather and climate-- farmers, number one. Now, water managers, meteorologists, the general public, when we track things like droughts and soil moisture and precipitation. So you're right. The Midwest Regional Climate Center and others went dark on April 17, magically popped up again yesterday.
Apparently, people made enough noise that they decided to restore that funding. So interesting times we live in. But I'm glad to see those back up because they matter to a lot of people and we use those maps in Updraft here.
EMILY BRIGHT: Yeah, well, and I appreciate Updraft. I check it every day. Thank you, Paul.
PAUL HUTTNER: Appreciate it. Thanks, Emily.
EMILY BRIGHT: That was NPR News Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner.
PAUL HUTTNER: Not yet, Emily, but I'm hoping to do that here in the next hour or so. Pretty nice out there in most of Minnesota today. A little cloudy and chilly in the Northwest, though.
EMILY BRIGHT: Well, it's been great weather for Earth Day, people out doing park cleanups and all of that. And I know Earth Day was founded right here in the Midwest in 1970. What have we learned? What have we accomplished since then?
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, and some of us are old enough to remember that first Earth Day, Emily. Listen, no matter who you are in Minnesota, we love our environment. If you're a boater, a camper, a hunter, or a fisher person, we just love our natural environment, Minnesota. And I think Minnesota has done a lot of things right since that first Earth Day. I wrote about it this week in Updraft. I'll pick a couple of things. One, cleaner water. In the '60s and '70s, we used to dump raw sewage into our lakes, Emily, like Lake Minnetonka--
EMILY BRIGHT: Ugh.
PAUL HUTTNER: I know-- in the western suburbs. Our lakes are much cleaner since then. In fact, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has a list of impaired lakes, and they've removed 64 lakes from that list since 2004. So that's good news. Our water is getting cleaner in Minnesota.
We've also had a renewable energy boom. We've gone from 0 to 33% renewable energy in about the past 25 years. And Minnesota's power emissions have dropped 52% from 2005 levels. So that's pretty impressive.
And then one last thing I would say for having done 12 years of our Climate Cast series, 600 episodes, Minnesota's attitudes on climate change awareness have improved, and in fact, so has the country. Yale does a study on this, and now 54% of people are either alarmed or concerned or really active about climate change. Only 10% dismiss climate change. So interesting how those attitudes have shifted in the last 20 years or so.
EMILY BRIGHT: Yeah, I really appreciate that, have we come from-- like, "how far have we come" perspective. So what can we expect this week, this weekend, rain?
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, a little bit of everything. Feeling more like spring out there today in Central and Southern Minnesota. We hit 70 in the Twin Cities yesterday. That was the fifth time this spring, and I think we'll get there again today.
There are some scattered light showers, some of it not reaching the ground, Montevideo, Redwood Falls, into the Southern Twin Cities south to the Iowa border. But it won't be much today. So around 70. Northwest Minnesota, you're going, yeah, it's chilly and cloudy up here. I get it. It's in the 40s and 50s.
Then tomorrow, that rain you mentioned, a pretty good system coming in. It will start in the morning, but mostly in the afternoon. We'll top out at 57 in the Twin Cities. We'll get an inch of rain, Emily, from the Twin Cities south and east through Rochester to the Iowa border. Maybe a little band of 2 inches from about Owatonna up to Redwing on the European model.
And then that ends early Friday. We clear out. 61 in the afternoon. Saturday looks nice, the better day of the weekend, I think, mostly sunny and 65. Sunday some clouds, a chance of rain, and we'll be up about 69.
EMILY BRIGHT: And any signs of warmer weather ahead? I know, I guess, we're already above average.
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, next week looks like we could see more 70s, potentially, and maybe 80 degrees on Monday in Southern Minnesota. We'll have a chance of thunderstorms Monday. Some of those will be strong. We'll have to keep an eye on that. And then drier, it looks like, later the rest of next week, mainly in the 60s. But Emily, that weekend of May 3 and 4, that first weekend in May, some of the models are cranking out 70 degrees again for Central and Southern Minnesota.
EMILY BRIGHT: That sounds pretty much amazing. So Paul, I want to ask you, because late last week, NOAA climate centers had their funding cut. The Midwest Region website went dark, and then funding got restored. So catch people up. What are climate centers, and what is going on there?
PAUL HUTTNER: They're really important for a lot of different sectors of society and people who work with weather and climate-- farmers, number one. Now, water managers, meteorologists, the general public, when we track things like droughts and soil moisture and precipitation. So you're right. The Midwest Regional Climate Center and others went dark on April 17, magically popped up again yesterday.
Apparently, people made enough noise that they decided to restore that funding. So interesting times we live in. But I'm glad to see those back up because they matter to a lot of people and we use those maps in Updraft here.
EMILY BRIGHT: Yeah, well, and I appreciate Updraft. I check it every day. Thank you, Paul.
PAUL HUTTNER: Appreciate it. Thanks, Emily.
EMILY BRIGHT: That was NPR News Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner.
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