Sundgaard: Muggy temps won't last

Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
It is hot, muggy and hazy out there! But it won't last long. MPR meteorologist Sven Sundgaard shares weather details for our region and beyond.
Click the audio player above to listen to the full episode.
Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
Audio transcript
Here with the weather details for the region and beyond, NPR meteorologist Sven Sundgaard. Hey, welcome back.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's one of those days where you always wonder how many more we got. And then another one comes. And you think, well, maybe this is the last one.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah but looking at the forecast, at least today and tomorrow, for sure we know that, right? So--
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Definitely.
INTERVIEWER: I'm looking here out my window in downtown St. Paul, and the skies are still kind of milky. I wouldn't exactly call them bright blue. So I'm going to assume this is still wildfire smoke.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Definitely. We got a lot of that across Minnesota again today. And these are coming from fires in Idaho and Montana, which is experiencing an above normal fire season. And that's forecast, really, for the month.
So, unfortunately, I got to tell folks, probably get used to this for the next several weeks. Any time our air is flowing from the West, which, of course, happens quite frequently, we're probably going to have some smoke in one form or another.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Air quality, by the way, what does it look like for some of us?
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, now, that's the change today. You know, yesterday we were just seeing it more aloft. Now it's starting to make its way into the lower atmosphere. And part of that is the warmer air moving in. You get these inversions where it gets warmer as you go up. And that kind of traps some of that particulate matter in the lower atmosphere.
So the way we measure these particles, we have a number. And you want it to be under 50, and it was yesterday. But now we're starting to see it creep up we're up to 51 in the Twin Cities, St. Cloud, 53. Fargo-Moorhead, up to 76.
It was up to 100 at one point in the Red River Valley, which is getting into that really poor air quality range. So most of us are going to be fine. But if you do have asthma or particularly sensitive, you want to take special care and really pay attention to those air quality alerts here over the next several days or weeks as the skies get hazy.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my gosh, it must be just horrible being out West, where the fires are. And it's also so incredibly hot.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, absolutely. And today, they're looking at particularly hazardous fire weather for fighting those fires too. They're talking about dry lightning. So they get thunderstorms to form, but it's too dry for the rain to reach the ground. So it doesn't do any good. But the lightning, of course, can start more fires.
So that's something that firefighters are really going to be battling today with in Western Montana and Idaho, the source of those fires. So fingers crossed they can get some kind of control here over the next several days.
INTERVIEWER: I know you have friends in California. So do I. But boy, they just cannot believe-- some of those temperatures around San Francisco? Yikes.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, 97 on Labor Day in San Francisco. And if anybody's familiar with that climate, that's really hot for them. 97's one thing for us. But for them, that's particularly hot.
The water temperatures off the coast-- I just checked yesterday-- 53 degrees. So that's like when Duluth hits 97. It's a particular feat. And of course, you get anywhere inland at all, and it's been triple digits.
Death Valley got within one degree of their hottest all time September record of 125. It was 124 two days in a row last week-- Thursday, Friday. Fresno today is looking at day 10 consecutive of triple digits. And their normal high is 96, but to get this is really quite remarkable. Much of California in the Southwest seeing temperatures 13 degrees above average so far for the last 7 to 10 days, which is a huge anomaly.
INTERVIEWER: Hey, welcome to climate change.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, absolutely. So it's hard to pinpoint fires specifically, but we know that the fire season, those conditions to make fire seasons worse, definitely tied to climate change. We're getting more of these hotter, drier days, up to six weeks more of hotter windy weather compared to, historically, for parts of the West and Southwest.
INTERVIEWER: So that's on the West Coast. The East Coast is being inundated with rain.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, they had 4 to 10 inches of rain in the Boston, Rhode Island areas yesterday. And of course, this isn't the first extreme rainfall event. Since late July, when it started, really, in St. Louis and then Kentucky, Illinois, Texas, Mississippi, and now the Northeast have had these just deluges of rainfall. And that, too, we can really tie to climate change. A warmer atmosphere just holds a lot more water content.
INTERVIEWER: Let's talk a little bit about our September and fall forecast, shall we?
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, no shock. It's going to be warmer than normal-- probably not a surprise to most people. Yeah, we're running, these first seven days now of September-- I can't believe that we're already a full week in-- 4 degrees above normal already, which is a huge amount.
And basically every model we look at forecasts a warmer-than-normal September and autumn. And this has been a climate trend. Our summers are starting earlier. It's getting hotter quicker.
So June is really warming. July and August is really kind of flat when you look at it, compared to historically. But then September also getting much warmer faster. So basically, our summers are getting longer-- earlier start, and a later end to them, you know?
And if you're something like a moose, that's really stressful for you. So some of our species in Northeastern Minnesota are really struggling and stressed out in this warming world.
INTERVIEWER: Well, our friend Mark Seeley says, of course, Minnesota is one of the fastest warming places in autumn.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Absolutely. Yeah, winter and fall were really one of the-- stand out. The upper Midwest, parts of the Northeast, and then also the Southwest. So yeah, it's a real fast-warming season, whereas, as I mentioned, July and August, really very subtle.
INTERVIEWER: See, we have about a minute left, minute and a half. So I'm kind of curious here. When do you think we're going to drop below 50 degrees?
SVEN SUNDGAARD: You know, that's a great quesiton.
INTERVIEWER: In the Twin Cities, in the Twin Cities.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: In the Twin Cities. Yeah, a lot of folks did this over the last weekend. But here-- and of course, we're dealing with a little bit of the urban heat island. But historically, that first night below 50 used to happen at the end of August. Now it's more like mid-September.
And then when you look at the tail end of it, it used to be mid-June was the last night in the 40s or colder. And now it's late May. So we've added 30 to 40 days of warm nights to the season, which you might not be complaining about, but that has an impact on ecosystems.
And you can basically extrapolate that across the state. And of course, it's cooler as you get outside of the Twin Cities, but everybody seeing warmer nights. And of course, that's a big climate trend too.
INTERVIEWER: All right, and before you go, the weather forecast.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, mid-80s today, pretty warm. It is humid out there, dew point 68 right now. Tomorrow is going to be hot and humid, maybe not quite 90, but close enough for September. It's going to feel like it.
And then the heat breaks Friday. We've got rain moving in. And temperatures are going to drop only 60s and low 70s Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Should see sunshine again early next week. And probably back in the 80s by the middle of next week.
So we're talking about summer may not be done yet. There could be more.
INTERVIEWER: All right. Sven, thank you. We'll talk to you again tomorrow morning.
SVEN SUNDGAARD: Absolutely. Thank you.
INTERVIEWER: That's our meteorologist Sven Sundgaard.
Download transcript (PDF)
Transcription services provided by 3Play Media.