More records? Fire weather terms; Dissapearing forests and climate change

85 degree high at MSP Tuesday

64 average high for October 4th

+21 degrees vs. average

4 degrees shy of record high of 89 Tuesday

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This is October? The temps map Tuesday PM looks more like July.

It appears temps will peak Wednesday between 85 and 88 degrees, with 90 not out of the question in southern Minnesota. The record high of 87 Wednesday in the metro is within reach!

Fire Weather: What does it mean?

We don't see many "Red Flag" and "Fire Weather" warnings in Minnesota, but they seem to be more common lately. Here are some terms and definitions courtesy of your local NWS.

The Disappearing Forest; A climate change accelerator?

An interesting story form the New York Times. As massive forest fires sweep across the USA from Arizona to Texas and Minnesota, are those disappearing forests increasing the probability of more rapid climate warming?

"WISE RIVER, Mont. -- The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn.

But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening.

Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.

From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state's spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.

The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two "once a century" droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become."

"Scientists have figured out -- with the precise numbers deduced only recently -- that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world's cars and trucks.

Without that disposal service, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be rising faster. The gas traps heat from the sun, and human emissions are causing the planet to warm."

I watched over a million acres of prime pine forest burn in Arizona during my 9 years there as Chief Meteorologist at the ABC station in Tucson. Now we are seeing massive blazes in Texas and yes, Minnesota. At some point the evidence seems to support the idea that we are witnessing the effects of climate change right before our eyes, in our lifetime, right here in Minnesota.

PH