Free Sauna: Dew points push 70 degrees Tuesday

Get ready for another surge in 'water vapor' over Minnesota and the upper Midwest Tuesday.

When winds blow a wetter air mass north into Minnesota, meteorologists call it 'moisture advection.' You might have other names for this phenomenon, some of which may be 4-letter words. Dew points surge toward the 70 degree mark over southern Minnesota Tuesday afternoon and evening. You'll feel the sticky factor rising tomorrow.

NOAA's NAM 4 km model captures waves of tropical moisture gurgling north this week as dew points in the 70s invade southern Minnesota.

88 dews
NOAA NAM 4 km dew points via College of Dupage

The frontal zone drapes across central Minnesota by Thursday.  The zone north of the front in central and northern Minnesota is ground zero for more thunderstorms with the potential for excessive rainfall by Wednesday night and Thursday.

Create a More Connected Minnesota

MPR News is your trusted resource for the news you need. With your support, MPR News brings accessible, courageous journalism and authentic conversation to everyone - free of paywalls and barriers. Your gift makes a difference.

88 3allfcsts_loop_ndfd
NOAA

Heavy rain and severe risk Wednesday night

Big storms should blow along the front Wednesday night. I can see a few severe storms, and the potential for multi-inch rains returns.

88 msp2

Gulf Coast flood potential

Note the persistent rains with a stalled low pressure system along the Gulf Coast. 10" or even 20" rainfall is possible in some areas. That's 3 months worth of rain in less than a week. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize flood potential is high, to potentially deadly along sections of the Gulf Coast this week.

Another Minnesota soaking

Closer to home storms have the potential to dump 3'+ rainfall totals again this week. The latest NOAA guidance puts the Twin Cities into play on the potential heavy rain zone.

88 qq
NOAA

Hot too

It looks like we'll have 2 to 3 more shots at 90 degrees in the metro this week. Tuesday through Thursday afternoons have the potential to deliver 90 at MSP, depending on cloud cover day to day. Even if we don't hit 90, upper 80s and dew points in the 70s will yield heat index values well into in the 90s to 100 degrees.

88 ApparentT20_northplains
NOAA

Some relief in the form of cooler and drier air arrives this weekend. But all indications are heat will bubble north again next week with a few more sultry days in the 90s. The 15-day meteogram courtesy of Custom Weather.

88 met
Custom Weather

Overall I still see a warmer than average pattern through most of August. NOAA's 8-14 day outlook suggest a toasty Minnesota running warmer than average through the 3rd week of this month.

88 814temp.new
NOAA

USA: 3rd warmest year on record so far

And the hot weather hits just keep on comin'.

NOAA's reports the 3rd warmest year on record so far through July. Like the children of Lake Wobegon, every state in the U.S. is above average when it comes to temperatures this year. Minnesota is on pace for our 6th warmest year on record through July.

88 statewidetavgrank-201601-201607
NOAA

The core of this years' warmth centers on the Northern Plains near the Canadian border. Minnesota's temperatures are running 4 to 5 degrees warmer than average this year. Much of this was due to the incredibly mild El Nino winter.

88 July us temp dep

Melting Greenland camp could expose dangerous waste

Because back in the 1960s nobody thought huge chunks of Greenland would be in danger of rapid melting?

Climate Central has more on a big potential 'oops' that may be exposed by climate change.

When the U.S. military abandoned Camp Century, a complex of tunnels dug into the ice of northwest Greenland, in the mid-1960s, they left behind thousands of tons of waste, including hazardous radioactive and chemical materials. They expected the detritus would be safely entombed in the ice sheet for tens of thousands of years, buried ever deeper under accumulating layers of snow and ice.

camp century
Camp Century in 1959 in Greenland. Image: U.S. Army

But a new study suggests that because of warming temperatures that are driving substantial melting of the ice, that material could be exposed much, much sooner – possibly even by the end of this century – posing a threat to vulnerable local ecosystems.

These remnants of the Cold War are also an example of an unanticipated political issue that could arise because of the effects of climate change, particularly as countries seek to establish a presence in the Arctic as warming makes it increasingly accessible.

“We think it’s a nice case study for this kind of political tension stemming from climate change,” study author William Colgan, a glaciologist at York University in Toronto, said.

Climate change an issue for millennials?

This tweet caught my eye. Seems like millennials get climate change and what it is doing to the planet we will leave them.