Favorable Outlook for Thanksgiving Travelers

Extended Forecast

SUNDAY: Early mix. Clouds linger. Winds. NW 10-15. High: 38.

SUNDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Winds: WNW 5-10. Low: 28.

MONDAY: Few PM rain or snow showers. Winds: S 3-8. High: 39.

TUESDAY: Mix of clouds and sunshine. Winds: NW 8-13. Wake-up: 32. High: 43.

WEDNESDAY: Cloudy, light mix possible later. Winds: NE 10-20. Wake-up: 33. High: 41.

THURSDAY: Mostly cloudy, few flakes. Winds: NW 10-20. Wake-up: 28. High: 37.

FRIDAY: Peeks of sun. A bit milder. Winds: SW 10-20. Wake-up: 24. High: 41.

SATURDAY: Gusty and raw with flurries. Winds: NW 10-20. Wake-up: 28 High: 36.
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This Day in Weather History
November 17th

1996: Six inches of snow falls in Douglas, Pope, and Stevens Counties.

1835: A strange night is observed at Ft. Snelling. Northern lights are seen over prairie fires.
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Average High/Low for Minneapolis
November 17th

Average High: 40F (Record: 71F set in 1953)
Average Low: 26F (Record: -5F set in 1880)

Record Rainfall: 1.21" set in 2015
Record Snowfall: 9.0" set in 1886
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Sunrise/Sunset Times for Minneapolis
November 17th

Sunrise: 7:13am
Sunset: 4:43pm

Hours of Daylight: ~9 hours & 29 minutes

Daylight LOST since yesterday: ~ 2 minutes & 17 seconds
Daylight LOST since summer solstice (June 21st): ~ 6 hours & 8 minutes
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Moon Phase for November 17th at Midnight
1.6 Days Before Last Quarter Moon

What's in the Night Sky?

"The famous Leonid meteor shower is expected to be at its best in the predawn hours on Sunday, November 17, and Monday, November 18, 2018. We give the nod to Monday, November 18. But this year, in 2019, the waning gibbous moon will somewhat obstruct on this year’s production. In a dark sky, free of moonlight, you can typically see up to 10 to 15 meteors per hour at the shower’s peak. Will you see what’s shown on the image at the top of this post? Thousands of meteors per hour? No. That image is from 1998, when the Leonids’ parent comet – Comet Temple-Tuttle – was nearby. The Leonids are famous for producing meteor storms when the comet is in our neighborhood, but no meteor storm is expected this year, only a modest 10 to 15 Leonid meteors per hour."

See more from Earth Sky HERE:

 

2019 Preliminary Tornado Count

 

Here's the 2019 preliminary tornado count across the nation, which shows 1,587 tornadoes since the beginning of the year. May was a very active month and produced several hundred tornadoes across the Central US and across parts of the Ohio Valley.

 

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2019 Preliminary Tornado Count

Here's a look at how many tornadoes there have been across the country so far this year. The preliminary count through November 14th suggests that there have been a total of 1,587 which is above the 2005-2015 short term average of 1322. Interestingly, this has been the busiest tornado season since 2011, when nearly 1,849 tornadoes were reported.

 

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Sunday Weather Outlook

 

Temperatures in the eastern half of the country will still be quite a bit colder than average with readings running nearly -5F to -15F below average, while folks in the western half of the country will be nearly +10F to +20F above average! It appears that temps will warm even more over the next couple of days in the Southwest, which could be enough to set high temperature records across parts of California.

 

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National Weather Outlook

 

Here's the weather outlook through the rest of the weekend and into early next week. A fast moving clipper system will spread areas of light rain and snow across parts of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Region. Meanwhile, a coastal low will continue to drift north along the East Coast with areas of heavy rain and gusy winds. 

 

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Heavy Ranifall Potential

 

The 7-day precipitation forecast from NOAA's WPC, shows heavy rain along parts of the East Coast, as a coastal low drifts north through early next week. Meanwhile, moisture from Tropical Storm Raymond will move into the Desert Southwest with heavy rain and localized flooding. Interestingly, not much moisture will make it into Minnesota through next weekend.

 

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Tropical Storm Raymond

 

Tropical Storm Raymond has developed in the Eastern Pacific and is expected to remain at tropical storm strength as it lifts north toward Mexico over the next couple/few days.

 

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Tracking Raymond

 

The latest forecast from NOAA's National Hurricane Center suggests that Raymond will drift north over the next few days and could perhaps impact the southern part of Baja California by late weekend or early next week as a tropical depression. Gusty winds and locally heavy rain will likely impact parts of northwestern Mexico and will also bring areas of heavier rain to the Desert Southwest.

 

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"Venice Flooding Reveals A Real Hoax About Climate Change - Framing It As “Either/Or”

 

"The flooding in Venice this past week was extraordinary. According to my Forbes colleague Eric Mack, “On Tuesday, rains helped bring the seasonal high tides known as acqua alta to near record levels, just seven centimeters short of what was seen during the historic floods of 1966.” The mayor blamed climate change as did many other people around the world. That is when the hyperventilation started. As I listened to the mayor’s comments, two things came to mind. First, mayor Luigi Brugnaro  knows more about his city and its flooding tendencies than I sitting thousands of miles away. Second, I wasn’t listening with a bias so understood the point he was making. A combination of high tides, rainfall, and even land mass subsidence (sinking) amplifies such events. However, sea level rise associated with climate change is in the mix too. Which brings me to the point of this article. I have noticed that some people make the mistake of framing climate change as an “either/or” proposition. It is not. It’s “and.” Let me explain."

 

See more from Forbes HERE:

 

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"Milky Way’s central black hole flings star out of galaxy"

 

"Five million years ago, a binary star system wandered too close to the supermassive black hole lurking at the core of the Milky Way. The hole’s ferocious gravity likely captured one of the stars, but the other was flung away with a velocity of more than 6 million kilometres per hour (3.7 million mph). That’s fast enough to escape the Milky Way, but even so, it will still take the outward-bound star, known as S5-HVS1, some 100 million years to pass through the galaxy’s outskirts and into the great void of intergalactic space. “We traced this star’s journey back to the centre of our galaxy, which is pretty exciting,” said Gary Da Costa, an astronomer at the Australian National University. “This star is travelling at record-breaking speed, 10 times faster than most stars in the Milky Way, including our Sun. “In astronomical terms, the star will be leaving our galaxy fairly soon and it will likely travel through the emptiness of intergalactic space for eternity. It’s great to be able to confirm a 30-year-old prediction that stars can be flung out of a galaxy by the supermassive black hole at its centre.” Using the 3.9-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope at Sliding Spring Observatory, an international team spotted the star by accident while searching for remnants of small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way."

 

See more from Astronomy Now HERE:

 

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"Worsening bushfires cause Australia to declare state of emergency"

 

"A state of emergency has been declared in Australia over escalating wildfires. David Elliott, the New South Wales minister for police and emergency services said the country faced what “could be the most dangerous bushfire week this nation has ever seen”. So far, at least three people have died, 100 people have been injured and 150 homes and buildings have been destroyed by the blazes devastating swathes of the eastern coast. The situation looks set to worsen as hot and dry winds pick up in strength. These latest fires come after Australia’s hottest summer on record, and an unusually hot and dry winter. “In south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales, the last three years have been drier and warmer than usual,” says Richard Thornton at the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre. “When preceding conditions have been like this, and the bush and grass is so dry, it doesn’t take much for a fire to get going once the wind is up. ”People living in and around Sydney, one of the most populous parts of the country, have been warned of “catastrophic” fire conditions for the first time since the classification was introduced in 2009. More than 100,000 homes in the area are within 100 metres of the bush and are at risk, according to consultancy firm Risk Frontiers."

 

See more from New Scientist HERE:

 

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"Why are weather apps still so unreliable?"

 

"It's early in the morning, you've just been shaken awake by your alarm, and it's time to get ready for the day. Without thinking much about it, you probably grab your phone and navigate to your weather app of choice so you can figure out what you'll be facing when you step out of the door. The problem is that those predictions are too often wrong, and you get stuck in a downpour without an umbrella or shivering in a short-sleeved shirt while gusts of wind make it feel like it's below freezing out. Complicating matters even more is the fact that if you check multiple weather apps, you might get completely different forecasts. Technology has come a long way in a short time, so why does it still feel like our weather predictions suck?"

 

See more from Mic HERE:

 

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"Hell Yes, Weird Ice Disk Season Is Upon Us"

 

"With winter comes changes, many of which are bad. The days get darker sooner. Christmas carols play everywhere. Sure, there are good things about winter, but at least for me, it’s particularly hard to find joy in the early days of the season, when the memory of summer and fall is still fresh. If you’re like me, then may I offer you a life raft in this sea of turbulent early winter emotions? Or more aptly, a life ice disk. Video emerged on Thursday of the first known swirly ice disk of the season. While smaller than the monstrous platter of ice that clogged Maine’s Presumpscot River last year, the new floating circle of ice spotted in Haynesville, Maine is still enough to stir my cold, dead heart. Local television station WABI shared footage a viewer captured of the ice disk. Though the station didn’t identify the exact location, it’s likely on the Mattawamkeag River that cuts through the tiny hamlet in the northeast part of the state near the U.S.-Canada border. The video shows the disk lazily rotating in the river current. Ice disks are usually a dead-of-winter phenomenon, but there’s no official ice disk season (sorry, I totally lied to you in the headline and I hope you can forgive me). They can form anytime the weather gets cold. And this week’s record cold snap in the eastern U.S. certainly helped with that part of the ice disk recipe."

 

See more from Gizmodo HERE:

 

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"Snow in Texas and ice in Alabama? Unusual cold weather could become more common"

 

"A wavier jet stream brings cold Arctic air down south. That may be a counterintuitive result of climate change, some scientists say. This week, temperatures are expected to hit historic lows across much of North America. Already, it has snowed in Texas and frozen in Tennessee, and hundreds of towns and cities are preparing for icy cold weather. This week’s cold snap isn’t exactly unseasonal—after all, it’s autumn, heading toward winter, and it’s the time of year when much of North America sinks into chilly weather. Some scientists think, though, that the frequency and intensity of these kinds of cold interludes may be changing as the planet warms, as counterintuitive as that might sound. “This Arctic outbreak is connected to the behavior of the jet stream and the polar vortex,” says Judah Cohen, an atmospheric scientist at MIT. And those, in turn, are affected by a changing climate—mostly by intense warming in the high Arctic. The topic is controversial in the atmospheric science community, but some think they see a connection between a warmer planet and cold blasts of weather like the one North America is experiencing right now."

 

See more from NatGeo HERE:

 

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"Wind and solar can save the planet — can they save our water supply, too?"

 

"Solar panels and wind turbines are lifelines to any non-apocalyptic version of the future. They’ll help us keep the lights on, the air breathable, and the planet inhabitable. But while the climate and health benefits of wind and solar are well known, they have another, underappreciated feature that could come in handy in our inevitably warmer, drier future: They don’t rely on water. A new study published in Nature Communications explores how this often overlooked benefit could help alleviate water scarcity and improve food security during a drought. The paper looks at California, where surface water — the kind found in rivers and lakes — is shared between hydropower facilities that produce electricity and farmers downstream who use it for irrigation. During a drought, there’s less surface water available, forcing farmers to turn to the groundwater found in aquifers to water their crops. After a recent five-year dry spell where groundwater was being pumped out faster than it could be replenished, California’s aquifers are now depleted."

 

See more from Grist HERE:

 

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