Star Tribune
Minnesota group working to fix radar gap that puts lives at risk
Sometimes it snows in April. Sometimes the sun shines while the heavens boom with thunder. And sometimes tornados crop up just to disappear within seconds.
It’s Minnesota weather. Luckily, most Minnesotans have easy access to weather apps to help monitor the skies. But for many residents, that app might be missing critical details.
That’s because a large swath of Minnesota — stretching from the Canadian border down the western side of the state, then snaking east along the Iowa border — is within an area where the National Weather Service’s radar does not reach below 6,000 feet.
That area is home to tens of thousands of residents, half the state’s tribal lands and many popular summer tourist destinations. And in two regions in that swath — most of Lake of the Woods County on the state’s northern border and a diamond-shaped area in western Minnesota — radar doesn’t reach below 10,000 feet.
“It’s not necessarily that there is no coverage at all but weather surveillance at that low level is lacking,” said Tara Goode of Climavision, a Kentucky-based company that makes radar systems to help fill the voids.
The gap forms because the National Weather Service’s radar is emitted in a straight line and the earth’s curvature creates space under the beam that grows with distance. So the farther away a city is from NWS radar towers — in Mayville, N.D.; Duluth, Chanhassen, Minn., Sioux Falls, S.D., and La Crosse, Wis. — the greater the radar gap.
“When the [radar beam] is looking over their head, it’s looking way up in the atmosphere. And down low is where a lot of the volatile severe stuff tends to pop up,” Goode said.
The National Weather Service, which set up the system of powerful NEXRAD Doppler radar systems in the 1990s, contends only 2% of all injuries caused by tornados nationwide occur during unwarned events at low altitudes. Furthermore, predicting severe weather takes experts to analyze radar data, as well as satellite data, weather models and ground spotters.
“No one argues the importance of radars and that optimal coverage is beneficial to hazardous weather detection, but humans are responsible for issuing hazardous weather warnings, not the radar,” states a 2020 report on radar gaps written by the director of the NWS.
But those humans — both spotters and everyday folks — are the ones Tina Lindquist is worried about.
“We have volunteer weather spotters that we’re putting out into weather when we’re not even sure what they’re going into,” said Lindquist, deputy director of Grant County Emergency Management.
About half of Grant County is in the diamond-shaped part of the state where radar doesn’t reach below 10,000 feet. That gap became more evident last year as derechos moved across the state.
“We had responders’ vehicles that were lifted off the road in high winds and moved into ditches and fields,” Lindquist said.
No one was hurt during those Grant County storms, but in May 2022, an experienced weather spotter was killed while checking the skies in southern Kandiyohi County.
Ryan Erickson, 63, had served as a volunteer firefighter since he was 18 and spent about five years as fire chief in Blomkest. Erickson, like many volunteer firefighters and first responders, was often called on to monitor conditions and report real-time ground-level conditions during severe weather.
“It’s not like he was a rookie who didn’t know what he was doing,” said Ace Bonnema, deputy director of Kandiyohi County Emergency Management. “He lost his life because a grain bin blew over and crushed him. That’s what got me going. We need to do something about this.”
Bonnema and Lindquist are part of an ad hoc group formed by the Association of Minnesota Emergency Managers working to find solutions to the radar gap.
Emergency management leaders don’t expect the federal government to build more large NEXRAD radars, as the system was a one-time acquisition. The NWS also hasn’t finalized future plans for improving radar coverage, and the organization could be facing budget cuts.
But companies such as Climavision offer smaller radar systems that can be placed on existing infrastructure. In October, Climavision plans to install an X-band radar system on a water tower in Wendell, a small city in Grant County, as part of a pilot project. It’ll be the first X-band system in the state, Goode said.
The company will cover the radar’s installation, maintenance and operations, and its data will be available at no cost to support public safety efforts. Climavision also will sell radar data to businesses such as insurance, agriculture and media companies.
“This is a great way public and private entities can work together,” Goode said.
The NEXRAD sites were selected to provide coverage of runways at major airports, protect resources at military bases and cover areas of the country with a high frequency of severe weather events, according to Todd Krause, meteorologist at Chanhassen’s National Weather Service office.
The network of about 140 radars in the contiguous United States provide coverage of about 75% of the land mass and nearly 95% of the population at 6,000 feet above the ground level.
The 2020 report on radar gaps analyzed 12,000 tornados from 2008-2016 and found “no statistically significant difference” in warning services inside or outside the zones under 6,000 feet.
“The bottom line is that radar coverage, even outside of the coverage by radar beam at 6,000 feet, allows forecasters to rarely, if ever, miss warnings for [the most damaging] tornados,” the report states.
Still, critical events do crop up under the radar. When a EF1 tornado struck Bemidji in the early morning hours of July 4, 2018, the county didn’t activate the tornado sirens because the tornado didn’t show up on the radar and damage was reported only after the storm passed through.
The radar gap also misses snowstorms and other weather events. Last December, several motorists became stranded in a blizzard in west-central Minnesota and had to be rescued, Bonnema said.
“A lot of them said they were from the metro area and said they looked at their radar and it looked fine out here,” he said.
“It comes down to a lack of information in the low-level atmosphere,” Lindquist said. “The meteorologists are doing a great job. But they don’t know what they don’t know.”
Mohamed Omar is the new board chair of Hennepin Healthcare System, the organization that runs HCMC, making him Minnesota’s first Somali American hospital board leader.
The health care system board permanently appointed Omar to the position Wednesday at their regular meeting. He had served as interim chair since Babette Apland stepped down in September.
Omar has been on the volunteer board for three years, working on the finance, investment, audit and compliance committees. He is the chief administrative officer at the Washburn Center for Children and previously was chief financial officer at the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund.
In a statement, Omar said he was excited to lead a hospital board in the state with the largest Somali American population in the U.S. He said he shared the health system’s dedication to providing “equitable, high-quality care.”
“My commitment is to deepen our community engagement, build more authentic connections between patients and team members, and build a confident future together,” Omar’s statement said.
CEO Jennifer DeCubellis and Nneka Sederstrom, chief health equity officer, praised Omar’s selection to lead the board. They said more inclusive leadership with a commitment to ending health disparities are key to HCMC’s success.
Hennepin County Board Chair Irene Fernando, who is also on health system board, said she was excited to work with Omar. She said county leaders are dedicated to good stewardship of the “state’s last public safety-net hospital.”
“As the first Hennepin County Board Chair of color, I know how impactful it is for our communities to see themselves represented in public leadership,” Fernando said.
DULUTH – The Superior National Forest has lifted its forestwide campfire ban, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, effective Friday.
Recent rain and humidity have improved conditions across the national forest’s 3 million acres, forest officials said in a news release.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has also lifted fire restrictions in Cook, Koochiching, Lake and northern St. Louis counties.
Fire danger is still a concern this time of year, said Karen Harrison, DNR wildfire prevention specialist.
“As leaves fall and vegetation continues to dry out, it’s important for people to be cautious with anything that can cause a spark,” she said.
The national forest imposed its broad campfire ban nearly two weeks ago, after a third wildfire, named for Bogus Lake, was discovered on forest land. No significant fire activity has been reported in recent days for any of those three fires. A fourth fire inside the forest, the 8.5-acre Pfeiffer Lake Fire, started Oct. 17. It was contained within 24 hours, the Forest Service said.
Much of northeast Minnesota is still classified in the “severe drought” stage by the U.S. Drought Monitor.
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris was asked this week if she thought Donald Trump was a fascist, and she replied ‘’Yes, I do.’’ She subsequently called him the same thing herself, saying voters don’t want ‘’a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.’’
But what exactly is a fascist? And does the meaning of the word shift when viewed through a historical or political prism — especially so close to the end of a fraught presidential race?
An authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is often associated with the far right and characterized by a dictatorial leader who uses military forces to help suppress political and civil opposition.
History’s two most famous fascists were Nazi chief Adolf Hitler in Germany and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Known as Il Duce, or ”the duke,” Mussolini headed the National Fascist Party, which was symbolized by an eagle clutching a fasces — a bundle of rods with an axe among them.
At Mussolini’s urging, in October 1922, thousands of ”Blackshirts,” or ”squadristi,” made up an armed fascist militia that marched on Rome, vowing to seize power. Hitler’s Nazis similarly relied on a militia, known as the ”Brownshirts.” Both men eventually imposed single-party rule and encouraged violence in the streets. They used soldiers, but also fomented civilian unrest that pit loyalists against political opponents and larger swaths of everyday society.
Hitler and Mussolini censored the press and issued sophisticated propaganda. They played up racist fears and manipulated not just their active supporters but everyday citizens.
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