Star Tribune
Twin Cities unlikely to have a white Christmas in 2023
It’s unlikely that the Twin Cities and southern half of Minnesota will have a white Christmas this year, as a weather pattern that brought a hot and dry summer will likely hang around through the holidays.
Aside from the Red River Valley in northwestern Minnesota, the ground in the rest of the state is largely void of snow and it’s likely to stay that way until the calendar turns to 2024, at least.
“Snow for the holidays, everybody loves that,” said Brent Hewett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Chanhassen. “But this year we likely won’t see it.”
The Twin Cities sees what’s known as a brown Christmas — meaning less than 1 inch of snow on the ground — about 30% of the time, and this will likely be one of those years, Hewett said.
From 1899 through 2022, there have been 36 brown Christmases in the metro with a trace or less of measurable snow depth on Christmas morning when official readings are taken. The last time that happened was just two years ago, but measurable snow has been absent on Dec. 25 seven times since 2000, according to the Minnesota State Climatology Office.
In contrast, the deepest snow cover on record on Dec. 25 was a hefty 20 inches in 1983, the climatology office said.
For those chanting “Let is Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow” in hopes of bringing on a dumping or at least enough of the white stuff to shovel, Hewett, a winter enthusiast, does not see that happening.
The forecast for this week calls for moderate temperatures — from the 30s on Wednesday into the 40s Thursday through the weekend. And a long-range forecast suggests temperatures across Minnesota have an 80% chance of running above average through Dec. 25 with precipitation running below normal, according to the Climate Prediction Center.
With no cold air from Canada in sight and the storm track firmly entrenched across the southern United States, it’s just going to be “40s and clouds,” Hewett said. “We are stuck in that pattern. Nature is not helping.”
About the only place nearly guaranteed to have snow for Christmas is — you guessed it — northern Minnesota. Places such as Babbitt, Big Falls, Cass Lake, Hoyt Lakes, Park Rapids, Remer, Roseau, Tower, Virginia and Walker have had snow 100% of the time on Christmas morning since official observations began, the climatology office said.
This dearth of snowfall so far in the metro — just 1.3 inches this month as of Tuesday — doesn’t mean it’s not coming.
Models hint the current weather pattern will break after the start of the new year and will become more “active,” Hewett said.
“We will still get winter,” he added.
Star Tribune
Biden calls out Musk over a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked in the US illegally
NEW YORK — President Joe Biden slammed Elon Musk for hypocrisy on immigration after a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked illegally in the United States. The South Africa-born Musk denies the allegation.
”That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here. No, I’m serious. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?” Biden said while campaigning on Saturday in Pittsburgh at a union hall.
The Washington Post reported that Musk worked illegally in the country while on a student visa. The newspaper, citing company documents, former business associates and court documents, said Musk arrived in Palo Alto, California in 1995 for a graduate program at Stanford University “but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his startup. ”
Musk wrote on X in reply to a video post of Biden’s comments: ”I was in fact allowed to work in the US.” Musk added, ”The Biden puppet is lying.”
Investors in Musk’s company, Zip2, were concerned about the possibility of their founder being deported, according to the report, and gave him a deadline for obtaining a work visa. The newspaper also cited a 2005 email from Musk to his Tesla co-founders acknowledging that he did not have authorization to be in the U.S. when he started Zip2.
According to the account, that email was submitted as evidence in a now-closed California defamation lawsuit and said that Musk had apllied to Stanford so he could stay in the country legally.
Musk is today the world’s richest man. He has committed more than $70 million to help Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and other GOP candidates win on Nov. 5, and is one of the party’s biggest donors this campaign season. He has been headlining events in the White House race’s final stretch, often echoing Trump’s dark rhetoric against immigration.
Trump has pledged to give Musk a role in his administration if he wins next month.
The only debate between DFL U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and GOP challenger Royce White started Sunday on the street outside WCCO Radio.
As White approached the building, he loudly called some two dozen flag-waving and cheering Klobuchar supporters a “whole lot of commies.” The 33-year-old provocateur and podcaster also told them to thank Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney — who endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris — because there was “no chance in hell” that Harris would defeat Republican former President Donald Trump on Nov. 5.
Klobuchar, 64, had arrived moments earlier, smiling and wishing “good morning” to her supporters. Once inside, the two took questions for an hour from moderator Blois Olson. Their tone was generally polite with White often interrupting a Klobuchar response with, “rebuttal,” indicated he wanted to respond.
The senator repeatedly raised White’s claims on X, formerly Twitter, that “The bad guys won in World War II” and that there were “no good guys in that war.” She called that stance offensive to veterans.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar arrives at WCCO Radio for a debate with Royce White in Minneapolis on Sunday, Oct. 27. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii)
Klobuchar, who is seeking a fourth six-year term, portrayed herself as a pragmatist. She opened by saying that we live in “incredibly divisive times politically” but that she has listened and worked with Republicans to bring down shipping costs, drug prices for seniors and to help veterans and push for more housing and child care.
“Courage in this next few years is not going to be standing by yourself yelling at people,” she said, her opening allusion to White’s rhetoric, which she said is often vulgar.
White, a former NBA player, is a political novice, but a close ally of Steve Bannon, the jailed former chief strategist for Trump and right wing media executive. Last summer, White won the state GOP endorsement to run against Klobuchar.
“Our country’s coming undone at the seams. I think we can change that,” White said in his opening statement. He said he threatens the status quo, decried the “permanent political class” and referred to the two major parties as the “uniparty.”
Other buildings destroyed at Khojir and Parchin likely included buildings where Iran used industrial mixers to create the solid fuel needed for its extensive ballistic missile arsenal, Eveleth said.
In a statement issued immediately after the attack Saturday, the Israeli military said it targeted ”missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state of Israel over the last year.”
Destroying such sites could greatly disrupt Iran’s ability to manufacture new ballistic missiles to replenish its arsenal after the two attacks on Israel. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the country’s ballistic missile program, has been silent since Saturday’s attack.
Iran’s overall ballistic missile arsenal, which includes shorter-range missiles unable to reach Israel, was estimated to be ”over 3,000” by Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then-commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2022. In the time since, Iran has fired hundreds of the missiles in a series of attacks.
There have been no videos or photos posted to social media of missile parts or damage in civilian neighborhoods following the recent attack — suggesting that the Israeli strikes were far more accurate that Iran’s ballistic missile barrages targeting Israel in April and October. Israel relied on aircraft-fired missiles during its attack.
However, one factory appeared to have been hit in Shamsabad Industrial City, just south of Tehran near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main gateway to the outside world. Online videos of the damaged building corresponded to an address for a firm known as TIECO, which advertises itself as building advanced machinery used in Iran’s oil and gas industry.
