Star Tribune
Streak-busting snowfall, “cold’ on tap for metro, southern Minnesota Wednesday and Thursday
The longest January Thaw recorded in Twin Cities weather history is about to come to an end, first with what’s expected to be the largest snowfall of the season, followed by the coldest day in more than three weeks.
A fast-moving front is forecast to bring 2 to 5 inches of snow across much of southern Minnesota and the Twin Cities, where a winter weather advisory is in effect from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday morning. Along with the metro, cities included in the advisory include Willmar, Redwood Falls, Mankato, Faribault and Rochester, the National Weather Service said.
Some places under the advisory could see 6 inches or more as the storm passes through, said Melissa Dye, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen.
“It’s tricky to nail that down,” she said. “We won’t know where until right before it happens.”
What is a sure bet is that thousands of Minnesotans will be pushing shovels or cranking up snow blowers for perhaps the first time this season to clear away wet-heavy snow.
“If you are driving, keep it slow,” Dye said. If shoveling, “take it easy.”
The Twin Cities has not seen measurable snow in 25 days, and the Valentine’s night storm could bring the largest snowfall of the season, which ironically happened over Halloween. The metro area picked up 2.7 inches on Oct. 30 and 31, the Weather Service said.
Since then, the Twin Cities has picked up a paltry 7.3 inches of snow for the season, with the last measurable snow recorded on Jan. 19. Three days after that, the mercury rose above the freezing mark, and high temperatures in the metro have reached 32 degrees or higher every day since.
That streak of 24 days has made for the longest January Thaw in the metro in the more than 180 years of weather record keeping. A January Thaw is defined as two consecutive days of above freezing temperatures during January, though they can start in December and run into February provided two of the days are in the first month of the year, the State Climatology Office said.
The old mark of 21 straight days was set from Dec. 19, 2006 to Jan. 8, 2007. St. Cloud had its longest January Thaw on record this year, spanning 17 days from Jan. 24 to Feb. 9, the Climatology Office said.
This year’s run of above 32-degree days will end on Thursday and Friday when temperatures are expected to drop back to what they should be for the second week of February. Thursday’s high will be around 30 degrees, and Friday — gasp — a bone-chilling 23 degrees.
The two-day event should be a brief interlude from the warm and snowless winter, which has already produced six record high temperatures in the Twin Cities, including 57 degrees on Feb. 6. Thermometers have recorded 12 days of high temperatures of 50 degrees or warmer in December, January and February, the three months defined as meteorological winter.
Records have tumbled in other cities, too. International Falls, known as the “Nation’s Ice Box,” had never seen 50 degrees in January. This year it happened twice. Rochester, St. Cloud and the metro have each set six record high temperatures over the past three months, and February still has two more weeks to go.
“We are excited for a snowstorm,” Dye said. “It’s our real first snow of the season.”
But don’t expect the snow or the colder air to hang around, too long, Dye said.
“This is not a signal for those who like colder weather,” she said.
Temperatures are expected to moderate back into the 30s by Sunday, and the long-range forecast from the Climate Prediction Center calls for warmer than average temperatures to hang around for the next two months.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
