Last
week NASA held a press conference where their solar physicists announced that
the solar wind was currently the weakest since such measurements started in the
early 1960s. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles that are ejected
from the Sun’s upper atmosphere.  It
consists mainly of electrons and protons.  

The solar wind is one of the many different
aspects of the sun earth relationship that falls under the title of space
weather.  How could this weaker solar
wind influence us on Earth?  No one knows
for sure, but it is likely that the weaker solar wind at a minimum will allow
more cosmic radiation to strike the planet. 
There has been research that has shown that cosmic radiation helps with
cloud formation.  More clouds on Earth could
mean slightly cooler global temperatures. 

Our understanding of the sun is far from perfect, so exactly what may
happen in the future is now nothing more than an educated guess. 

Eight
out of the first nine days of this month were below average, many well below
average, but now most of the past ten days have been well above seasonal
averages, especially the night time lows. 
The last ten days have been so warm that it may surprise you to learn
that our average temperature for the month is currently running above
average. 

Taking a look at the rest of
the month, it currently seems quite likely that we will finish the month above
average, a rare occurrence so far in 2008. 
Although heavy rain once again struck the area earlier this week, it for
the most part missed the immediate Fargo Moorhead area, but we did get enough
that this September is currently ranked as the fifth wettest on record with
still a few more days to go. 

So far much
of eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota have received
between four and six inches of rain this month, well above the two inch
average.

It was a year ago today that many of you were
awakened very early in the morning by a thunderstorm the dropped hailstones as
large as baseballs.  The thunderstorm arrived around 2:00 AM and moved
quickly to the northeast. 

Hail that
large is rare in any one location. 
Although almost every year,  some
part of our region experiences such an event. 

August 2008 may have been the first full month
since 1913 that no sunspots were observed on the surface of the sun. 
There is still some disagreement if a tiny speck observed on August 21 should
count as a true sunspot or not. 

Historically, shorter solar
cycles tend to induce a slight warming on earth, whereas longer cycles tend to
induce a slight cooling.  So if history is any guide, the recent, ten-year
trend of slightly cooler global weather may continue.   

You
may have noticed that our sunsets recently have been a bit brighter, especially
with the orange colors the past couple of weeks.  We certainly have not been alone, vibrant
sunset reports have been very common throughout the northern hemisphere.  

The cause of these spectacular sunsets is
the ash from a recent volcanic eruption in Alaska. 
Back on August 7, the Kasatochi Volcano, which is part of the Aleutian Island chain, sent an ash plume to
nearly 40,000 feet.  Upper-level wind
quickly scattered this ash throughout the northern hemisphere.  The fine ash particles are excellent
scatterers of the longer wavelengths of visible light, the oranges and reds,
which is why those colors have been so vibrant recently. 

Although large volcanic eruptions can cause
cooler weather, an example being the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the early
1990s, this eruption so far at least seems to small to bring anything but a good
sky show in the coming weeks.

What will probably be remembered the most about the summer of 2008 will not necessarily be the average temperature, which finished just slightly below the long term average, or not even the rainfall, which although finished well above average, came in just a couple of heavier rain events. 

On September 1 we hit 92 which will very likely go down as the warmest temperature of the year.  Although we have had other years with fewer 90 degree days as recently as 2004, you would have to go back to 1915, the year without a 90 degree day to find a year with a cooler maximum high temperature.  

The climatological summer (June, July, August)
of 2008 finished slightly below average for temperatures with an average
temperature of 67.8 degrees. Our summer average is 68.5 degrees.  This was
our first summer with below average temperatures since 2004. 

Surrounding those events, much of
the summer was extremely sunny and quite dry which once again should remind us
that we live in a highly variable climate.

Frequently in the winter-time some location in
North Dakota or especially Minnesota will end up
having the coldest temperature in the lower 48 states. 

But in the summer-time,
it is usually some location in the western mountain ranges that ends up being
the cold spot as the high elevations in combination with cold air draining into
the valleys at night will cause cities like Stanley, Idaho, Wisdom, Montana, or
Truckee, California to be listed as the nations cold spot that day. 

But not
always, the cities of Tower and Embarrass Minnesota also sit in small valleys which even
in the summer can bring temperatures down close to the freezing point.  In a
fact that may surprise you, the state of Minnesota has only two days in the record
books where the record low is above freezing. 

Those two days are August 8 and
July 21, so in other words, no day of the year is really safe from frost in
northern Minnesota.