We're taking a little short break in the middle of the right now from politics, but we're gonna go back to it.

Don't worry about it.

We're instead turning to one of my favorite to Of course.

The weather.

You didn't think we would end tonight's show without mentioning the words Hal and snow in the same sentence?

Did you?

Thursday's precipitation amounts didn't even come close to the in 1991 Halloween blizzard totals, but that doesn't mean we won't compare some of the num with our next guest.

Kenny Blumenfeld is a senior cli for the DNR.

It's good to see you again.

- Great to see you.

Thank you.

You know, the only time we cance was for the Halloween snowstorm That's the only time?

The only time.

A lot of things were canceled.

- Right?

Where were you in ‘91, my friend Oh, I was a senior in high schoo and we had when I was on the foo team, and we were going into the and we played a game of kind of tackle football while it was snowing up on one of the fields.

It was it was actually kind of f And then I was already really in in the weather.

I mean, I was I was already hook So we, - You werent doing snowfall tot Yes, I was yeah.

- Measuring?

The Legendary Bruce Watson had trained me.

And so I was a I was pretty devoted observer.

And I took measurements throughout that storm.

I want to ask about something th you quoted.

You said the weather extreme one weather extreme offsets the next extreme.

Sure.

Explain.

- Okay.

All right, so we have been in a very dry phase right?

And, you know, we had almost no precipitation in September and most of October until really the last week or so And people were bummed out and c And, you know, some people were pretty happy.

There was a lot of recreation happening, but, people were worr We, we've just been through a different extreme.

We had previously in the early s been way too wet and had a lot of flooding.

Well, if you think about it, with all the excess precipitatio aside from the flooding and asid from the hardships and all of th that we don't like about it, you also have, the fact that the soils got nice and saturated the root systems were filled wit We had an abundance of water.

So when we hit the dry spell, it took time to draw down the water that was already before we went into drought.

So if we hadn't been so wet, we would have gone into drought and it would have been more wide We probably would have had more And so, you know, in that way, - It balances out a little bit.

And also the wet period would have been more extreme too if it hadn't been dry prior to t So I know it's exhausting for pe to think of all the extremes.

And, you know, they talk about weather whiplash but in this case, and it's not guaranteed to happe But in this case, we actually get some protection from those extremes because you have one extreme kind of protecting you from the if it's in the opposite directio Got it.

Okay.

Thank you for that So, you know, the old saying is drought begets Right?

And so but it sounds like we're into a little bit of a wet patte coming up here, which is a good, good situation.

Right?

Its good news.

- We could use the water.

And, this is actually a pretty g to get it, because as the water falls on th you don't have all the plants competing for using up that wate So it actually goes into the soi Our, our friend, perennial favor Mark Seeley, talks about how wel the soil can actually utilize that water in the fall because the plants are either dormant or dead.

So it's, it's actually a good time to to and according to the weather ser and the real forecasters, it looks like a wet period is up Is that the month of November, t Is that what it's looking like in terms of long range forecast?

- At least the next week or so it looks pretty wet and the 8 to forecast went wet again, too.

So maybe the first half or so of at least.

Long range winter forecast?

The official forecast right now reflects La Nina, cooling of the Pacific Ocean near the equator.

Those tend to, and when I say tend to I mean si out of ten times you get a real The other four though, it could be anything.

One of our warmest winters on record was a La Nina.

So you don't want to place your but it's more likely than not when you're in a La Nina, that you're going to have colder conditions and more snow than, for example, last winter.

That would be a good thing.

But we still are looking at clim change, which must skew that som Yeah, we've seen some pretty big in the behavior of both El Nino and La Nina as the climate, global climate h You know, the oceans are warming And so the baseline that we use to assess El Nino and La Nina, those are actually changing.

And so there's just more heat av So both La Nina and El Nino winters are warmer than they use Always fun to have you.

Thanks for coming over.

- You got the best job.

Thanks.

- Great talking to you.

Thanks a lot.

- Thanks.