But we start tonight with the deepening drought around the state after a record dry September, there's been no measurable October rainfall in the Twin Cities and really much around the state of Minnesota.

The U.S. Drought Monitor map now shows nearly a third of the state in severe drought, and there are burning restrictions all around the state of Minnesota.

Mark Seeley is the author of Minnesota Weather Almanac and a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

Well, as we go on the air, my friend, there's a fire that's growing in the Chengwatana forest in Pine County.

And of course, we had the red flag warning earlier this week, almost all except for two counties were in that red flag warning, which I don't think I've seen really in recent memory.

I think that's quite remarkable to all of us in the weather community.

Cathy, you know, since the last decade or two when we've been using the red flag warnings and the criteria I would remind viewers of, yeah, low relative humidity somewhere below 30%, winds of 20 to 30 miles an hour with gusts over 30 miles an hour.

And then, of course, dangerous landscape fire conditions and, I've never seen that.

I've never, I don't dispute that probably sometime in our history before the weather service used red flag warnings we've probably had the types of weather conditions that have would, would have warranted 85 of our 87, if not all 87 counties.

But that was very unusual.

It captured the attention of the weather community as well.

And I did notice that the relative humidity values went down for many communities in Minnesota, went down between 14 and 19%, which is remarkably low.

Wow.

Now, is there a weather pattern causing this, or is this a stationary front or something that's just kind of hovering over the area?

I mean, there was, you know, of course we've been talking about climate change and its effects on our weather, but I wonder about what about that.

Yeah.

Well, we do have, displacement of the jet stream further north than normal for this time of year.

So we and we all know weather goes from west to east across our North American continent.

So things have been steered either north or south of us pretty consistently since the end of August, Eric.

And so really, in fact, Cathy and I have talked about this in recent weeks.

We can characterize this as a flash drought evolution, because really, it's been over the last 5 or 6 weeks that we've just taken a dive.

And the precipitation deficits are record setting or close to record setting since the end of August for most places in the state of Minnesota.

Can you say then that is climate change perhaps is a flash drought a signal of climate change?

Because we've now had several of these flash droughts?

Well, many climatologists would argue it is, and it's tied to another feature of our climate that is associated with climate change, which is amplified variability.

So when we're wet, we're really, really wet, like we were talking earlier in the year when you had Paul Douglas and I on in July.

We were talking about we were on a record setting wet pace almost statewide, almost everywhere in the state.

And now we've taken a dive in the other direction, but to an extreme.

And so it's the magnitude of this great increase in variability that plays into the flash drought and is, in fact, an associated symptom with climate change.

Can the soil store some precipitation?

Oh, absolutely.

In fact, the soil, we all know that our tremendous agriculture in our state, Eric, depends on the soil moisture recharge, especially in the fall season Can that happen with all this drought?

We can still we can still get there if the soils remain unfrozen, which that's the silver lining.

All of the outlooks suggest our rest of our autumn is going to be mild and keep the soils from freezing early.

So if we can transition to a wetter pattern, we can yet put a lot more storage in the, in the soil.

I wonder here, you know, when it comes to, We’re going to put your mic on because we're having just we might as well be honest with listeners and viewers, we're having a mic problem here today.

So there you go.

I'm curious then, because that's the hope to get moisture.

But doesn't drought beget drought?

Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to break a drought once you're in it.

It's hard.

The transition isn't easy to get back into a wet, a wetter pattern.

The surrounding landscape is so dry that as air masses pass over it on approach to Minnesota, for example, from whatever trajectory they're coming, they're over a drier landscape and they're drying out.

So they're not the you lose the continuity of that moisture.

That's absolutely true.

Do we know about a winter outlook?

It's kind of iffy right now, Eric.

It did come out this week.

The new revised outlook.

And, I'm seeing the pattis to be milder than normal for the early part of winter, but not necessarily wetter.

it's kind of roll of the dice.

And then maybe the second half of winter, we might see some colder than normal temperatures set in, and we might see some decent snowfalls.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Okay, let's hope for that then.

As much.

I can't believe I said that, but let's hope for that.

Be good.

Fingers crossed.

There you go.

Have a great weekend.

Okay, thanks.

Thanks, Mark Seely.

Appreciate it.