Fresh Podcast: MPCA Road Salt Education

Good afternoon! We skipped a week because of Thanksgiving, but the weekly podcast is back talking about MPCA’s Road Salt Education. There is a class coming up Dec 9 that is VERY helpful in understanding the effects salt has in our environment. Check it out!

Don’t forget you can subscribe in iTunes (recommended!) or YouTube, or subscribe to our Blog to be alerted when a new podcast appears. (Here is a little video on RSS Feeds.) Lastly, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter for all the really good, juicy updates!

Have a great week!

Brad

EPISODE NOTES

MPCA’s Road Salt Website

2009 Road Salt Symposium Brochure

List of Road Salt Training Certificate Holders (Please consider those who are certified when choosing a snow and ice management provider.)

The Weather is A-Changin’

Good morning –

I woke up today with multiple texts and facebook posts from family/friends in Dallas that it is snowing

Dallas, TX this morning. http://www.flickr.com/photos/xostefaknee/4152431905/

there this morning! Crack out the winter coats because our MN weather is changing. We are heading into a cold period – but more about that in a bit.

The weather has been anything but normal lately. Here are my top goofy weather items from the past few weeks:

1) No measurable snow fell in the entire month of November in the Twin Cities. We were out one time to check for icy conditions and applied a little deicing salt but that was it.

2) 2nd warmest November on record with 42.9 degrees. (#1 is 2001 @ 46.4) Even more amazing, MPR’s Updraft Blog says is it is only the 3rd November in the past 118 years with an average above 40 degrees.

3) Minnesota Lakes are experiencing a late freeze-up this year. Clear into Canada, the lakes have yet to ice over as of yesterday. Here is some satellite imagery from yesterday (I learned of this satellite courtesy of Paul Douglas at

Updated Winter Outlook

Good Monday morning to all! I hope you had a great weekend – or at least a great Sunday in Minnesota.

We drove to Iowa over the weekend to help my family with harvest but the wettest, coldest (by 4 degrees!) early October in recorded history didn’t allow for any combining to happen.

A couple of months ago I wrote about a couple of winter weather predictions. The National Weather Service has updated its winter outlook with a few tasty tidbits. They are still predicting a warmer winter. El Nino averages 3 degrees warmer than other years. However the precipitation is tough to predict from an El Nino with swings from 17″ in 1984-85 to 84″ in 1991-92. They have solidified their equal chances for above or below average precipitation this winter.

Our fall cleanups are also running far behind schedule this year due to the impressively wet fall. The leaves are finally falling, but yesterday and today have been the first days we have gotten out to work on cleanups and it looks like the rest of the week will be a bust as well.

Have a great week!

Brad