The Minnesota "drought flood"

Guest post by Scott Gates

Much as with the UK – where their “drought” is demonstrated by severe flooding … in Minnesota it is much the same.

The government forecasters (NOAA)  claims we’re in a long term moderate to severe drought ……… LINK HERE  – pic Here:

…. the REALITY is far different …

LINK HERE to last 30 days rainfall – pic here:

LINK HERE to Normal 30 day rainfall – pic here:

Most of the “Moderate to Severe Long Term drought area has seen 200% to 600% of “normal” rainfall over last 30 days.

LINK HERE – pic here:

An interesting – to me – observation is the precip pattern from Southern to Northern MN and the Eastern Dakotas almost exctly matches the normal precip pattern – just in much higher numbers of total precip.  CAGW proponents will try to tell us this is because of all the extra water vapor due to warmer temps – which would of course be pretty ridiculous because then we wouldn’t have had drought the last appx 1 year with extreme precip and snow a year earlier.

What it shows – to me as a layman – again, is that it is weather patterns, both longer term but also the minutia of each days weather – where the fronts are, what the winds are doing, how the jet stream is flowing, where the moisture is coming, what the temp gradients are etc etc that are what is determining the weather – not some ridiculous theory based on computer models with garbage inputs.

Heck – even the SHORT TERM weather models – looking 7 days out or less – cannot usually agree. My anecdotal experience form occasional looks is that the European ECMWF model is usually more accurate in my area than the US models.

And while that precip has been steady throughout the spring so far – the last 24 hours shows it is a change in weather patterns not “climate” underlying all – weather patterns change and with them so too does the “weather” …. if it was “climate” change we would see increasingly frequent and sustained weather change with a trend in one direction … we have not … a year ago (2010-2011) the winter in the area saw record snowfall – then “moderate to severe drought” thru the summer, fall and 2011-2012 winter … yet now we’ve seen the weather pattern change again and are seeing huge rain events such as this:

Storm total (appx last 24 hours) – screen save from my GRLevel3 – over 10″ in some areas :

Monsoon rains and yet we are in moderate to severe drought. But it must just be a few recent extreme events like last 24 hours that caused this – right?

Nope:

Past week – majority of area 300-600% above normal over most of southern MN – 3-5″ above normal

Past 14 days – majority 300-500% of normal – 2-5″ above normal

Past 30 days – majority 200-400% of normal – 3-5+” above normal

Past 60 days – majority 150-300% of normal – 2-6″ above normal

Past 90 days – majority 150-300% of normal – 4-6″ above normal

Past 180 days – majority 125-200% of normal – 2-6″ above normal