![]() Miles you'd have to travel south from Brainerd to reach a location whose 2018 summertime temperatures match Brainerd's 2050-ish projection (Think: Ames, Iowa.)īwca Pushing the Boundary Looking for the Bold North? Try Canada. The high temperature in the Twin Cities on (Memorial Day) - the earliest recorded 100 ☏ reading here Number of days in Faribault, by the year 2100, that will reach 95 ☏ The multiple by which Minnesota's winter warming has exceeded its summer warming. ![]() Since 1970, average winter temperatures have risen by about 6 ☏.Īverage number of winter ticks found on a single moose.Īnnual precipitation, in inches, that fell on the town of Harmony in 2018 - a new state record. Rank of Minneapolis among the nation's cities with fastest warming winters (tied with Mankato). In summer, the temperature (☏) at which moose start panting.Īnnual precipitation, in inches, that fell on the town of Waseca in 2016, setting a state record. In winter, the temperature (☏) at which moose exhibit signs of thermal stress.Īverage increase in February temperatures (☏) statewide statewide since 1895. Percentage of flood damage that occurs outside designated flood zones. Number of Minnesota's "mega rain" events (rains in which at least six inches fall over an area of at least 1,000-square miles) since 1970.Īverage increase in annual precipitation, in inches, between 18.Īverage increase in northern Minnesota's winter daily low temps (☏) from 1895 to 2015. Increase in inches of annual precipitation in the Twin Cities from 1951 to 2012. Increase in average temperature (☏) in the Twin Cities from 1951 to 2012.Īverage (☏) warming in Minnesota, between 18. One summer, sitting on the dock at the cabin, we’ll realize the loons have left the lake. But we’ll see it play out in more absolute terms. All the ash trees will die.Ĭlimate change is, in the strict sense, a matter of degrees. ![]() Pine forests will become oak and maple woods. We’ll see animals come (are you ready for feral pigs?) and go (goodbye, moose). That is, we’ll see what climate change looks like when we walk in the woods-or walk down the sidewalk. It’s probably rational-even productive-to worry about that stuff.īut the example of the caribou demonstrates something else. When we hear about global warming-or block our ears and try not to hear about it-we tend to think of systemic changes. But with the entire Lake Superior herd on the brink of collapse, it’s been decades since we got a cameo. Over the years, stragglers have wandered down the North Shore from Canada during winters. Despite an astonishing capacity to survive in the bleakest environments, caribou fail pitifully at defending their young from wolves.īy the 1940s, the shy lichen-eaters had mostly disappeared from Minnesota, their existence memorialized in a few place names and otherwise mostly forgotten. The increased numbers of moose and deer became a boon to the timber wolf.Īnd that, in turn, proved to be a calamity for the woodland caribou. Those same changes to the landscape benefited moose and deer, which favor younger, more fragmented forests. Logging, road building, and wildfires eliminated the caribou’s preferred habitat: large, unbroken tracts of old-growth woodlands. Human intrusions into the caribou’s domain proved to be its undoing. In the north country of yesteryear, the king of the hoofed mammals was the woodland caribou, wild kin of the old-world reindeer. Nor, surprisingly, was it the now-ubiquitous white-tailed deer-a rarity then (!) in most forested parts of the state. At the turn of the 20th century, the most common member of the deer clan in far northeastern Minnesota was not the moose.
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