Climate>Duluth: Jamie Harvey
Host Tone Lanzillo interviews Bag it Duluth Coordinator Jamie Harvie at the PACT-TV Studio in Duluth.
Host Tone Lanzillo interviews Bag it Duluth Coordinator Jamie Harvie at the PACT-TV Studio in Duluth.
The international news agency Reuters is the latest to report on Duluth as a potential climate-change refuge. Back in April, it was the New York Times.
The National Weather Service has issued a coastal flood advisory until 10 p.m. tonight. Duluth city staff issued a news release reminding the public not to drive through standing water, and keep a safe distance from the shoreline.
Recorded Sept. 24 at Gichi-ode’ Akiing by Duluth Public Access Community Television.
“As the West burns, the South swelters and the East floods, some Americans are starting to reconsider where they choose to live,” writes New York Times climate reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis in an article suggesting people might someday migrate to Duluth to escape global warming.
Although Duluth is known for — and by some feared — for its winters, they tend to run together in our memories. Everyone who experienced it recalls the Mega Storm of 1991 and there was a long cold snap a few years ago, but by and large the various storms and other winter climate events are forgotten or the memories get mashed together.
So, in an effort to sort them out I tossed together a brief and somewhat vague list of some winter moments that have been marked on Perfect Duluth Day in the past (with links) or have been loosely referenced on the web as having been more wintery than other winters. (As the comments have come in I’ve added a few more links from Zenith City Online and notes regarding conditions of some years.)
Standing water in the Canal Park business district. Debris and open manholes beneath the water. Waves pushing debris and rocks onto the Lakewalk.
Shilo is lethargic in this Duluth heat. Curiosity that once jetted her off the ground at the potential of capturing what made the random noise in the brush has quelled. She has become a passive witness. Her eyes dart in interest, maybe a quick turn of the head, but nothing is important enough to coax her legs into a sprint. Not on August days when temperatures are 80 to 90 degrees and she can only expire heat while sweating through paw pads or panting.
I brush her almost daily. Removing at least a little of her hair layer may help some trapped heat escape. She has taken to lying on the cement slab in the garage, two large doors remain open letting what exists of the midday breeze wave in, a welcomed visitor.
The other loyal companion, Bear, aka Mr. Bearington, a newfoundland mixed with lab, is still on constant guard. Heat does not deter him from his mission. He remains focused on what happens on the other side of the fence. He must protect us from intruders that might sneak through the boundary. Most of the time it’s another dog, sometimes it’s a skater, a horse, a biker, or the most ferocious intruder this summer, a snapping turtle so small it could fit in the palm of my hand. Still, a snapper is a snapper. Once I realized we were being invaded by such a fearsome beast, I scooped it into a bucket and escorted it to the pond on the back 15.
Minnesota Nice Imaging of Bloomington captured these images following last week’s flooding in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.
“The rivers were RAGING!” the video description on Vimeo notes. “It was so loud, you couldn’t hear the drones 10 feet away from you. What amazing sights to behold though — the St. Louis River and Thompson Reservoir were busting at the banks to the point that even the large inlet to Lake Superior was flooding, and creating some amazing rapids!”
