Not the Best News for Winter Lovers

We all know climate change isn’t good and for people who love winter it’s even worse.

From the MN Department of Natural Resources

Nature Sightings – Winter is Changing!

If you grew up in Minnesota, what childhood memories do you have of winter?  Did you ever ice skate on a frozen pond or ice fish on a lake?  Do you remember snow days, when school was cancelled but all of the neighborhood kids would be outside all day long building snow forts and sledding on the mountains of piled-up snow left by snowplows? Have you noticed that the cold and snowy winters that define us as Minnesotans seem to be on the decline?

Indeed, one of the leading symptoms of climate change in Minnesota has been rising winter and overnight minimum temperatures.  Winter temperatures have been rising twice as fast as the average annual temperatures, and ten times faster than summer!  So what does this mean for the future of cold, snowy winters here?

State climatologists have observed our Minnesota winters changing.  The cold season is shrinking, even while major snow events seem to be increasing. So we are having a shorter winter period with heavier snowfall. Climate change trends and models indicate our extreme cold winters will continue to rapidly decline beyond the year 2025, and with the much warmer winter temperatures, the frequency of heavy snow fall will also begin to decline.

With this understanding of changing winters in Minnesota, it is interesting to wonder what winter memories our great grandchildren will have as Minnesotans continue to adapt to a changing climate.

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