Currently in the Twin Cities — August 17, 2023: Wildfire smoke returns

The weather, currently.

Cooler air flows in behind a front for Thursday. Winds will still be blustery Thursday but ushering in cooler air and Canadian wildfire smoke. Winds will be 10-20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. Highs will be in the 70s statewide with hazy sunshine.

Friday will bring more seasonable temperatures, back in the 80s but the HEAT is building in for the weekend. Highs will be in the 90s Saturday into potentially early next week. The 90s may be consecutive or we may get some breaks in between: the models still differ on the full extent of the heat wave.

— Sven Sundgaard

What you need to know, currently.

Hurricane Hilary is expected to make a rare trek northward across the US-Mexico border this weekend, bringing the potential for catastrophic flooding.

The latest GFS model (below) shows the remnants of a much-weakened Hurricane Hilary could bring up to 10 inches of rain to the deserts of southern California by Tuesday.

That’s a lot of rain for an area that gets almost none.

In the Coachella-Imperial Valley, the area near Palm Springs and the Salton Sea, average yearly rainfall is about 3-5 inches. That means Hilary is expected to produce about 2-3 years of rainfall in about 3 days.

The last time something like this happened, it wasn’t pretty. In 1976, the remnants of Hurricane Kathleen produced nearly 15 inches of rain on the southward-facing slopes of the Coachella Valley, creating a wall of water as high as 40 feet through normally dry streambeds, washing away homes, roads, and irrigated fields along the way.

As you might guess, hurricanes are quite rare in Southern California, but happen most frequently during El Niño years — like 2023. Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is also a culprit here: a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, thus making torrential rainstorms more likely.

—Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

The fires in Maui have struck at the heart of Hawaiian heritage, and if you’d like to support survivors, here are good places to start:

The fires burned through the capital town of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the ancestral and present home to native Hawaiians on their original unceded lands. One of the buildings destroyed was the Na ‘Aikane o Maui cultural center, a gathering place for the Hawaiian community to organize and celebrate.

If you’d like to help the community rebuild and restore the cultural center, a fund has been established that is accepting donations — specify “donation for Na ‘Aikane” on this Venmo link.