Currently in the Twin Cities — August 28, 2023: Warming back up again

The weather, currently.

The weekend brought some rare cool weather. Highs both Saturday and Sunday were only in the 70s with a morning low at MSP of 56 early Sunday. It’s only the 7th morning low of 56 or cooler this summer. We should see 17 in a normal summer: it’s another measure of how warm the summer’s been.

We’ll have a few isolated late showers or a thunderstorm Monday with temperatures gradually warming up this week. Look for low 80s to start the week but by the end of the week and weekend we’ll see highs in the upper 80s to even 90 degrees again.

— Sven Sundgaard

What you need to know, currently.

Tropical Storm Idalia formed over the weekend, and is ramping up its intensity on a trajectory towards Florida.

Tampa Bay is currently in the cone of uncertainty for Idalia. Up to 11 feet of storm surge is expected from Idalia near the exact landfall location, with about 3-5 feet expected in the Tampa Bay region.

Since records began in 1850, only 5 hurricanes have ever directly struck the Tampa Bay region. Since the last one struck in 1946, the region’s population has grown 10-fold, from around 300,000 to more than 3 million today.

Due to the gentle sloping of the seafloor on the Florida Gulf coast, this area is especially prone to coastal flooding from hurricanes. In a worst-case scenario, a major hurricane making landfall just north of Tampa Bay could funnel as much as 26 feet of storm surge into the bay. Last year, a study found that the Tampa Bay metro area was even more vulnerable than New Orleans to storm surge flooding — second only to Miami and New York in the US.

—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.