Currently in the Twin Cities — July 8, 2024: A warmup begins

The weather, currently.

We appear to finally be turning the corner on the very wet pattern from past 6 to 7 weeks. There’s still some lingering instability Monday and Tuesday with isolated to spotty showers or thunder popping up in the afternoon hours but we’ll have sunshine much of this week and dwindling rain chances midweek into the weekend. This will also allow temperatures to warm up.

The first week of July was about 4 degrees cooler than normal. We finally look set to hit our first 90 by Saturday and Sunday. This will be the latest first 90 in 31 years.

— Sven Sundgaard

What you can do, currently.

A Media Matters analysis found that last year — the hottest calendar year on record — network coverage of climate actually declined in the US. What’s worse, just 12% of reports about climate change mentioned fossil fuels as the driving cause. The media still reported on extreme weather, but stopped short of making the climate connection.

Independent climate journalism like Currently is needed more than ever. And this year, with all of these weather warnings already underway, we’ll unfortunately have plenty of opportunities to do better.