Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Emily Swihart, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming to you today from Milan, Illinois, The rain has finally let up and that sun is trying to shine, which is especially notable for our topic today. But before we get into that, you know I am not doing this by myself. I am joined, as always, every week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville, Illinois. Hi, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 00:30Hello, Emily. The rain has... Hasn't really made its way down here yet. So
Emily Swihart: 00:36I know. I kind of felt bad.
Ken Johnson: 00:39Maybe by the time people listen to this, it'll have come. But as of right now, not a whole lot.
Emily Swihart: 00:44Yeah. And we've been getting dumped on. So I I felt a little bad saying that and celebrating the end of the rain, but we've been getting we've dumped on. So it's time. It's time.
Emily Swihart: 00:55It's also time to introduce our guest today. We are joined today by Doctor. Trent Ford, Illinois State Climatologist. He is a scientist with the Prairie Research Institute and a real expert in the area of climate patterns. And so he's here to help us explain and make sense of what is happening this year and possibly what's coming up in the months ahead.
Emily Swihart: 01:17So welcome, Trent. Thanks for joining us.
Trent Ford: 01:20Yeah. Thanks, Emily, Ken. Good to talk with you guys again.
Emily Swihart: 01:23Well, there's a lot to cover. We've... It's just been a year. So first, can we check-in how you doing as our state climatologist? You're probably getting a lot of
Trent Ford: 01:34questions. Yeah. I'm better than the National Weather Service offices. Like, I, I'm putting together a timeline, like a graphical timeline of the crazy weather this year. I came up with this stat today before I jumped on.
Trent Ford: 01:48I'll say it's because of you guys. But, so, in June, we averaged averaged three and a half days between tornado outbreaks in Illinois. So on average in June, there was three and a half days between tornadoes happening on average in June. And so like I in August, I was at a meeting with some National Weather Service folks at an emergency management workshop. And they're I mean, they look so they look like I did when my kid was first born.
Trent Ford: 02:16You know, it was just like they haven't slept. They... You know, it's just wild. So at least for me, like, I'm busiest when we're in drought, so I've been I've been pretty good this year. But, yeah, it has just been absolutely incredible.
Trent Ford: 02:28Just no break seemingly.
Emily Swihart: 02:30Wow. That's an incredible stat. I look forward to seeing that graphic, but I'm like, just three days. That's...
Trent Ford: 02:37And that was just June. We think about what happened in August with all the storms and then what you all have been dealing with September and going all the way back what seems like ancient history since we had those massive hailstones in Ginkgokey and that E F 3. Yeah, it's been a wild year.
Emily Swihart: 02:54Yeah. That does seem like a long time ago. Wow. What a year. Oh, well, okay.
Emily Swihart: 03:02Let's just... Let's get this started, Ken. We've got questions for you, Trent. If you don't mind, Ken, kick us off here.
Ken Johnson: 03:09So I think you touched on this a little bit already, but how did this summer shape up as far as the weather goes?
Trent Ford: 03:15Yeah. The summer was like when we look at the the the temperature data and the rainfall data, especially from a temperature standpoint, it wasn't particularly noteworthy as far as the summer is concerned. So we had, a actually slightly cooler June, especially in Northern And Central Illinois. And then it just got really hot as it always does, but it was actually even hotter than normal in July. And then it was sort of a milder, mildly warm August.
Trent Ford: 03:46So, you know, overall, we were, you know, top 25 warmest summers on record statewide. Parts of Southern Illinois were a little bit warmer, a little bit higher in that ranking, but nothing super noteworthy. Not anything close to what we saw even just last year. From a precipitation standpoint, though, it was extremely wet, and and really for most places it was extremely wet. So there was only a little bit of Far Northwest Illinois, like around between Freeport and Galena, and then a little bit of kind of Northern Calhoun County.
Trent Ford: 04:27Those are the only places that were drier than normal this summer. And then we had a huge swath around the I-seventy 4 Corridor, the Chicagoland area in Far Southern Illinois that were eight to 10 inches wetter than average. So it was in those places extremely wet summer. So yeah, extremely wet summer really across the state statewide. It was our ninth wettest summer on record and our wettest, in a really long time, wettest since 2015, so less than ten years.
Trent Ford: 04:58And a lot of that came from June, which was extremely wet across Northern Central Illinois, and then August is as well. That kind of broad swath of central noise that was really, really wet.
Emily Swihart: 05:08Trent, can you... So you said the ninth wettest. Like, how long have records been being kept? Can you put that in perspective?
Trent Ford: 05:14Yeah. Consistently statewide 1895. Now we have a handful of stations that go back farther than that, but that's really when we can reasonably believe countywide and statewide numbers. But we do have, like I mentioned, some of the stations that go back even farther, one of which is in Danville. Danville actually had their wettest summer on record, so 26 inches of rain just between June and August.
Trent Ford: 05:39Give you an idea. Last year, if you live in the Central Illinois area, it was pretty dry. We had a drought in 2025. Danville actually had only 27 inches of rain the whole year, so they got an inch just a little bit less to just this summer than they had the whole year last year. So yeah, it was pretty pretty wildly wet in some parts of the state.
Emily Swihart: 05:59Wow. I'm I'm sorry. I'm trying to wrap my head around that. That's in... That's incredible.
Emily Swihart: 06:06First, like the longevity of those records. So, like, I mean, it's significant that we're ninth wettest over, what, a hundred and twenty plus years of record keeping and then 26 inches in two months?
Trent Ford: 06:19Three months. Yeah.
Emily Swihart: 06:20Three months? June June June, July, August.
Trent Ford: 06:21Yeah. And they had actually they were drier than normal in July. So, I think more than three quarters of that came in June and August. So, it was it was extremely wet and then it was dry in July and then extremely wet again in August. So,
Emily Swihart: 06:34yeah. That's incredible.
Trent Ford: 06:36And all those storms came. Oh, no, go ahead. Go ahead.
Emily Swihart: 06:39Well, I was like, I interrupted like the the question, but like, go ahead. All those storms came.
Trent Ford: 06:43Oh, I was going say all the rain came on the back of of, as we know, just a lot of severe weather. So, 60 tornadoes in June. We had, over 30 in August, and by we had already by the latter half of June, we had already set a new record as far as the number of statewide tornadoes, which was at 142 in 2024. And so as of the end of August, we were at two ten for the state. So, now some of those came in March, April, but, yeah, it was just, it was just seemingly, especially in June and August, just every week having another dozen tornadoes or something coming across the state.
Trent Ford: 07:26So, yeah, just a lot of severe weather that came along with that rainfall.
Ken Johnson: 07:31So for the for the tornado stuff, is there any kind of one thing we can point to as to why that is? Is is Illinois the new tornado alley now?
Trent Ford: 07:38Yeah. No. I mean, so when when we get tornadoes, when we get big tornado years, right? It's not we need tornado outbreaks. So to get up to the 100 mark, it can't we can't just have one tornado and then a week later have another tornado.
Trent Ford: 07:53We need tornado outbreaks where we get ten, twelve, in some cases up to 20 tornadoes in a single day from a single storm. To get that, you need not only enough instability and energy in the atmosphere coming from humidity and heat, a lot of times, most of coming from the Gulf Of Mexico. You also need the right dynamics in the upper atmosphere, the way the air is moving to generate storms that can produce that many that that kind of tornadoes with that efficiency. So normally we'll have those ingredients mix together a few times a year. And so we in a normal year, normal year will end up with like 60 to 70 tornadoes across the state.
Trent Ford: 08:31And in any given year, we'll get at least one or two tornado outbreaks where we get eight, ten, 12 tornadoes with those ingredients mixed. But you need those two things at the same time, so it doesn't happen very often. This year, the ingredients mixed in March and then they mixed again in April and then they mixed again in June and then they mixed again in August. Now they haven't mixed since, knock on wood, but it is it it has just been this I guess right or wrong depending on what your perspective, good luck, bad luck of having the right upper atmosphere airflow with the lower atmosphere instability that have combined to make for storms that when they move across Illinois have just generated a lot of tornadoes. And so we see that all across the Midwest this year, where every state has more tornadoes than they normally do.
Trent Ford: 09:21But no other state is anywhere near where we are. In fact, we have more tornadoes than the next two states in The U. S. Combined, which are Iowa and Indiana. And that just shows you not only that the ingredients for tornadoes were mixing well this year in the Midwest, but particularly well in Illinois.
Emily Swihart: 09:40So sorry, Ken, I'm gonna interrupt your question again. I know you want... I know you have a specific question you wanna get to. But so you said that there's instability in the upper atmosphere, and then there's warmer winds or warmer temperatures coming up from The Gulf. Like, what causes that instability in the upper atmosphere?
Emily Swihart: 09:57Do do we know? Is there a theory?
Trent Ford: 09:59Yeah. So the flow... It's actually the flow in the upper atmosphere. So the instability is coming from the surface in the lower atmosphere, and you need that to get the air to rise and start to really strengthen those thunderstorms. And that just comes from a lot of energy, can come from heat from the sun, but we also, here in the Midwest, we can have that in that that humidity.
Trent Ford: 10:17So, I always say like, like anybody who's lived in Illinois or anywhere in the Midwest for more than just a few years, you know, you can step outside, you can sort of smell it, you know, like, oh, this is gonna be a severe weather day. And that's the kind of instability that we're feeling based on based on experience. Now, the thing is is that that kind of day where it's just hot, it's humid, you know stuff's gonna happen. A storm will fire off. It'll be a single supercell which is a big, well, relatively small, but it's a powerful thunderstorm.
Trent Ford: 10:44It puts down a single tornado, maybe two, and then it dies. In the right conditions, we can get the upper atmosphere involved, and especially this year, what we've had is a is a ridging, which is kind of a high pressure. You can imagine across The United States, you get the jet stream that kind of pushes up north over the Central Plains, then it dips down. And we're sort of on the back end of that ridge. A lot of times what we'll see is that the jet stream is flowing over the top of that ridge and it gives us the right spin, the right dynamics so that we can create when they when those storms meet all of that energy here in Illinois from The Gulf, they can just fire off not just one or two supercells but these whole lines of thunderstorms.
Trent Ford: 11:27So this year, if people remember, you know, there were times, multiple times when we would see tornado warnings, you know, those like red red areas from the National Weather Service that spanned from, you know, Chicago down to Champaign and just moving in a single line across the state. That kind of system gets generated by, yes, the instability coming up from the Gulf but also the upper atmosphere flow coming over that, the ridge that was sort of baking the Southern Central Plains. And again, like that's not uncommon for the spring and summer, but it usually only sets up once or twice a year. This year, it's been re... It was on repeat again in April and June and then again in August.
Trent Ford: 12:07We were spinning out dozens of tornadoes a week, and, so it it it it got... The the numbers got eye popping pretty quickly.
Ken Johnson: 12:15Alright. So going back to rain and storms. Why is there a bubble around Jacksonville? Why why are the storms... When I...
Ken Johnson: 12:24When I'm watching the radar thinking, yes. I finally don't have to go water the garden.
Trent Ford: 12:27Did you make your annual donation to the state climate office again? I don't know. Like, the the... Yeah. So this year, if we go back the last ninety days, from pretty much...
Trent Ford: 12:42I don't know. My Western Illinois geography is not what it should be, but let's call it Pittsfield to Jacksonville. That has been the driest area of the state over the last maybe three months or so. So, your experiences and perspectives are validated there. Now, is there a hole every year?
Trent Ford: 13:02No. And and I've done this before. It's always fun. When you have a good crowd that, like, you're speaking to and that are that are actually engaged and aren't just looking at you, you can ask how many of you feel like or or believe that you are live in a in like a bubble that doesn't get hit by rain. Every single person raises their hand.
Trent Ford: 13:21There's every... Across the state. And and I don't have a scientific reason for it, at least a scientifically valid reason. But in my mind, I think the reason being is that the the games that drought plays on people, the mind games. So when we get flooding, right, oftentimes it's it's these big events, very little time to prepare, The impact happens and now it's just recovery, right?
Trent Ford: 13:46So, it it it with drought, it's like, okay, you missed this rain. Now, you're hoping for rain. You're going to miss the next rain because by definition, drought has to, you you have to miss multiple rains to get into that drought And then when you're in drought, you're seeing the impacts. All you're thinking about is that drought and all you're doing is staring at the radar, hoping that that storm that's coming in comes to you. And inevitably, it tends to fall apart, especially during drought.
Trent Ford: 14:13So whereas if you're in drought, you get a big rain. Now your mind can shift away from drought to something else because there's all sorts of other problems that people have going on. So I feel like that's why everybody feels like they're in a bubble, where that's always splitting around there. And there's there's there's up to number of reasons. You know?
Trent Ford: 14:31Some people, like, if you live near River Valley or power plants, or I don't know. There's there's a bunch of cities, you know, all those sorts of things. There's always a reason to describe it. But in reality, I think it's a mind game that drought plays on people. But this year, this summer in in, that kind of part of West Central Illinois, it has been drier.
Trent Ford: 14:53So
Ken Johnson: 14:54Alright. Yeah. I'll put my tinfoil hat away now.
Trent Ford: 14:56Oh, that's
Ken Johnson: 15:00Alright. Well, one last question, for me here for now anyway. So we hear a lot about corn sweat during the summer. So does corn sweat keep temperatures slightly cooler than it would otherwise be if it was less humid, if we didn't have so much corn?
Trent Ford: 15:15The corn sweat adds to the transpiration from crops and plants adds to the humidity in the atmosphere. It is not the major source. The primary source any given day is, is the humidity from the Gulf Of Mexico. My evidence for such is, how humid this this month has been in Illinois, September. And if you go out and look over the last couple of weeks when the dew point temperatures were really high and the heat index values were over 90 or 100, the corn is dead or dying.
Trent Ford: 15:46It's not transpiring. So there is no corn sweat being out of the area and yet it's extremely or it was extremely humid. So that shows you the majority of our humidity. The majority of that effect on temperature that humidity can have comes from The Gulf. Now, if we were to go back to kind of pre, colonization, pre European settlement Illinois, and we don't have the massive swaths of cropland, we likely would see, an effect on our temperatures, and that effect is lower humidity, which allows the temperature to climb higher during the daytime.
Trent Ford: 16:23But it higher humidity that the corn can help at least add to, also keeps nighttime temperatures elevated. When we hear about corn sweat making things cooler, that's really only sort of a misnomer anyway, but we'll just say humidity. High humidity does tend to tamp down on daily high temperatures. We just can't climb as quickly. However, those nighttime temperatures remain elevated.
Trent Ford: 16:50So from a, a health perspective, that's one of the many effects that humidity can have is that keeping those nights warmer or hot, can really add stress to people and to animals, when they can't recover from daytime heat. Though, but, but it can depress those, those, those daytime temperatures though. That's one reason why if we look back over the last one hundred years here in Illinois and throughout much of the Midwest, we don't actually see a really significant trend in daytime high temperatures in the summertime. We're not getting more days over 100 degrees here in Illinois. Part of that is higher humidity.
Trent Ford: 17:29However, when we look at nighttime temperatures in the summertime, that's when the trends are huge, and that that speaks to that humidity influence just making our nights more consistently warm during the summertime.
Ken Johnson: 17:42You know, there's still been some gross nights this summer.
Trent Ford: 17:45It's been rough. Yeah, I think Springfield's, you know, the dew point temperature is my one of my favorite metrics to kind of understand how nasty it is outside. It's not as good for representing human heat... Human health impacts as, like, what bulb globe temperature. There's so many other ones.
Trent Ford: 18:02But but when the dew point gets above 70, I think we as Midwesterners really start to feel like this is gross. And when it gets above 80, it's it's it's really disgusting. Like, it just, so Springfield set a new dew point temperature record, this year, in August, and it was 84 degree dew point, which is like swimming through soup. So that that is, and I I we I was out just out of Colorado a couple weeks ago for a drought meeting and telling some friends and colleagues from Colorado out there, just giving, I mean, if anybody's been to Colorado, right, especially up at elevation, they they feel humidity when the dew point is in the fifties, you know, they're like, oh, it's starting to get sticky out. And I was telling about the 84 degree and they're like, man, that would just be terrible.
Trent Ford: 18:47So, like, you know, but.
Emily Swihart: 18:50Yes, they're they're not wrong.
Trent Ford: 18:52It's yeah, it it it is gross. It is gross. Like, no, it's true but but we do have water. So, yes. You know, with that humidity comes rain and comes water.
Emily Swihart: 19:03Oh, yeah. And on here, we joke, like, Ken is not a fan of the summer, and I'm more of a fan of it than he is. But it was it was... It's sticky is, like, the perfect way to describe that. It...
Emily Swihart: 19:17You're just clammy, like, all the time. So Is is gross. Wasn't... Yeah. So it wasn't all in our minds.
Emily Swihart: 19:24We don't... We weren't all just exhausted from summer. No.
Trent Ford: 19:27No. And and and and the extension of summer into September was really... Was particularly annoying. Like, hey. Yeah.
Trent Ford: 19:33We ex... You're meeting expectations in July. Right? We expect July to be hot and humid. It's hot and humid.
Trent Ford: 19:39Okay. Just deal with it. Right? But it's not September. Right?
Trent Ford: 19:42And increasingly so, it feels like September is becoming an extension of summer, which is is quite frustrating. Yep. So anyway.
Emily Swihart: 19:51Especially for some of us. Yes. Well, and here, I had alluded to the fact that we have had a lot of rain lately. In the last, just honestly, weekend, we probably had seven to nine inches in different areas. And so like so different than what other places in Illinois have had.
Emily Swihart: 20:09And you talked about those nighttime temperatures. Yeah, people and animals suffer, but so do plants. They can't also recover from some of the daytime stress. And so I was getting particularly concerned locally and it's the same concerns Ken still has, which is heading into winter dormant season, how are our plants, if they're gonna be stressed heading into that, going to fare? So can we shift gears and talk about now what is coming?
Emily Swihart: 20:37Like, what do we think the fall looks like? Do you have predictions based on what you're seeing on models or what has already happened? Like, what what are we in for?
Trent Ford: 20:45Yeah. It's it's so as there's lots of things going on at the same time. So, that are good for for good and bad as far as forecasts are concerned. So, as we get further into fall and closer to winter, obviously, we're moving out in time, so it's harder to predict the weather conditions in November than it is in a week, you know, here in in, now that we're taping this in late September. But, the, as we get closer to winter, the effects of El Nino normally start to really kick in.
Trent Ford: 21:23We we have the strongest signal of El Nino affecting our weather the most in the wintertime, the December, January, February. So when we look at outlooks from the common prediction center for that period, October, November, December, and November, December, January, we start to shift there. We start seeing more of an El Nino pattern in the outlooks, and that's because it's a main source of a signal to say, hey, El Nino is starting to really ramp up. It's already in the kind of strong to very strong phase as far as how intense it is likely going to have a pretty big impact on our weather this winter. Now, what does that mean for us for the fall and especially the winter?
Trent Ford: 21:59It tends to paint us a little bit warmer, a little bit more mild, not summer. It's, you know, it's warmer than average. So that's certainly been the case for September. Now, whether or not that was due to El Nino could be debated, but certainly as we get further into October and November and then into December, likely that we're going to see more of those milder above average temperatures. And that's across the whole Northern US, but certainly here in the Midwest.
Trent Ford: 22:26As far as precipitation is concerned, it's more of a mixed bag. We've seen El Ninos with really dry falls. We've seen El Ninos where we get more seasonable amounts of rain and more normal amounts of rain. And then in the wintertime, it tends to be less snowy, but not... It's not consistent enough to say that, you know, with incompetence that we're not gonna get a whole lot of snow this year.
Trent Ford: 22:47So precipitation, as almost always is the case, is a little bit harder. But as far as temperatures, it's definitely that that milder, warmer pattern. And given the intensity of the El Nino that's brewing right now, I... I'd be really surprised if we look back at the start of March and didn't have anything but a warmer to much warmer than normal wintertime.
Emily Swihart: 23:14Sounds like we need to schedule a podcast with you in March.
Trent Ford: 23:17Hey. Yeah. Well... And and then you can bring it up. Like, hey.
Trent Ford: 23:19You were wrong. What the hell?
Ken Johnson: 23:20What what are
Trent Ford: 23:21you doing? You know?
Emily Swihart: 23:23That That was not what I was hoping for. Just...
Trent Ford: 23:25Okay. And
Emily Swihart: 23:27so... Okay. It would be interesting. You know? I imagine at that time, you would have...
Emily Swihart: 23:34You will obviously have a better perspective, but also more information. Because you'll be... You know, scientists will be gathering information about how El Nino is affecting.
Trent Ford: 23:42Yeah. Absolutely. Even, like, every month that we go forward now, towards the wintertime, we get better and better information about what winter's gonna look like. And and that's why NOAA doesn't release their winter outlooks like their official winter outlooks until middle of October, because they wanna get as close to possible, to that period of time. Like if you're predicting winter in July, there could be a lot that happens.
Trent Ford: 24:05This year, though, like we've been looking all since February at a pretty strong El Nino. It's got a greater than 90% chance of becoming a very strong event, which is the scientifically the strongest that you can have as far as categories are concerned. So almost a guarantee it's going to be a very strong event. There's still a potential of it being near record in its intensity. So all of that being said, that that milder tilt to winter is very likely.
Trent Ford: 24:35Now also we have to add to that trends. Every season in Illinois is warmed, as a response to, you know, our changing climate, but, winter's warmed at a far faster rate than all the other seasons. So we add the variability, the year to year variability in El Nino forcing that makes our winters warmer and the fact that our winters are warming anyway because of climate change. It it's it's almost like a slam. It's about as close to the slam dunk temperature forecast as we can get in Illinois for the wintertime.
Trent Ford: 25:05But people miss slam dunks. So we'll
Emily Swihart: 25:09have to
Trent Ford: 25:09wait and see. And I will say too, this is this is maybe a tangent, but what we predict, what we can predict this far out in time when it comes to seasonal climate predictions can run counter to how people experience winter. So I just, one kind of, like, hypothetical situation could be that we have a really warm period in December and a warm start to January, and then just we get nailed by three or four big winter storms and then February is warm as well. So when we look back, what we're really predicting here these seasonal climate outlooks is the average temperature over those three months, the total amount of precipitation over those three months and how that compares to average. But we can have this period of time, right, where we just were warm, warm, warm and then just get nailed by a bunch of snow and winter storms and it's warm again.
Trent Ford: 25:56The average is still above above normal. So therefore, the forecast verifies we all high five each other and go home, when people are actually remembering the winter of twenty six, twenty seven as a really intense winter because they were affected by one or two big storm events. So that kind of speaks to the we unfortunately can't get to the precision this far out that is needed to say how much snow are you going to get? How many days are your kids going to have to do remote learning or whatever they do now? Those kind of things.
Trent Ford: 26:25It's just too precise of a forecast to be able to get there. We kind of talk about these tendencies of above and below normal temperatures, above and below normal precipitation. That's kind of the best we got.
Emily Swihart: 26:36Okay. Well, so you've referenced... You've said El Nino a couple of times. This is a term that joined our vernacular... I was I was doing a little research and and digging into some stuff.
Emily Swihart: 26:49Like, some other haematologists had said around, like the storms of nineteen ninety three, I think is kind of when, and tell me if this is, if I'm remembering this wrong, I'm sure if there's an error, it's on me. But it kind of became part of our, you know, like our lexicon in that time. Like, so now we've all heard of El Nino, and then the the opposite is La Nina. Yes. Like Yeah.
Emily Swihart: 27:14Could you could you help us understand what these terms are and, like, what exactly it is and means? You know? Cause you've said it a couple times, but go ahead.
Trent Ford: 27:23Yeah. No. I've dropped it. It's like PB's Playhouse where I said the magic word and everybody goes crazy. The El Nino...
Trent Ford: 27:29Yeah. So it's funny. So El Nino has been recognized, since the late eighteenth century, and, it was actually by, Peruvian and Ecuadorian fishermen who noticed that every three to five years, they'd have a bumper crop of, I think it was sardines. Don't quote me on that. Some kind of fish.
Trent Ford: 27:53And, and then on the flip side, a terrible crop. And so they named... When they had a terrible crop, they named it El Nino, the... Because they would notice that the the kind of peak of of this phenomenon of of really good or bad, sort of fishing would happen right around Christmas. So El Nino meaning like the the boy child.
Trent Ford: 28:16Right? So that that was kinda where it came from. And then they named the sort of, like you mentioned, the opposite effect is La Nina. So this was sort of a recognized pattern again from fishing that then scientists studied it. Hey, what's actually going on here?
Trent Ford: 28:33What we found is that what was happening is on this three to five year period of time, we'd see the water in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean that stretches from off the coast of South America, Peru and Ecuador, all the way across Australia, that it would sort of oscillate or vary in its temperature. So some years it would be really, really warm. Some years it would be cooler. Not not cool because it's the Equatorial Pacific. I mean, it's Equator, but but cooler than normal.
Trent Ford: 29:01And when it was really warm, that's when the fish would have problems and it was really cool, it would be a little bit better. And so, what's actually happening here, what we've discovered, over the last, you know, two hundred years or so is that the speed at which the the surface ocean waters move across the Pacific from South America to Australia is dictated by the trade winds. And every three to five years or so, the trade winds start to slack a little bit and the waters that are moving in that direction move a little bit more slowly and therefore they start to heat up a little bit more. They're taking in more energy as they move across. So there's this big area of unusually warm water stretching from South America over across towards Australia.
Trent Ford: 29:46That's in a linear pattern. The reason it matters for our weather and climate is because the Pacific is a massive source and sink of energy. And where that energy is being transferred from ocean to atmosphere is determined by how warm those waters are and where those warm waters are. And so where that pattern is can dictate where the jet stream flows, how much it flows, and therefore have downstream effects to pretty much every global climate region, which is why we focus so much in El Nino. On the flip side, that oscillation, we can start to get trade winds that increase or strengthen, blow that water across more quickly.
Trent Ford: 30:24Therefore it doesn't warm as fast and we have a little bit of unusually cool water that's called a La Nina And that same thing where it's affecting the jet stream, both the subtropical, sub polar jet stream, as well as what's going on in the Southern Hemisphere. And so as far as like ocean patterns that have the biggest effect on global climates, El Nino and La Nina, they're number one. And so this year, we are... Have seen El Nino form pretty early. Usually, it forms August into September, carries through the wintertime.
Trent Ford: 30:59Remember we talked about El Nino peaking around Christmas and then it starts to die off in the spring. This year it formed in June. It was forecasted all the way back in February to be a very strong El Nino event, meaning that the water is not just somewhat warmer than normal, but it's much warmer than normal. And that has come to fruition. So we are in a strong El Nino.
Trent Ford: 31:20It's getting it's just a matter of time before it gets to a very strong El Nino. And so that that's kind of where where we're at right now. It's expected to peak like most El Ninos sometime between December and January, and probably stay with us through the spring. So that that's kind of where we're at. And for the Midwest, when we go back to the last seventy or eighty years that we have good records of El Nino and La Nina, what we see is El Nino winters especially tend to have, milder temperatures.
Trent Ford: 31:51So the expectation is that, stronger El Ninos tend to elicit a little bit of a stronger weather response, and therefore, a very strong El Nino is likely to elicit a very strong weather response in Midwest as a as a mild winter.
Ken Johnson: 32:07So so you've mentioned this is very strong. I think I've heard some places where this could be the one... The strongest one anybody alive has ever seen. Yeah. So very strong.
Ken Johnson: 32:18Is this gonna be like, the day after tomorrow type thing
Trent Ford: 32:21where we're
Ken Johnson: 32:21just gonna have chaos everywhere?
Trent Ford: 32:23I saw that. I saw the day after tomorrow reference. Excellent. I get questions every once in while. Do you hate...
Trent Ford: 32:28You must hate the day after tomorrow. Said, no. I love it. Right? It's like a seismologist probably loves San Andreas.
Trent Ford: 32:33As long as you come in with the expectation that it's not gonna be rooted in, like, good science, it's a it's just a fun watch. So so hats off to, to day after tomorrow. It won't be day after tomorrow. We're not gonna see the Northern Hemisphere freeze. In fact, it's probably gonna push us to some record warmth in some places in the Northern Hemisphere, perhaps Europe, maybe parts of Northern North America, that sort of thing.
Trent Ford: 32:59When we talk about chaos, what what El Nino does tend to do is it has somewhat to very strong, impacts on weather, especially during our wintertime all across the globe. Now here in the Midwest, we've talked about it where it's milder temperatures in the winter. Not a whole lot of people complaining about that, although it does have impacts. Maybe we can cover that later. But we think more globally, we do see regions of the of the of the world that are more negatively affected by strong El Ninos.
Trent Ford: 33:30Starting in Northern Australia, they tend to be very warm and very dry. Now think about December, January is their summertime, their warm season, also their dry season. It just gets amplified during El Nino events. So I've I've heard stories where Australian firefighters that are over here helping, fight fires in the Western US and Western Canada. They're talking, interviewing them, and they're basically like, yeah.
Trent Ford: 33:53We're we're over here helping, and we expect the, Canadians and Americans to come over to us in a few in a few week... In a few months. They're expecting it's gonna be a pretty nasty heat and wildfire season in Australia. It also, on the annual, can affect the efficiency, the intensity of the West African monsoon, the Indian monsoon, the East China monsoon. Those are, monsoonal or monsoons that generate a lot of precipitation in, certain parts of the world that can, when those monsoons fail, experience issues with food security, I guess it would be food insecurity.
Trent Ford: 34:32So that could become an issue that can be compounded with certain geopolitical events that are going on right now and the availability of things like wheat and energy for burning. So climate doesn't happen in a vacuum. It intersects with what's going on in the world. So that could be an issue as well. In the Mediterranean, we can see particularly dry wintertime, which that's their wet season normally.
Trent Ford: 34:57So then the following summers can be pretty dry. That can be a problem. So it's really when we think about the chaos that you mentioned, Ken, it's really just about having significant weather impacts co occurring at the same time, you know, at the same time. Co occurring at the same time is a, what do we call that? The...
Trent Ford: 35:14When you when you say something that... I don't know. Anyway, I was supposed to be... I I I thought I'd be all... I had my espresso, and I thought I'd be witty and everything, and I just completely blew that one.
Trent Ford: 35:24But, anyway, but, yeah, basically, co occurring, that that becomes a challenge, especially when you think about global energy markets, global food markets, those kind of things could be really challenging. And then, in South America, of course, a lot of Midwestern farmers care about what the weather looks like in parts of Brazil and Argentina. It can be problematic, for them. In some parts of Brazil, we can get really heavy rainfall. Other parts of Brazil, we tend to have a lot of drought during El Nino events.
Trent Ford: 35:56We were just talking to a group from coastal Ecuador. They tend to have really heavy rainfall, landslide problems during El Nino. So this is why, you know, sometimes talking with with different people from Illinois, especially media, it's like, you know, we've heard all this terrible things about La Nino. Tell us what it means for Illinois. And I'm just like, warmer winter.
Trent Ford: 36:16And everybody's like, yay. But we have to acknowledge the the fact that it has really significant global impacts as well.
Ken Johnson: 36:23When I saw... So we're recording this September 22. I think it was yesterday. California has already declared a state of emergency. Those are to bolster statewide El Nino preparedness.
Trent Ford: 36:33Yeah. And for them, it's actually the opposite of what we normally think where, you know, they've of course been dealing with decades of drought and water scarcity issues. El Nino winters tend to be a little bit, or in some cases a lot wetter for them, set up what we call atmospheric rivers, which are just big streams of moisture in the atmosphere that can feed into really heavy rainfall, especially on the coastal side of mountain ranges there in California. So a lot of their bolstering for flood, for landslide issues that that can be problematic in El Nino winters, especially. Now on the flip side, the good side of that is that a big El Nino year with lots of snowpack can be beneficial for reservoir and water resources next summer, which are, you know, you've probably heard the stories about Lake Powell, Lake Mead being at record lows and there being significant water restrictions in many places.
Trent Ford: 37:31That is one thing. Now one big El Nino year isn't going to fix the mess that has been built out in the Western US, but but it definitely can be beneficial for them in that way.
Emily Swihart: 37:43This is gonna ask you to really, like, look into the future. And so you can tell me
Trent Ford: 37:48Oh, good.
Emily Swihart: 37:48I'm not doing that. But you said that there's a pattern to these. And so your point with how it affects global climates, which then affects food availability, like landslides. Like when you say California, I'm thinking of like the massive wildfires they had and all that bare soil, like being at risk for failing. I've got family in Colorado who are very concerned, you know, about the the dryness and there's wildfires.
Emily Swihart: 38:18It was all, you know, very concerning this summer. Is it... So, like, restoring, you know, some of that moisture and replenishing those reservoirs, like, is it likely or could we we hold on to some optimism, especially for, you know, our neighbors out west, that it might be a couple of wet years potentially because of El Nino? Or is this are we... You know, like, where are we kinda at, like, in that, like, three year cycle?
Emily Swihart: 38:45Like, does this feel like the beginning of it, the middle of it, the end of it? Like, or do we just not know?
Trent Ford: 38:50Yeah. Unfortunately, it it doesn't. El Nino and La Nina that what what what is what we kind of combined the whole thing into called the El Nino Southern Oscillation or Enso, if you'll hear that. So Enso doesn't behave like a like a sine curve where it goes up and down between El Nino and La Nina consistently. We say to three to five years because generally speaking, that's on average how much time elapses between El Nino and Venezuela.
Trent Ford: 39:16We go El Nino, then a couple of years in La Nina, then neutral, which is neither, and then go back in El Nino. We look at the wavelength and it's every three to five years or so. But just to give you an idea, before this year we were in, and I think it was between 2019 and 2023, we had four consecutive winters in La Nina. So we can even stack them up right in a while. Now in general, when we have El Nino years, it's a little bit wetter out west, which can be in especially with high heavier snowpack.
Trent Ford: 39:47So that's beneficial for one single year. But, it's hard to say whether we're gonna stay in El Nino or come back to El Nino next winter. And I I mentioned, like, one El Nino year is not enough to kinda make up for what's been going on back there. This is an issue with, like, the difference between the weather variability and long term climate change and the human influence on that out west. So, not only in the Western US are they experiencing climate change and so far where they're getting less snow in the wintertime because of warming winters, but they're also aridifying, meaning that the snow is melting more quickly, soils are drying, vegetation dries more quickly during the summertime, and there's a lot more evaporation or at least demand for that evaporation.
Trent Ford: 40:33That's a long term trend that's going to continue irrespective of El Nino or La Nina. Of course, the same time, over the last hundred years or so, we've seen developments that has sort of assumed stationarity or no change in how much water is supplied. But with those changes, less water, meaning that, there's just water shortages that are more chronic now than they are acute. So a single good year or let's say two or three good El Nino years in a row can sort of prolong, but not fix the, the the overall problem out there.
Emily Swihart: 41:12Yeah. That's not the answer I wanted, but I appreciate your honesty. But Of course I'm joking. It is not what I wanted to hear because you do hear these stories. I'm gonna bring it back to Illinois real quick here, but we hear a lot of stories and coverage of what's happening in the Western United States because they're hit.
Emily Swihart: 41:31But it also affects us because so much of our food supply, especially in the winter months, come from there. So we're all connected, and you've made that point. And I appreciate it. And I guess I just... I keep coming back to that.
Emily Swihart: 41:43Like, we're gonna talk about Illinois and how it affects us. Like a warmer winter to me sounds great. Like as a person, I understand there's there's a, you know, some influence or some, you know, responses that our plants are gonna have because of it. And so I I get that. But personally, I'm not a huge fan of freezing cold weather.
Trent Ford: 42:03Yeah.
Emily Swihart: 42:03So it it... I could fall into that, you know, kind of that mindset of like, oh, great. Like, we're we're sitting pretty. But I appreciate you giving that global perspective because we all are, like, super connected, at the global scale. Yeah.
Trent Ford: 42:17Yeah. Unfortunately. I mean, I say this unfortunately because, it it... You know, if we were to... If if if if you have aliens that come down to Earth today and they look at the state of our climate, right, not just this year, but over the last several decades, And they were to look across The United States and say, where we need to we need to put 90% or whatever obscene number it is of fruit and vegetable production in one location.
Trent Ford: 42:41Like, where are we gonna put it? And I I feel like the Central Valley is... It should be, like, close to last on the list, right, just based on water availability, and just the the the hazards, the kind of, soup of hazards that California can be affected by. But that's the way that things have been set up. It's the system we have.
Trent Ford: 43:02And so you're right that here in Illinois, if you go even today in September, October, you go and look at where your where your fruit is coming from. I marked last week as the first week where I couldn't find any blueberries that weren't grown in South America in the grocery store. That's just a personal beef of mine. And so those are the kind of things that, you know, what's going on in places like California or Peru or South Africa do affect what, what, what we pay, what we get here in Illinois, how we live. That is, that is really important not to just say, hey, we're good, but that, you know, understanding what's going on around other parts of the world.
Emily Swihart: 43:41Yeah. Yep. Alright. So let let us... Let's bring it back to Illinois, you know, because, you know, that's our...
Emily Swihart: 43:49Primarily where all of our listeners and viewers are gonna be at in the Midwest. And so I mentioned I'm not a fan of the supreme cold, you've kind of said that maybe I'll be lucking out a little bit except for some possible major storms. And so can we talk about that? And I guess what comes to my mind is that term polar vortex. Is that related at all to El Nino patterns, or is that a totally separate phenomenon?
Emily Swihart: 44:19And Yeah. How many are we gonna get? How cold it's gonna be? And where am I going to escape it?
Trent Ford: 44:23Where where are they going to... Okay. Well, I mean, if you wanna escape it, you can go to Florida. Right? Because because if you go to South Florida, you're gonna escape the vast majority of polar vortices or vortexes.
Trent Ford: 44:34Yeah. So this is this is a really good question. So. Nothing is completely disconnected in the climate system. So what's going on in the Arctic is affected by what's going on with El Nino in the Pacific, and they can affect each other because it's all the same Earth system.
Trent Ford: 44:56However, different kind of things that are going on, different patterns are operating on different timescales. So I mentioned that El Nino sets up or La Nina sets up in the fall, carries through winter most of the time and dies in the spring. So it really has that influence, particularly in the fall and winter. But when we're in El Nino now, we're not getting out of El Nino before March. So it's not flipping in and out of El Nino, La Nina.
Trent Ford: 45:22The kinds of patterns that really dictate when we have a big polar vortex or destabilization of that are working on much shorter timescales. We can get changes in pressure patterns and temperature patterns in the Arctic that go week to week even. And so imagine that you have like, you know, kind of the bass, right? If you think about a symphony, if you want to, all the instruments that are going on or, you know, the the orchestra is containing the instruments that play at the low kind of wavelengths. Like I played tuba, which is how cool I was in in high school playing tuba.
Trent Ford: 45:55And and it was like this low... Right? Like, I'm the bass, you know, your bass clef. That's the El Nino. You're kinda staying in the same pattern the whole time.
Trent Ford: 46:02My wife jokes because we had three keys. We had three notes we could play. She played clarinet. So, then you have the the clarinet player, right, who's who's just moving their fingers really, really fast and pretending to blow, I think. And that...
Trent Ford: 46:16It's that clarinet player. That's more of the Arctic stuff. Right? Where they're they're... It's going boom, boom, boom, back and forth, back and forth.
Trent Ford: 46:23What's happening in the Arctic is influenced by El Nino, but they can operate on different time scales. And that's why right now, I can tell you that in, I say Christmas time. On Christmas, we're going be in El Nino. I would bet all my money on it, but I have no clue what the Arctic is going to look like at Christmas because it's it's operating on much different timescales. What we need to have a polar vortex is something called a sudden stratospheric warming.
Trent Ford: 46:48The stratosphere is the part of the atmosphere that's above where we typically live. Yeah, thirty, fifty thousand feet above us right now. We get a sudden stratospheric warming event in the Arctic and it can throw off essentially what we call the polar vortex, which is this kind of area of of circulating very cold air down here at the troposphere where we we live in the Arctic. Once it kicks that off, it can spill out into the mid latitudes. So air and temperatures that we typically expect to see in parts of like Central Or Northern Canada in the middle of January all of a sudden are in the mid latitudes in Chicago, in Seattle, in Beijing.
Trent Ford: 47:27However, we can't predict a sudden stratospheric warming more than maybe two weeks ahead of time. We and even if we can and I say, yes, there's a sudden stratospheric warming, I can't tell you if it's going to destabilize the polar vortex enough to give us cold air. Even if I can tell you it's going to destabilize the polar vortex to give you enough cold air. I can't tell you where that air is going to go. We could have a sudden stratospheric warming, a big polar vortex being kicked off and the air spills out into Scandinavia and we're fine and nobody cares.
Trent Ford: 47:56So it's really challenging to predict like how many, how intense those kind of things are going to be or if we're going to get any at all, just because it's operating on those on those sort of timescales. Same thing with winter storms. You know, the temperature at the time that a winter storm arrives is so important to dictate what we experience here on at the surface because we've seen winter storms every year. Have these where there could be an area of 100 miles from north to south that separates snow from freezing rain from severe weather. And that's all dictated by where the temperature gradients are at that time, which can be forecasted no more than maybe a few days ahead of time.
Trent Ford: 48:41And we know that like the impact of getting three inches of snow or a half inch of ice is huge, right? It's like that's the difference between as it's kind of annoying, leave a little early or I'm not getting out of the house today. So so it's really challenging. And that's why when we talk about the beginning, like we talk about milder winters, what we forecast for winter. But our models are just...
Trent Ford: 49:03We just can't simply forecast the level of precision needed to really inform people about how they're gonna be affected by winter weather this season. Sorry.
Emily Swihart: 49:13Yeah. Was gonna say strike two.
Trent Ford: 49:15Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I know. I know.
Emily Swihart: 49:18No. The... I... Okay. I'm joking in that.
Emily Swihart: 49:23Like, I kinda knew that was coming. Like, it is fascinating to me. Like, I I appreciate how you explain it to, like, a lay person. Like, I I I get it. Like, you...
Emily Swihart: 49:32I get that there is a whole lot of things influencing, like, what we experience. And so I can accept that. I don't love it, but I will accept it. And I don't know. It it just is...
Emily Swihart: 49:45This is all just fascinating. I'm sorry. I'm gushing now. Because it... Like, I don't...
Emily Swihart: 49:48You don't think about it. Like, you wake up... At least I don't. I'll speak for myself. Wake up in the morning.
Emily Swihart: 49:53I check the weather. Mhmm. You know, is it gonna rain? What's the temperature? Like, who needs to wear shorts or pants?
Emily Swihart: 49:58Like, for the kids. You know? And often I don't think about how all of these major global systems, both at the surface level and above, are affecting things. And so I'm just, okay, I'm gonna stop gushing right now. Ken, you can take it away, but I appreciate it, Trent.
Trent Ford: 50:18No. It's fascinating. Right? It's it's it's... We've even seen...
Trent Ford: 50:20I've seen studies that show that, you know, when when Eurasia, right, gets a bunch of snow or is relatively snow less in the wintertime, it can affect our temperatures here because it, if we get a big area like Eurasia being covered in a blanket of snow, it changes the energy balance and therefore how the atmosphere flows over Alaska and here. So everything is connected in ways that, you know, our models are super complex and sophisticated, but they're nowhere near as sophisticated as the actual Earth system. And I don't think the latter will be, but, you know, we get closer and closer with better and better information.
Ken Johnson: 50:57So go... Going back to the sudden stratospheric warming, do we see more of that with climate change, the climate's warming?
Trent Ford: 51:04That's a good question. It... It's not it's not certain. We do... We don't have a good signal on that.
Trent Ford: 51:12There... There's a lot... And when I say it's not certain, what I mean is is that, you know, science is done in a way that we... Somebody does some kind of study trying to connect climate change with more or fewer sudden stratospheric warming events, and they have a result. And then they publish that result and all the other scientists who study that thing see that result.
Trent Ford: 51:30They're like, let's tweak the methods a little bit. Let's use a different dataset. Let's just iterate on this a little bit, run it and see what we find. Oh, we found similar or we found completely different. Right?
Trent Ford: 51:42And once you do that about 10 dozen times, then you start to see convergence of evidence, right? To say like, a 100 groups looked at this and 90 out of a 100 found the exact same thing. Therefore we have a lot of evidence. We have a lot of confidence that this is something that's happening. Or you get a situation where a dozen groups have looked at it and you've got a dozen answers right now.
Trent Ford: 52:01It could be that one of those answers is right, or none of those answers is right. And so we just don't have the certainty. And that's what we have the connection between sudden stratospheric warming and climate change. We see some studies that show, yeah, there may be a little bit of a link here and there's some studies that show, nope, we can't we can't part any of the signal through the noise. So not a whole lot of of of good understanding there.
Trent Ford: 52:22One thing that we do know, though, is that I mentioned that winters are warming here in the Midwest. They're warming even at a faster rate in the Arctic. So what that means is that if we do get that sudden stratospheric warming, if we do get that polar vortex disrupted, the air that's spilling out of the Arctic today or this year or the last decade is on average warmer, not warm, but it's warmer than the air that was in the Arctic fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. So even if we do get more polar vortex affected kind of weather, which I'm not saying we do, but if we do, the intensity will likely be less as far as extreme cold. Now, what's really interesting to me is that we are adapting to a warmer winter, right?
Trent Ford: 53:08People here in the Midwest, even if we feel like we're we're not, we are adapting to that warmer winter. So and and of course, plant systems are as well. So something that I think about is if, I just saw an email about climate analogs and especially crop growers learning from growers further south or west of them to try to understand what the climate looks like. So if we say if a grower is going to take a cultivar of a black berry or grape or something and say, hey, this worked really well in Arkansas and we're getting warmer, so I'm going to bring it up to Illinois. The fact is, is that, yeah, we may get less extreme cold, but because we're closer to the Arctic, it's still possible that we can get that really cold extreme.
Trent Ford: 53:53And this is all sort of assuming that climate change operates as a consistent linear trend, which it just doesn't. Not every winter is warmer than the winter before it. We broke, we set our all time cold temperature record in Illinois just in 2019. So we have records going back to 1895 in most places, and we broke it just seven years ago. So that, that tells us that on top of this warming trend, we have this amount of variability that means that we can't just predict it's going to be warmer, it's going to be warmer, it's going to be warmer.
Trent Ford: 54:26So as far as like management of natural resources of ag, especially the perennial crops that depend more on the the winter than annuals do, it's a really complicated picture. And so, yeah, that's that's that's just a challenge in both climate communication, as well as as well as, you know, adapting to to the changing climate. I feel like that was a tangent that didn't actually address your question. And I don't think I even remember what your original question was. So sorry.
Ken Johnson: 54:57Megan, it was sudden stratospheric warming.
Trent Ford: 55:00Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 55:01Yeah. You got it. Alright. I think we got one last question here, again, pertaining to climate change, and this is from Chris. So does our climate and weather lag behind the c o two effects in the atmosphere?
Trent Ford: 55:16Yes. Yeah. So carbon dioxide that's emitted today will have a residency time that's that's fairly long in the decades. And our what was basically connecting the carbon dioxide or the greenhouse gas emission to the climate change. We emit the greenhouse gases, through burning of fossil fuels or other types of activities.
Trent Ford: 55:39They go up in the atmosphere. They sit for a decade or two. And while they're up there, what they're doing is they're allowing the sun's energy to come in, the earth's outgoing energy to be essentially trapped more effectively, which increases the global average temperature. So that takes some time. Then the global average temperature, which is just a way of measuring how much energy here is on earth, is affecting how the climate system is moving, how oceans are moving and transferring energy to the atmosphere, to the ice, to the biosphere, to the plants and everything, that all takes time.
Trent Ford: 56:11So it takes time to represent, to measure climate change and to feel that effect. So all of that lag time that goes from the actual emissions of the greenhouse gas to the actual tangible impact to our climate can take years in some cases. So, there is a lag effect. However, there's been studies that say that kind of hypothetical world that if we were to stop all greenhouse gas emissions today, how long would it take for the, the, the climate to kind of equal break, you know, just kind of like level out at a new normal. And it's not very long.
Trent Ford: 56:47It's, it's, you know, ten to twenty years, something like that. So there is a lag time, but, it doesn't mean that, you know, mitigation of climate change is going to take generations to see the actual results of. We can see them in a matter of of years. So, yeah, so that's kind of the that being said, though, also, and that's that's the glass half full maybe take to it. Glass half empty take is to it is that we can't just focus on mitigation, which is like reducing greenhouse gases alone.
Trent Ford: 57:18That's really important. But we also have to adapt to a changing climate. So winters are going to continue to get warmer, even if we even if we mitigate the effect of climate change. That magnitude of warming is going to be affected. So hopefully we can lower that magnitude and not be completely different climate.
Trent Ford: 57:34But we still have to adapt to it in in ways that can protect people.
Emily Swihart: 57:38Okay. Well, that was a better answer that you've given about some of the other things. I like the optimism. We do need action. We do need action.
Emily Swihart: 57:48And that looks different. That's a whole another discussion that we could have that many brilliant minds have had, what that action looks like. But adaptation and change in behavior can go hand in hand.
Trent Ford: 58:05Yeah, absolutely. And every individual, every sector, every part of sort of, you know, you know, kind of everybody kind of sort of plays a role in that place. Obviously, there's individual actions, which sometimes could be overweight, but but also each sector, you know, from natural resource management to accounting to, you know, there's there's solutions in every one. And so, yeah, it's just a really important piece as well. Are solutions that and there are and there are many solutions that are already being implemented as well.
Trent Ford: 58:41So sometimes you can paint the picture of like we have to get started and it's like, no, we've been working on this for decades. So it's just kind of building on those solutions.
Emily Swihart: 58:52Trent, is there anything you want? Did we miss anything before we wrap up or come up on time? And I don't wanna, you take up your whole day, but also No.
Trent Ford: 59:00No. This has this has been great. Okay. I, yeah, really appreciate the conversation. Can I mention real quick?
Trent Ford: 59:07Because that's something I kinda mentioned at the beginning and didn't at all, but I wanna show... And I know this isn't a video thing, but, this is my three d print of our record, our new state record hailstone, that dropped in Kankakee in March. So I can like rotate it my head for scale here. So 6.6 inches maximum dimension here. So it's a beast.
Trent Ford: 59:33So this was confirmed as a new state record hailstone in late August. So pretty cool. It's impressive. That is incredible. Yeah.
Trent Ford: 59:43Yeah. It's it's it's wild. It's wild. And that that storm, which was in March, would have our previous record stone dropped in 2015 in Minooka or near Minooka. It was 4.75 inches in diameter.
Trent Ford: 59:56This stone... We confirmed at least six stones that would have broken... Would have set a new record. So this was just the biggest one that we could confirm and find. So it was it was a massive storm.
Trent Ford: 01:00:07So just, yeah, another kind of, like, notch in this year's severe weather belt. Right? Just just how much how much how crazy it's been.
Emily Swihart: 01:00:14That's incredible. I think you buried the lead here. Like, that
Trent Ford: 01:00:18is Yeah. I know. I know. I meant to bring it up earlier.
Emily Swihart: 01:00:20The thing is
Trent Ford: 01:00:22You can edit and put this to the front then.
Ken Johnson: 01:00:24And there's People gotta listen to the whole thing to see it.
Trent Ford: 01:00:26Yeah. Listen. That's all. There you go. That's that's the...
Trent Ford: 01:00:29Yeah. Yeah. Just tease it at the beginning. So, yeah, it's it's it's massive. So, yeah.
Trent Ford: 01:00:34And now, I have three of them here. So, this is my new traveling show. So, every every event I go to, I'm gonna I'm gonna pull this out because who doesn't like to see it, right? So.
Emily Swihart: 01:00:44That's really, really cool.
Trent Ford: 01:00:45Yeah.
Emily Swihart: 01:00:46And also, like, holy cow. I have dual emotions, where that is amazing, and nature is wild and crazy, and just incredible. But that fell on somebody's land and property. And I remember seeing the photos of the damage, and it's just heartbreaking again thinking
Trent Ford: 01:01:06about that. It's why. This, because it's out of the plastic resin that three d printers use, this doesn't weigh nearly as much. The thing was 1.3 pounds, something like that, of ice. So I actually tried to because, you know, giant nerd tried to calculate terminal velocity.
Trent Ford: 01:01:23We have to assume that it's a perfect sphere. And this is when your listeners drop off when I say the word sphere. Right. But if we assume that it's a perfect sphere, the terminal velocity is like 78 miles per hour. So, I mean, this thing is moving, right?
Trent Ford: 01:01:38And we also I had some of the nerdier, even nerdier people in the atmospheric science department try to calculate the updraft speed. Because generally speaking, the faster the updraft in the storm, the the the more quickly you're gonna inject that hail and the larger the hail is gonna be. And they were calculating, like, again, back of the envelope, like, 130, 140 mile per hour updraft. So that means that air is moving from near the surface up through the center of that thunderstorm at, like, a 130 miles per hour. It's just absolutely incredible.
Trent Ford: 01:02:05Yeah. So just wild. But you're right, though, Emily, that, like, sometimes we we can get lost in the coolness of the science and forget that, yeah, that was a really bad day for a lot of people. So
Emily Swihart: 01:02:16Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They they go hand in hand.
Trent Ford: 01:02:19Yep.
Emily Swihart: 01:02:21Well, that was a lot of great information today on our complex and interconnected climate. The Good Growing podcast is a production of the University of Illinois Extension edited this week by Mr. Ken Johnson. Thank you for doing that. Trent, thank you so much for joining us for your just wealth of information.
Emily Swihart: 01:02:40We really appreciate it.
Trent Ford: 01:02:41Yeah. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, this has been great as always.
Emily Swihart: 01:02:48And, Ken, thank you for joining once again our steadfast man in plaid with your podcast.
Ken Johnson: 01:02:57Someday I'm not gonna wear plaid just to throw you off. Not
Emily Swihart: 01:03:01today, though.
Ken Johnson: 01:03:02And and thank you, Trent, as always. It was great. We need to have you on to, discuss the day after tomorrow, Twisters.
Trent Ford: 01:03:10Yeah. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Let's...
Trent Ford: 01:03:14I I want to I want to break down nuclear twister or... It's called atomic twister. Look that up. Mark Mark Paul Gosselaer, tornadoes coming after a nuclear power plant in Tennessee. So I'll just leave it there.
Trent Ford: 01:03:27So good stuff.
Ken Johnson: 01:03:27I have to check that one out. Sharknado?
Trent Ford: 01:03:29Yeah. Sharknadoes are good one too. Yeah. All these TBS Saturday afternoon movies that are... You gotta break down.
Trent Ford: 01:03:35Totally.
Ken Johnson: 01:03:36Alright. We'll get it scheduled. And Emily, thank you as always, and let's do this again next week.
Emily Swihart: 01:03:44Oh, you know we will, and we are going to be talking about the National Garden Bureau, plant of the year. It is sedum, Excuse me, the Perennial Plant of the Year. They have a number. So we'll talk about the Perennial Plant of the Year next, next week. Listeners, thank you for doing what you do best in listening or if you are watching on YouTube, watching.
Emily Swihart: 01:04:05And as always, keep on growing.