My mother’s family moved to Babbitt in the early 50s to take part in the taconite boom. When Grandpa retired in 1965, he and Grandma moved back to Litchfield. At a recent family gathering down there, I got to talk with my Uncle Gene who as I’ve mentioned before is from Babbitt’s class of 1961. He told me how he worked his way through UMD with summer work at Reserve. He said hot summer days in the pit were a bit challenging at times as he dozed things with a Cat D8.
Hot days this summer may be hard to come by. Long range forecasters think the Upper Midwest summer will be cooler and drier than normal. On one hand that makes me fear more wild fires like those of last year’s. On the other hand, my ditches are already filled to the rim and the ground is too soft to work with. Some dryness might not be so bad if it doesn’t turn into drought.
Those same long range forecasters say June will be near normal for temps and an inch shy on rainfall. June 1 to 7 should be warm with thunderstorms. The 8th to 17th should be showery and cool. The 18th to 22nd will turn warm and stormy again. The rest of the month is slated to go sunny and hot.
The super long range forecast has everybody talking about Super El Nino. We all know around here that regular El Nino warms the Pacific and shifts the world’s weather patterns. Super El Nino really exaggerates the changes. In the 1877 SEL, millions died in Africa, Asia and Brazil due to drought. North America suffered extensive flooding. Other SEL years include 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16. I recall 97-98 being the year we got record snow and I was riding my snowmobile on April 30th at night to see the Hale Bop Comet.
As a final note, legendary weathercaster Richard “Heatwave” Berler recently sent me a message saying that last May was the 50th anniversary of his first weathercast on Channel 3. He is still going strong doing weather in Laredo, Texas but still has fond memories of our region and our people.
