(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll tour the legacy of the Lakes Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota.

But first, our guest joining us now is Daryl Ritchison, the North Dakota State climatologist, and of course also Director of North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network.

Daryl, thanks for joining us today.

- It is a pleasure to be here.

- Well, as we get started, before you tell us about all your jobs, tell us about yourself and your background.

- I grew up in a very small town in southern Minnesota between the cities of Mankato and Faribault, which hopefully most people would recognize in southern Minnesota, a little town called Elysian.

When I grew up it was only 350, it's grown quite a bit because people discovered our two lakes in town, and so there's a lot of lake homes there.

But I went to what's now referenced as Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mankato State, you know, when I went there.

Much of my career was in broadcast meteorology.

Worked in a small station in Mankato, Minnesota, down in Sioux Falls and here in Fargo and Grand Forks at WDAY and WDAZ.

And now for almost the last 11 years I've been working up at NDSU, most of that time as the Director of the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network.

But now for almost a year now, I've been also serving as the state climatologist for North Dakota.

- Well, we're gonna touch on both, but let's start off with what exactly the state climatologist, what is it and what are your duties there?

- You know, the really, you can take on a number of different roles in that position where you wanna go.

You know, I really've been focusing on the integrity of our data in North Dakota, trying to reorganize it, put it back together.

There's so much to learn from what has happened in the past.

And so to get that data, and there's so many just basic data requests that I do every single day.

You know, someone is asking for certain data.

Say the tragic fires in Western North Dakota last year, the presidential declaration for that, I was asked, which is oftentimes the case in these scenarios.

Can you write up the weather summary, you know, what actually happened?

Because being the state climatologist gives that report a little bit more, I don't know, notoriety perhaps.

So we work in that issue.

A lot of training for different things, a lot of public talks that we do for that, keeping track of the records, it really goes on and on.

But you could also, you know, take it into different realms.

I serve two positions, so I really try to focus on, you know, the past climate, working with the climate data that we have, the reports that are necessary for that, and a lot of the data requests that we have really, again, on a daily basis.

- Yeah, so take us back for a moment and when did you become fascinated with the weather?

- Probably when I was, I don't know my exact age, but it was probably around four or five.

And it was really a lot of people that are interested in weather always sometimes comes down to thunderstorms, especially when you grow up in the Midwest.

And when I was really young I was, I asked, I remember asking my brother what causes thunder?

And he told me two clouds bumping against each other.

Well, you have to remember, he was only like eight or nine years old at that time.

And I thought, I saw a couple clouds bump together, and I did not get any thunder.

So joys of our generation being a little older, we had a bookmobile as our library that came into town, and it's always exciting when the bookmobile came in.

So I looked up a book about weather and found out it was lightning that causes thunder.

But I've been fascinated with it on my entire life, and I've also always been fascinated with climate, climate studies in the past weather.

And so I just have the best job in the world for me.

I pinch myself at times, that I get to do this for a living, - You know, what did you learn with a meteorology degree and how did that prepare you for all the positions you've had?

- Probably that, the constant reminder that the atmosphere is a chaotic, non-linear system, and it really can't be forecasted, and we do a pretty good job at it.

But it, you know, the weather and being a forecaster and which I still do, just not as much as I used to in that part of my world, always is very humbling.

And, you know, it's really hard to be too arrogant when you're meteorologist 'cause Mother Nature will always teach you a lesson in that we still don't completely understand what's going on.

- Yeah, and as far as state climatologist, was that position created or did you succeed somewhat?

- I had, was successor.

Sadly our former state climatologist passed away from cancer about a year ago.

And so they ended up asking me if I'd be willing to take over that position, which I was thrilled to be able to do.

- Yeah, so what about, you know, how did your time, well, maybe forecasting at WDAY and sounded kind of prepare you and develop you for all this?

- It really helped me in many ways understand weather instrumentation because it all comes down to weather instrumentation, and the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network, you know, we have now, I do believe the largest weather network in the country is NDAWN, the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network.

Plus we're working with the state of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Ag to spread the network throughout the entire, almost the entire state of Minnesota, with exception of the core of the Twin Cities and the arrowhead of Minnesota.

But the rest of the state we're adding stations there.

And so when you deal with forecasting, it's like you get to know the sensor 'cause you want it to be accurate.

So you know that the airport in Fargo, for example, has some oddities and some biases.

Well, you forecast for the biases because you want to have the same number in your forecast, but it's just really learning that.

So then when you're jumping into a weather network where so much of your job is weather instrumentation, making sure they're calibrated correctly, make sure they're giving out the correct data that we need for all the research and the tools that we offer.

It really just led into that very, very much.

And of course when you're a broadcast meteorologist, you're the all around scientist for everybody and plus you have to deal with a lot of climatology.

And so in turn that position made really in many ways a smooth transition for me to move into that role as well.

- So you've mentioned it two or three times, you've talked a little bit about it, but what is the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network?

- We are referenced as a meso net.

So meso network.

Meso in Greek is middle.

And so it's really the middle component of the atmosphere in the sense of meso scale.

So in meteorology there's a meso scale, there's this synoptic scale, there's a micro scale, different scales.

So what we're trying to do is have a weather station approximately every 15 to 20 miles throughout the entire state of North Dakota and then now also in Minnesota.

And so this provides data.

You know, of course we're an agricultural weather network, so our focus is on agriculture.

We generally can forecast like when is this insect going to emerge?

You know, when is this disease going to form?

It gives farmers that heads up that today, you know, if I spray today I will get ahead of that disease or that insect.

If you wait three or four days, then it might be too late or you have to spray a little bit more.

So there's a cost there in doing that or hey, I don't have to spray.

The disease threat is zero so you get to save that spraying.

So it's really an an economic tool.

It's a very strong value proposition for agriculture in the state.

It's really hard to estimate how much knowing that actually saves, but the estimates could be a hundred million dollars a year just for the state of North Dakota.

And so in turn that value proposition, saving farmers money, increasing their profits, increasing their profits, of course then that goes onto the local town, spreads out.

You know, every dollar as we know economically gets spread out multiple times.

So it's really a large benefit for the state.

But that's just agriculture.

So you know, we've worked with the Metro Flood Diversion Authority here in Fargo, put all season gauges so we can measure that liquid in the snow in the winter in multiple locations so we know all winter long where are we going to be for precipitation.

We've worked with the Red River Joint Water Resource District, the Devil's Lake Joint Water Resource Board and other agencies in the Army Corps of Engineers to just bring this data in.

So in turn we have such a much better understanding of what may possibly happen in the future.

And again, all of these are strong value proposition, which in turn is why I just love my job.

- Well, you answered a couple of questions, of course the farmers one, but you mentioned two or three different scales there.

What's the difference of the scales or measurement or?

- Well, think of synoptic scale as a weather map.

If you watch the weather tonight on some local broadcasting company, you know there'd be a map maybe with a area of low pressure, cold front, warm front, you know, that's more synoptic scale.

It would be like the Midwest.

Meso scale, again, depends on which definition you want to use, but a lot of times it's between that 40 and 60 mile range.

Think a county is meso scale and then micro scale is often times say Fargo-Moorehead and to some degree Bismarck.

The larger cities, that urban heat island that you develop in a very small area.

That would be more micro scale.

- Yeah, so what kind of weather pattern is North Dakota in right now?

- Right now, most of this winter we've been in what we would refer to as northwest flow.

And northwest flow is the upper level wind generally this winter is coming from the Northwest.

And if you think about it, what is to the northwest of North Dakota, the prairie provinces, the Rocky Mountains, there's not like a big ocean up there any place.

And it tends to be our dry flow.

So when we have our dry seasons or our dry decades, they're dominated by Northwest flow.

If the flow comes in from the southwest, say from California, Colorado, those storms as they're creeping up towards us, can pull in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, America, whatever you wanna call it.

That moisture streams up.

That's where our big storms come in.

So say the winters of '09, '10, '11, that were so extremely wet, we were under southwest flow almost those entire winters.

And so those are the two dominant flow patterns that we get here in the northern plains.

And one is wet and one is dry.

And so that's why you'll go a couple, three years really, really wet, and sometimes you go six, seven, eight years where it's dry, you know, because, you know, it's always that constant reminder.

Most people know this, but North Dakota, Minnesota, you know, the upper Midwest and northern plains here, we have one of the most dynamic, ever changing climates of where anyone lives in the entire world.

So it's never boring here for more than a day or two.

- Well, yeah, and so what do you foresee for this summer, spring and summer?

- Well, I was just up in New Rockford speaking on this just last evening when this was being recorded at least.

And in turn, you know, it just this summer to me there's a lot of things going on globally, and when you're forecasting that far in advance, what I do and a lot of other long range forecasters, and there's not a lot of us, but you use analogs, and analogs is going, looking in the past for similar conditions.

For instance, there's a very weak La Nina in the Pacific Ocean right now, and that's the cooling of the equatorial Pacific waters.

There's been eight of these events since 1980, weak La Ninas, okay?

And when I look back at those, six of the eight summers following that, most of North Dakota were dry, drier than average.

Not necessarily like dry, super bad drought or anything, just drier than average.

And so right there gives you a hint.

And there's other things happening in the Pacific right now, and all of these things, most of the time not always, 'cause every year's unique is they're a little bit drier.

And so I go, you know, there's, I go through it one by one, you know, there's four things here that all point towards most of the time when that happens, the summer ends up being a little drier than average.

Last summer, outside of the Devil's Lake basin was drier than average.

Western North Dakota, you know, had a very severe drought and are still extremely dry at this point, you know.

We'll wait till spring and see if we can get some moisture out in that part of the state.

So that's my ongoing forecast is I just think for most, 'cause one thunderstorm will change this area.

There's always, you know, a spot that's wetter or drier than other spots because of thunderstorms.

But I think as a whole it just looks a little dry to me at the moment, so that's what I've been forecasting, but I always tell people it's the future.

You know, you have to take it, you know, I have a pretty good track record with this, but again, Mother Nature will do what Mother Nature does.

- Absolutely, so let's talk a little bit about maybe a controversial subject, climate change.

Where do you come down on this topic or what do you think?

- If you would've told me 35 years ago when I started in the business, that weather would be so politicized, I probably would've rolled my eyes at you and gone that's not, impossible.

And when you talk climate change, there happens to be a crack in the table that we're sitting on.

I try, you know, you go in the tightrope, if I say one thing or the other, this side or this side thinks I'm a quack, and I try to be a scientist about it.

But you know, a lot of what you hear just, you know, isn't necessarily true.

It's the extreme stuff that, you know, let's bring that back a little bit.

The world's not gonna end in five years.

How many times do you see a politician or someone saying, you know, if we don't do something, five years from now, this is gonna happen.

And it never happens.

Humans have an impact on the climate.

Most good research suggests that it's gonna be fairly mild.

But the reality is all we know is carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.

It will attribute to some warming.

No one knows exactly how much, and no one really knows what the impacts are.

Those are the true statements in that statement.

And all good scientists, good reputable scientists would agree with that comment.

You know, some people go, oh, no, Daryl, they said this, or no Daryl, they said this.

But that's, you know, where, really what it is.

Why I love my job at NDAWN in particular is climate or weather resiliency.

We're building for it.

You know, we live in this climate.

You know, Devil's Lake has gone dry in the last 1200 years.

Devil's Lake has overflowed into the Cheyenne naturally in the last 1200 years.

You know, these things happened in the past.

What caused those?

What happened to the great droughts of the 13, 1400s?

If you look at proxy data, the weather had been more extreme in the past than it is right now.

That's not to say that humans don't have an impact.

I just have to say that there's a lot of noise then there, and that's why there's ongoing research and moving forward.

But in turn, you know, the reality is here, people might not wanna hear this, and I might get a nasty email or two about saying this, but CO2 levels are not gonna drop.

So would the best thing of action just be climate resiliency for now and plan, and that's, you know, why I enjoy my part of NDAWN and when we're doing that.

So it's a very complex issue.

Far, far more complex than say a given news story or what most people think.

- Yeah, I'm sure you've observed Los Angeles fires, the horrors out there.

Can you talk about what the factors and causes were out there?

Is it water supply, land mismanagement, or does just climate play a big role in this?

- Well, they're a wet/dry climate there.

They're a Mediterranean climate.

Fires are natural and important into the environment, and in turn there it's just land use management.

You know, they weren't allowed to do trimming around their properties, manage the possibilities of fire.

Can you imagine people in Fargo-Moorhead just planting highly flammable plants around your house on purpose and then you get one arsonist and look the horribleness that it happened.

But again, that's a, you know, it is a natural component of that climate because those plant species need fire in many ways to do regeneration.

Not, don't, you know, take away the fact that, you know, obviously I feel horrible.

I mean it's just tragic beyond words.

But you know, to blame climate change on that to me would be a little bit of a stretch.

It was mismanagement, human induced, arson that did it.

And you know, water supplies at the moment.

It was just a bunch of things went wrong.

No one does any of these things on purpose, you know, and it's just bad things sometimes just happen, and it's tragic.

- Quick flip, I mean, what about hurricanes in Florida?

Obviously the wet and the water up there.

Does it seem to be getting worse in the past decade?

- Well, the Atlantic Ocean, and that's what most Americans see, the Atlantic Ocean has gone through a phase of more hurricanes.

There's reasons for it.

One of that reasons is the Atlantic Ocean has a multi-decadal oscillation pattern.

Right now the Atlantic Ocean is in its warm phase when you tend to get more hurricanes.

Globally, there's no trend to hurricanes in the last 50 years.

Zero trend.

And if you wanna really, technically the trend is down, but it's not down statistically significant.

So that's what, you know, you always have to intervene.

You always hear this stuff, but hurricanes have always existed in the Atlantic for literally, there's proxy data that there's hurricanes in Kansas when Kansas was underneath the ocean, you know, multiple millions of years ago.

So when you place that many people, if the 1940s happen again in Florida, you haven't seen anything yet in bad stuff happening 'cause the 1940s had five very serious hurricanes go through when the population was probably less than a million people.

Now I do believe they're somewhere in the teens, Florida, millions, so when you put that much infrastructure in and then, you know, everyone, well, look at the billion dollar disasters.

Well, there's more targets, you know, now.

So that's one of those things again, humans, you know, we should have a little bit more common sense on building and such.

- Yeah, well, we're about out of time, but what's the most common question asked of you, well, as it relates to weather and things from the public?

- It really depends on the season.

It really kind of goes through cycles.

You know, lately it's what's our frost depth, and I'll get that over and over again.

Or Daryl, you know, there's no snow on the ground, and you know, and lately it depends where they're calling from.

Like, and I go, well, Fargo, for example, this, so far this winter we're ranked 36th least snowy winter.

And people go, huh>?

Yeah there was 35 winters with even less snow than this.

And it's always to refresh their memories that you remember the snowy years because bad things, you know, you had to work hard, and it was a different winter.

No one remembers the winters where there wasn't no snow.

This is not as unusual as people make it out to be.

So again, it really depends on the time of year, but trust me, the questions are always coming.

- Yeah, well, I wish we had more time for questions and answers, but if people want more information, where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- Well, you can contact me for any number of things, and I will take you.

If I can't answer 'em, I'll push you to somebody that I know.

I'm pretty easy to find.

I'm sure I was supered at some point during this lecture, and I'm at NDSU as a state climatologist.

If you put North Dakota State Climatologist or something, you would find me.

My phone number is on there for people and my email.

I will welcome all questions.

- Daryl, thanks for joining us today.

- [Daryl] It's great to be here today.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) Minnesota is known as the land of 10,000 Lakes.

And from the state's earliest years, lake life has been a major part of its culture.

The legacy of the Lakes Museum and Gardens in Alexandria, Minnesota is a testament to Minnesota's lake culture.

(upbeat music) - We're not just boats.

We are an entire museum dedicated to lake life and lake culture and the history of boating as an industry.

We have so much to offer that even if boats aren't your thing, you'll still love this museum.

(upbeat music) The Legacy of the Lakes Museum started when a group of individuals who either summered at the lake or were lake residents or lived in Alexandria, got together in the mid 1990s, and they wanted to preserve wood boat craftsmanship.

They thought that it was something that deserved to be recognized and preserved.

We were officially incorporated in 1999 as the Minnesota Lakes Maritime Society, and we were able to open up the museum itself here in 2006.

Our mission at the Legacy of the Lakes Museum is officially to celebrate lake life and lake culture and preserve that for future generations.

In 2016, we switched our name from the Minnesota Lakes Maritime Museum to Legacy of the Lakes Museum to more broadly encompass things beyond wood boats.

So we still have a very large wooden boat collection, but we also do things like art displays, photography, swimsuit history, resort history, fishing gallery.

It's not just boats, it's so much more.

(upbeat music) We usually open mid-May.

We're open through October 31st every year.

And the reason behind that is that these wood boats, they have to go in special storage so that they don't dry out.

We wanna preserve them as long as possible.

So in the winter months, that's a little bit more difficult.

So we shut down the museum.

(upbeat music) Our main collection, of course, is our over 100 watercraft.

So that's everything from a 1970s version of a jet ski to an 1894 launch to 1950s wood classic runabouts.

And we just try to focus on how do we interpret these boats with different stories.

We have lots of unique and rare watercraft in here.

Several of them are one of a kinds.

One of our very unique boats here is one of only two that remain as built.

It's a Naptha launch from 1895.

It's called Frida.

Naptha is like a low grade gasoline, kinda like lighter fluid, but it worked like a steam engine.

So instead of boiling water, you boiled the Naptha, which at the time was actually safer than boiling water.

They didn't last very long.

During the World Wars, they were stripped of all their copper fittings for the war efforts.

So to have one that has its original engine with all its fittings is a very unique and rare thing.

The Falls Flyers are made by Larson Boat works, and Larson is one of those brands that's kind of synonymous with Minnesota and has a lot of recognition.

The Falls Flyers came about in the 1930s.

They were heavily inspired by Charles Lindbergh's JN-4, Jenny Biplane, and Charles Lindbergh of course is also from Little Falls, same as Paul Larson.

And they were classmates and friends, and so he made these Falls Flyers in kind of a tribute in honor of his friend.

(upbeat music) You can also see things like the history of Alexandria Boat Works.

It's one of the very first boat works ever in the state, and it was around for over 100 years.

These little boat works were all over Minnesota.

Why?

It's 'cause lakes are very prevalent in Minnesota, and boats were essential to commerce and recreation on lakes.

We tell the story of local resorts and why people have come to Minnesota for years because of the lakes.

Water skiing was invented in Minnesota on Lake Pepin, which of course also borders Wisconsin.

But because the inventor Ralph Samuelson lived in Minnesota, we get the credit.

He had this idea that if you're able to ski on snow, you should be able to ski on water.

So he took a pair of snow skis and was pulled behind a powered boat and was able to stand up.

And that is where water skiing was developed, and it really rapidly developed after that.

(upbeat music) Alexandria is one of those communities where we have a very vibrant, permanent residency all year round, but we do also have people who return to the lakes every summer and have been doing that since as early as the 1880s.

If you could afford to, you would wanna come out to the lakes and just take in the cool breezes.

Fishing was a really large thing.

There were train companies that would specifically sponsor tickets and excursions if you booked with them to different resorts.

And so from this, you get this lake culture of going to the lake.

It does make Minnesota special, and the ways we enjoy the lakes now are not that different than how we enjoyed them 100 years ago.

We are so incredibly supported by many different communities, not just our local community here in Alexandria, but also the wood boat community.

People love coming in here.

Even if you're not into boating, you can still appreciate these boats as art forms because it is a craftsmanship that went into making these boats, and they were aware of every detail that went into these boats.

We get visitors from far and wide because they've seen us advertised or stories have been written about us in different boating magazines.

We do a classic boat show every year in July, and so we have lots of involvement from the wood boat community in that.

And the community here in Alexandria who come out to see all the wood boats.

(upbeat music) It's important to preserve the history of lake life and lake culture because it's very ingrained into who we are as Minnesotans and Minnesota culture and Minnesota history.

People have been coming to lakes in Minnesota for generations.

With the land of 10,000 lakes, what makes us special is our lake life and lake culture.

And so it's just a story that we wanna tell and make sure people are aware of.

(upbeat music) - Well, that's all we have for "Prairie Pulse" this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the Members of Prairie Public.

(upbeat music)