Latest / Being Minnesotan / Episode 5: Extremes

Transcript

Episode 5: Extremes · Being Minnesotan

• S1E5 Extremes audio: Welcome to Cave Pod, number one talk rock for Make Cave Good and Hunt Gather Food. Me Brian. Me talk. You listen. Ugh. Brian, what are you doing? Well it's our Halloween episode. You just wanted an excuse to wear a wig, didn't you? Yeah, I miss having hair. Welcome to Being Minnesotan, the pod show for people who would never take the last piece of candy. In this episode, we're talking about extreme weather with Paul Huttner, hearing from one of the Twin Cities' youngest emerging artists, and reaching new heights in the boundary waters. This is episode 5 with your hosts Emiline Childs and Brian Clapper. We join them now next to Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. Good morning Brian. Good morning. what a perfect fall day here in the Twin Cities. A beautiful fall day. It is. So we are in Linden Hills. We've got Lake Harriet right behind us. this is actually one of my favorite neighborhoods. Okay. Do you spend much time here? Not really. I mean I I get here every once in a while on my bike and I get here for work, but I don't spend a whole lot of time wandering around. It's very cool. I think from the homes to the trees and the lake and not just a couple blocks from here, there's A whole one of my favorite neighborhoods in all of the Twin Cities. There's this really lovely children's bookstore. There's lots of restaurants. it's just such a great place to come, bring the family. You can hang out for hours. And so I'm really glad that we're here today. Yeah. for sure. we are actually at the streetcar museum. Yeah. Did you know that we had streetcars at one point? I knew I I wish that we still had them. Yeah, it's a shame that they went away. I'm glad that we have some public transportation, but for a long time it was buses or bust. Didn't we have like the One of the largest streetcar networks in the country at one point? That I I don't know that much. but I think that yeah, it was it was very robust and then you know, things happen in history where they decided that well that we shouldn't be carting people around for free. No, I think it was th there's some conspiracy theory about you know somebody who owned a bus company getting involved. Yeah. But we used I mean you used to be able to go all the way to to Minnetonka on one side, all the way to White Bear Lake on the other side. Yeah. It's crazy that we don't have that anymore. It is, it is. But I'm glad that we have the museum and you can come. I don't know, it's not very expensive, just a few bucks, and you can actually take a ride on the train, learn all about the history. It's one of my fun favorite things to do. So yeah. It is unseasonably warm for Halloween. It is. It's really weird that it's gonna be in the mid seventies and we have Halloween next week. Because all Minnesota kids, all like yeah, upper Midwest kids know. You pick your Halloween costume based on if it will fit over your snowsuit. People probably have never heard this from somebody from our generation before. But in nineteen ninety one we had a little bit of a snowstorm during. I had no idea. huh. Okay, so t I couldn't keep a straight face through that. We kn we always talk about it. Everyone talks about it. We don't stop talking about it. We're gonna talk about it a little bit in this episode. Not too much. but you know we have to pay Om homage? I think that's the right word. Yeah. we have to honor. it's th it's been thirty five years. Yeah. Very cool. Makes me feel old. Do you remember it? I do. I was pretty young. I was like kindergarten first grade, I think. But I do remember being in my snow suit and the snow being on the ground and still plowing down the street to get my candy. I actually like I was eleven. I don't remember a ton about trick or treating that night other than I think I was wearing inadequate boots. But what I remember was the next day because all of the dads were home. in the neighborhood, all of the dads were home and it was like a snow day from school. It was like the greatest thing ever. It was like an extra weekend day, but like my dad didn't have to do yard work 'cause it was covered in snow. And I think that we had like one of our neighbors had a snowmobile and so we tar started going around our circle on a snowmobile and that was the first time my dad had ever used one and he picked it up as a hobby. fun because of the blizzard. Because of that blizzard, he picked it up as a hobby and did that for the next thirty years. I was in the wrong neighborhood because to this day I've never been on a snowmobile. But if I was your neighbor, maybe I would now have a lifelong passion for snowmobiling. Absolutely. so this week we are talking about extremes. Yes. the blizzard, of course, being one of those very extremes weather event. you know, I would say when most people think of Minnesota, they don't think extreme. Yeah. They think it's It's a place. There's it's lovely. It the Minnesota nights. I think people think extreme cold. Yeah, I I yes, exactly. Yes. And so I think our weather is probably one of the most extreme things about our state. And actually we do have some of the most extreme weather of any of the states, truly. With the bitter cold to the you know, it gets really hot here. People don't don't realize I think we have maybe the biggest temperature swings in the continental US. Yep, absolutely. And I'm really excited because this week we get to talk to a tried and true meteorologist all about it and I think there's nothing that Minnesotans love more than talking about the weather. Yes. And I also in this episode partook in some extreme sports. Ooh, tell me more. you know mountain climbing if you can call it a mountain. I was gonna say here here in Minnesota mountain climbing. It's I mean it's called a mountain. I don't know if it technically is, but Eagle Mountain. Okay, so where is Eagle Mountain? It is on the north shore, just outside of Grand Moray. It is I think twenty three hundred feet above sea level, so not really a mountain. Yeah. It was fun. Well, I wasn't there with you. I'm really excited to get to hear your story. When I started thinking about this episode and thinking about extreme things, I thought, well, we should talk to an actual extreme athlete like skydiving or something like that. But then I think once you mentioned the extreme weather angle, I was kinda hooked on that and then it also tied into the date of the thirty fifth anniversary of the Halloween blizzard and so we could talk about extreme weather and I think it works out perfectly. Yeah, I d I mean truly I think that it like I said, it is the most extreme thing. But there's There's actually lots of extremes if we think about it. We're at the extreme north of the country. we have the northernmost point in the contiguous United States in the northwest angle here in Minnesota. Yep. We are we border the largest freshwater lake in the world. Yep. That's pretty extreme. That's our beautiful north shore. And also if you just think about the geography of our state going from the, you know, southwest corner where it's just very flat, very much just you know, farm fields to the northern most point where it's very very much a forest that's where our mountains are. I think we also have the shortest distance between the state low point and the state high point. It's like twenty miles from the shore of Lake Superior to the top of Beagle Mountain. It's and it's a lot closer together than any other state. that's really interesting. Apart from maybe Hawaii. I'm not sure I'd have to double check that. Just real cl lot of cliffs happening up there. so yeah, so I'm really excited about this episode. I think it's gonna be A lot of fun for our viewers, like I said, and our listeners. we love talking about the weather. But we also I mean, think just in general, I'm really excited to hear your story and and watch you climb that mountain. climb is a really generous word. Mosey up the mountain. It's it's a long hike. It's not a short hike. So even though we are ahead of Halloween with this episode, it's not gonna be like super heavy into the Halloween theme, but I did love our cave pod cold open. Yes. I thought that was pretty great. And I'm glad you got to show No. Okay. I tried. But I think we should get into this episode. Yeah, let's go. Let's do it. Paul Huttner knows Minnesota weather. He was a constant presence on Minnesota Airwaves since the 1980s, first at WCCO and more recently at MPR until his retirement earlier this year. He's the perfect person to talk about extreme weather and especially the Halloween blizzard 35 years ago this week. He joins us at the Nine Mile Creek watershed district offices in Eden Prairie. People going to recognize you from? Hmm. Well, there's old schoolers and there's more recent people. The old schoolers might remember me from my days at WCCO TV. I started as an intern there in the early 1980s. I was going to school at McAllister College. And I got an internship there in the Weather Center. and it was awesome. And I was like, you guys are gonna have to kick me out of here. I did four semesters. I interned there for two years. And then eventually I went to Chicago, got a job, came back to CCO TV and worked there and started on the morning show from like eighty-eight to ninety-four. And then went to Chicago again, WGN went to Arizona for nine years, came back to CCO again until about two thousand seven. And then I got a gig at MPR News as their First chief meteorologist. So the younger crew might recognize me from twenty years about on PR news radio doing weather hits. Me, I am very much fangirling today. Like this is a big deal for me. So but yeah. No, the MPR, I think for myself and you know, a lot of people that I know, it's like you were our weather guy. You know, when someone was like, Well, I heard the weather was gonna be like this, I was like, Well, Paul Huttner said this. And he's always right. So y you were the first meteorologist at or chief first chief meteorologist at N at MPR. What was it like transitioning from a visual medium to radio and describing weather when you didn't have a map to show? Yeah. I I loved doing TV weather because I love telling stories with maps. When I transitioned full-time into radio, I love that because it's a different challenge because you have to paint the mental picture in people's minds. So it's a little theater of the mind, I came up with a thing called the Weather Lab, the Huttner Weather Lab, which was my my home office. And I let people fill in the blanks on what the rest of what was in there. And people would always come up to me and say, So what's the weather lab really like? So but yes, to be able to talk about a storm, a weather situation, and be able to paint the picture of that in people's minds is a different challenge, but I am really enjoyed that. Okay. Well I just on that point, it really helped me actually understand weather a little bit better because it wasn't just here's the forecast and here's a map. I'm like, I don't know what those lines mean, but you would describe it so well and then it that really helped me understand it better. Yeah, so you had time to get into a little bit of depth and a little bit of the science. We did. So it's kind of cool because in twenty years of TV, I was always telling my news managers, hey, listen, you know, people want more than the forecast. Weather has all these really cool concepts that people experience every day and we should be explaining those. And they're like, Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. So I'd sneak it in there when I could. When I get to MPR, they're like, Paul, we want you to talk about the science behind the weather. Want you to talk about the why of weather. And I'm like, Yes. My time is around the right spots. Yeah. So it it turned out very well. I never pictured when I started in a T V career that I'd end up at public radio for 20 years, but it turned out great. Yeah. And you said you you attended McTe McAllister. Does that mean did you grow up locally? I did. I'm I grew up in a little place called Deep Haven in the western suburbs. Tonka High School grad, way back in the day in 1979. And then I ended up going to McAllister College. They didn't have a meteorology program per se, but they had a great geography department. And my advisor was a weather and climate guy. His name was Howard Milky. And so I was able to do take climatology, take certain classes in independent study under him. And then I also fit in that four semesters worth of an internship in the WCCO TV Weather Center. So between all those and some independent study with a guy named Dr. Walt Lyons, I was able to match those American Meteorological Society criteria for membership and for certification. So that's what it how I ended up. That was my path through that. Okay, so you you interned at CCO, this would have been in the 80s. Yeah. And then you left for Chicago? Correct. I I was in the in the CCO Weather Center in college, early to mid-80s, graduated from McAllister in 1985. In 1986, I got my first real weather job, which was at a place called Weather Command in Chicago. And they were a meteorological Consultant, they're still around. and they did they had a bunch of diverse clients. Like I did forecasts for gas and electric utilities. We had to precisely forecast the temperature for their daily load because if they get it wrong, they've got to buy power on the spot market and it's super expensive. So, you know, I always say when you flip your light switch, think about us, because there's a meteorologist in that light switch. I had no idea. That is very interesting and makes total sense. Yeah. so I did that and we did a nuclear forecast for a plant there, which I lived eight miles from, so I was into that. And then we also had like twenty-five radio stations, including WBBM in Chicago, which is a news radio station. And the th that was where I really sort of cut my teeth on broadcasting. Okay. And then what year did you come back here? So eighty-eight, I came back. And got a job in the CCO Weather Center. I was managing their cable weather channel. They had an old WCCO cable weather channel, super kitschy, super great. Somewhere there's video of that on YouTube. See if we can dig it up. Yeah. And also prepared forecasts every day, prepared graphics for the TV meteorologists. Within about a year, year and a half, I started doing some on-camera stuff. My first ever broadcast was. live from the Minnesota State Fair at the National Weather Service booth during Bud Kraling's noon weather report. He pitched it out to me. Right into the fire. What a great memory though. That's great. Bud Kraling was awesome. He was one of my mentors. He's the guy that taught me how to stand in front of the green screen and do the clicker and I'm doing the clicker and the clicker doesn't work and I just kind of look at him and he goes, Paul, sometimes you're just gonna have to tap dance for three minutes. But anyway, I started there and I got into TV and then eventually that evolved into me being on the morning news show that they started in late ninety one. So you would have been, I mean, a little bit green still in ninety-one. yeah. And how long were you on the air the night of the great Halloween blizzard? Yeah. So it was interesting because the in the days leading up to that storm, we knew a storm was coming. We were looking at the computer models. I remember us standing around the day before. in the weather center and looking at them printing out two inches of liquid. And at a ten to one ratio, that could be twenty inches of snow or more. And we're all looking at each other going, that's not really going to happen, is it? So I'm like, wait, we're the ones that are supposed to know if that's going to happen. Exactly. But oftentimes the models will overdo it. So we call our news managers over and we're like, hey guys, listen, this could be big if this if this pans out. And they're like, okay. And we didn't have a morning show at the time. So they're like, all right, Paul, you come in in the morning early, 5 30, and you can do updates until the rest of the news team gets in there. So I get up, it's you know 3:30, 4 in the morning. There's 12 inches of snow in my driveway, and it's snowing heavily, like at an inch or two an hour. I had to back out of my driveway three times in the ruts. To get out and go. And I lived in Minnetonka. And so I got up on 394, which was pretty new back then. And it wasn't plowed. there was a foot of snow. I was ripping rooster tails down. And I finally just buried it in the snowbank, right in my parking lot, a block from CCO, trudged in there, got on the air, started doing updates. about a half hour later, my news director, John Lansing, comes in and Sorel boots and a parka, and he's like, Paul? I want you to turn this into the weather channel. I want you to go on the air and stay on the air for as long as you can. And I'm like, cool. So we started doing these updates, and the thing was, nobody else could make it into the station. So none of the news anchors. Finally, Trish Van Pilsom made it in, and she was doing reports live from the roof while I was anchoring. So I ended up by accident being the sole anchor for the Halloween megastorm for CCO TV from about 536 in the morning until almost noon. my gosh, what a marathon. Yeah. And we were on probably forty-five or fifty minutes out of every hour once we started going. Did you find it hard to fill that time or was it just like thrilling and you wanted to just keep talking about it? It was thrilling. I mean was running on pure adrenaline. we had a few different setups. We had the weather desk where I could you know, show the radar, talk to camera. telestrate on that. and then we had the green screen, so I'd pop from there over to there. The technical crew and Lansing were setting me up with interviews like we had the head of the state patrol on. Okay. he was the guy who's like we advised no travel in the Twin Cities. And that was a moment where you could just like hear everybody breathe because the entire city was shut down. Yeah. so yeah I was pretty pumped and I and we c they kept interviews coming in. I was talking to the National Weather Service. so Yeah, I was good to go. Good. Yeah. That's fun. And I I think just in some quick research I was looking at looks like maybe that was the largest single snow event in Twin Cities history. It still is, which is remarkable. We got twenty-eight point four inches total in the Twin Cities. So think of it this way. A good snowstorm, I think, of you know, seven inches of snow is a pretty good snowstorm. Well, that was four of those, right? And the interesting thing about this storm is from a numbers standpoint. The twenty-eight inches, the highest snow total ever, the second highest is twenty-one inches. So this was a whole extra snowstorm on top of three snowstorms. And I am somewhat surprised that it still stands to this day. I figured we'd break that record by now. Right. But we haven't. Duluth got thirty-six inches. Superior Wisconsin got forty five inches of snow. Wow. Yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting because people think of Minnesota, they think of snow. Minnesota, right? Right. But we don't come close to some of the snow totals that other cities have. We just have it consistently all winter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean some of the mountain locations obviously up in Colorado, they're getting hundreds of inches of snow. Park City, Utah, you know, those places. but yeah, we once it Once it sticks, it usually stays around. The interesting thing about that year is it didn't. we got that snow and it was super warm when the before the storm. So the first couple inches melted on the freeways and then froze as all the extra snow fell on top of it. That's the nightmare. And then it got super cold. So three ninety four was like a tank test. It was rutted for like a month. But then eventually it melted later in November and we got another Heavy snow. So we actually didn't keep that snow all winter. That surprises me. I w I wouldn't have thought it would get so warm through November that it would have melted. Interesting. Yeah. Well it's interesting to me because I I was eleven, when that happened. And a lot of things you think you your memories as a kid, you don't quite have them in perspective. They seem like they're much bigger deals than they were. Would you say that our our perspective on that blizzard is Is it accurate? Is it within scope of what it should be? Do we maybe exaggerate it in its importance? Yeah. Well, people make fun of it now, which is great. Right. Well, everybody in our generation talks about it nonstop. That's right. I look at it this way: it is the singular weather event for Minnesota from that perspective. Now, this storm could have occurred on Thanksgiving or Christmas or Valentine's Day, and I'm sure people would still be talking about the big Christmas storm from 1991. and you know, the fact that it occurred on Halloween made it even cooler. But the real thing about this is that the meteorology of it was so rare and so unique that it is a singular weather event. We've never had that much snow, or really even close to it out of a single storm. the Minnesota DNR Climate Office lists their top five weather events of the 20th century. And the first one is the Dust Bowl in the thirties. The second one's the Armistice Day Blizzard of nineteen forty. Third is the Halloween blizzard. Okay. Ninety one. That's the only one that many of us live through and remember. Yeah. So really, for most of our lifetimes, this is the storm of a lifetime. Well, that fits in with our theme of this episode, which is extremes. It's it is the most extreme weather event most of us have experienced in Minnesota. Yes, without a doubt. And the the other one, the fifth is the nineteen sixty five tornado outbreak, which I'm old enough to remember. That's actually my first living memory. And that's what prompted me to want to become a meteorologist. Wow. Like what I assume that you got into this career because you love weather. Absolutely. And and you would say that that was the sort of defining moment? Without a doubt. I was four years old, my older brothers and sister came home from school. The sky was green, it's storming and hailing. We're picking up these big, huge fifth-size hail chunks and putting them in the freezer. We had football helmets on because it was so coming down so hard. And then my mom comes out the door. You kids, get inside. Your father called, there's a tornado coming. My dad worked at the Minneapolis courthouse. He was a security guard there, and the police were there, and they had all the radio traffic. So he got wind that there was a tornado on the ground in Chanhassan heading for us in Deep Haven. And I remember watching that storm through the little basement window and then driving the next day to a neighborhood about a half mile away. Our house wasn't damaged, but those homes in Cottagewood were flattened. And that was an F four, F five tornado. And from that moment on I was like, I gotta know what did this. So that was your origin story, but in terms of extreme weather events, which do you think is maybe more impactful? Yeah, I think I think you have to say the Halloween Blizzard is it was actually a big break in my career too, because that morning our our news station did what we call a forty plus share. It's the highest ratings. And the news director called me over the next day and they're saying, Hutner, congratulations, you're the only person in the history of CCO TV with their own forty share. and by pure dumb luck, right? And accident, because they had intended that other people would come in and anchor the the storm. Right. And they just didn't make it. Yeah. So that was a big career break for me. I think that has to be the most impactful storm. Now I've worked a lot of other tornado outbreaks. The d the odd December fifteenth tornado outbreak a few years ago, I think it was twenty twenty two, I'd have to look it up, that was really unusual. The dome buster storm that that broke the Metrodome Twenty ten, I think it was. That was pretty big. Yeah. Yeah. you know, talking about extremes, there's not a lot about Minnesota that's super extreme except for our weather. And in particular, the temperature swings. you know, we have some of the coldest temperatures and then we get up there pretty warm. So do you have any stories or memories or just kind of interesting facts about that that we could talk about? Yeah, I think Minnesota is one of the top five states when it comes to all time temperature extremes. And I I'm might I might mess this up. It's a lookup thing, but sixty below in Tower is the coldest in Minnesota history. And I think it's a hundred and fourteen in Beardsley in the western part of Minnesota is the hottest ever. So that is a huge swing. A lot of states don't have that much variation. you know, that old thing if you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes. We get rapid changes because we're in the middle of the continent, we get air masses sweeping in from all directions. So this, really is the Super Bowl of weather, or maybe more like the World Series, because there's so many different kinds of weather that it's more like a seven game series. Yeah, I always I when I talk with people who are not from Minnesota, they're like, it it's it's a hundred degrees there today. And I'm like, Yeah, we literally have it all when it comes to weather, except for earthquakes and hurricanes. We do not have those, but We do have pretty much everything else. Yep, it it's a full employment act for meteorologists for sure. We'll be back to more with Paul Huttner, but first, let's go to the West Seventh neighborhood in St. Paul, to Mancini's classic Vegas Lounge, owned by the same family since 1948. Tony Bennett once played here, and it seems like the perfect place to catch up with an artist you've probably seen before, but likely haven't heard yet. I'm Obadai Gamble. I'm seventeen. I'm an artist, singer, producer, guitar player, music lover. I wanna congratulate you. You released your first album this year called Notice. why don't you tell us about it? How did it come to be? Yes, thank you. that's a lot Being my first project, it kind of came together over a long period of time. I mean as I was growing up I was kind of just making songs. some of those songs, the ideas were really old. I had this folder that was called like New Album Twenty Twenty One. But then that just became my joke because like I just wanted to make a project but it just kept like reforming itself. and so it took like five years for it actually to release as an album. but I'm sure you changed a lot at this time too. Yes, definitely. as I just kept changing what songs were in and what songs weren't. I got better as a producer too and realized like wow. I thought that song was really good a year ago. And then, yeah, my thoughts changed about that. But I eventually found like nine songs that like really resonated with me and I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna work on these now. It was really fun being able to arrange and produce and like kind of get out of my room and work with other like musicians and artists too. Well, and you just said your room and I was gonna say, did I read somewhere that you like? converted your closet into a recording studio. You literally meant your room. Yes. I most of it yes, most of it was done in my room. we got like violin, like clarinet, flute. Flute, I We brought a cello into the into the closet. I would I just picture the It's the tightest fit I think I've ever seen in any any s like room ever. it was it was a stretch, but we we got it working and That was a fun experience. But So those are all live instruments that you have on? most of them yes. I know yes. I think whenever I had an idea, I wanted it to be as authentic as possible. Of course technology is has its ways of being realistic. But you know, I was able to work with some great people and recorded drums on two songs. I recorded guitar at River Rock, it's now called Sun Dog Studios. Okay. and I did a bunch of stuff at home. But how would you describe the music on this album? I I love how kind of like different each song is, like an ethereal choral intro and then the folk singer, songwriter, guitar song and then goes straight to like a bossa nova love song. Like I feel like there isn't really just one way to describe this album. This is why I love it so much. Like I feel like I I love the people who have their thing. And I also like I'm still trying to find my thing. Yeah. And I feel like this album was an exploration of that. Who are some of your favorite musicians or musical influencer? Some people that have inspired me the most. songwriting, Adrienne Lanker, Lizzie McAlpine. I also take like production inspiration from Lizzie as well. Like I love the production on her. I had a Jacob Collier era. And I love people who are just like so unique and so mesmerizing and cool to watch. You grew up in a musical family, didn't you? Yes. My well my grandparents were in a folk Christian group called the Gamble Folk. They toured all around singing very beautiful songs and I admire their songwriting and musicianship. And my parents sing and have a have two musical theater companies. okay. So I grew up with a lot of musicals. but that wasn't really my thing. it was for my sisters, but not for me, even though I do appreciate musicals for sure. Some people in our audience might recognize you from something that you did when you were a little younger. You were like a a Vikings analyst on breaking the news. what do you remember about that time? Well I remember meeting Jana. I remember meeting her. It was in some restaurant near my house. I was young. I was very young. Like probably seven or eight, something like that. Yeah. I remember When she would come to my school and we would do interviews and I remember all the emotional roller coasters of being a Vikings fan, as many of you know. We're running high this season so far, but we'll see. But in my many years as a professional analyst you never know. How did it come to be? Like how did you even get started doing that? So It all started when I made that song for Teddy Bridgewater. yeah. and that caught her attention. Mm-hmm. I think I'd been on a different like news station 'Cause they wanted to ask me about it. and she saw something in me, I don't know what it was, but she was like, I want this crazy six year old kid to like analyze the Vikings. And so that went on for many years, and I just recently we had our last live interview because her show was taken off the air. it's just very sad. And there were so many people who love her loves her show and just like it's so inspired by her journalism and of course as a Gotten older, I've actually appreciated what she's been doing and right. You understand it a little differently than when you were eight. People like her are so important to like the media these days. Like we we need what she's doing. so we have brought you here to perform a song for us. What are you gonna sing today? I'm gonna sing the second song off of my album. It's called Wait. Awesome, let's do it. It's hard to put in words how I feel about you. Take them from You smile, the world stands still and I just watch you. Never had a If it's all in game why I feel the way For all the same while I feel the way If it's all again why drive the way For all the same white I feel the way I remember the day I first met you. Edge side man I could tell you everything from that day Hola But how'd I find the time? If it's all a game, why die if you go? If we're all the same, why feel wicked If it's all again why in life you believe if we're all the same white eye There are things that I wish I could tell you Made some mistakes. How wish I could depend every every moment of your life. I miss your emplace. If it's all again, why I feel the win? If we're all the same, why I feel the win? Control again why I feel like See my eye cause I try to push it inside. I feel like how I fell close to you. This world expans too fast like whatever's supposed to do. I can keep on If it's all a game I die same way that I felt if it's all again didn't you feel it I just wanted you to feel it I wanna say I love you but it's too Now here's more of our conversation with Paul Hutner. I I was at the point in my career where I was working on the morning show at WCCO that they had just started actually later that year. Okay. And so I was looking around and a a job came up in Chicago at WGN TV. They were starting a morning show. And so I applied, you know, kind of on a whim, and they called me and I went down for an interview and it turned out that they hired me. So in nineteen ninety-four, right after Labor Day, they debuted the WGN Morning News. So it was me and and Sonia Gant and Dave Eckert to start. But then they kind of turned it into this whole ensemble crew with Larry Potash and Robin Baumgarten, who they are still there today. They're the anchors of that show. They've been there for what is that, thirty years, thirty thirty-five years. so yeah, I did that for a couple of years. It was great fun. Tom Skilling was a chief meteorologist there. He's a legend in Chicago and really around much of the country. So it was great working with him. but I got tired of getting up at three thirty in the morning every day. So when my contract ended, I was kinda like, you know, I need to do something else. But you also if if I remember correctly, you were in Tucson for a bit. Yes. Louis Black, who's a comedian, has a great bit about how much boring it must be to be a meteorologist in San Diego. Say, what's the weather like Lewis? He says, nice. So is weather boring in Tucson? How many ways can you say sunny and hot? Yeah. Actually, it's less boring than people think it is, because yes, there's that period in the spring and early summer where it just kind of gets hotter every day and it's sunny most days. But they have a thing called the North American monsoon. So in July, August, September, moisture starts to come up from the south, from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. And they get these storms that build up over the mountains, not every day, but most days. And they come rolling off into the valleys, and they are they can be very severe. So they'll roll off the mountains and we'll get severe thunderstorm warnings, and it will dump rain. I mean torrential rains and they'll have flash floods. So it's very can be very exciting. And then during that time of year, you get the most amazing sunsets because the mountains and the storm and the lightning and the sunlight is playing and it's remarkable. And then in the winter, Arizona actually does get its fair share of winter storms where you get rain in the valleys and snow in the mountains. Sure. So it's less boring than people think it is. Truly. Yeah. Okay. And then from Tucson then you came back here. I did. Came back, kinda had the homing pigeon thing, right? Our son was gonna be in fourth grade. And we we're kinda thinking, you know, it'd be great to get him back in school here. It'd be great for him to be closer to his grandma. and so we did that. And I actually started working at CCO TV again for about a year and a half when the MPR thing came up. Sure. Sure. And tell me about Climate Cast. How did that get started? 'Cause that was last 12, 13 years? Yeah, it was 13 years by the time I left. so I had started studying and following climate change when I was in Chicago. I worked the Chicago heat wave that killed 700 plus people. wow. and and then when I went to Arizona, I was doing reports and working on with a climate group down there who was studying the Colorado River watershed and droughts and climate changes there. so I started doing climate stories there. when I got back to Minnesota and got into MPR, after a few years, I was like, guys, there's so much climate news, science, and solutions happening every week that we really should do a a show, a segment on this every week. And so I pitched it to them. It was twenty twelve, and they they liked it. So it started actually with Carrie Miller in her show in the morning every Thursday, once a week. And our first guest was Mayor R. T. Ryback from Minneapolis at the time. And then it just evolved into its own entity where it got moved around a little. We went to All Things Considered, and then we went to Morning Edition for a little while, but we went back to All Things Considered, where it mostly lasted for a good 10, 11 years. And it was awesome. I got to interview the the world's leading climate scientists. I got to interview CEOs from companies all around Minnesota, and and the US really that have discovered that climate change is not just a concept, it's in their bottom line and it's in their supply chains. I got to interview all kinds of people working in the climate space, clean energy. It was just a a really cool way to talk about the latest climate science, news, and solutions every week. And with the with with climate change, should we be expecting what has been extreme in the past to be more commonplace? Yes. The variability seems to be growing. Yeah. because the jet stream is changing. That's the theory, that's the science, and it's getting more amplified. So and it's getting stuck more often. So we get periods where we're wet, wet, wet, wet, and we get periods where we're dry, dry, dry. Droughts are f happening faster that flip the switch between drought and flood. That that the amplification of the hydrologic cycle, s there seems to be good evidence that that's happening with climate change as the planet gets warmer. Things are evaporating faster. There's more water vapor in the atmosphere. So when storms do come in, they have more water to work with and they're producing heavier precipitation events. So knowing that, if somebody asked you for a forecast for the next fifty years in Minnesota, just a general hey, what are we what can we expect in the next fifty years, what would you tell them? I'm I would tell them that our winters are gonna continue to shrink. they're gonna last Not as long. They're going to be shorter. It's going to be warmer on the fall end. Maybe not as warm on the spring end because the signal doesn't seem to be as strong there. we're going to have more warm-ups in the middle of winter that tend to eat up snow cover. We're still going to have a really good old-fashioned winter, maybe one out of every three, four, five years. But the majority of our winters are going to be milder, especially at night, and they're going to be shorter. And the other thing that's gonna happen is we're gonna continue to see an increase in these heavy rainfall events, localized heavy precipitation events, and we're gonna see more periods of drought in between. so you're retired about six months ago now, right? Yes. How's retirement going? Awesome. It's my golden summer. I played a lot of golf. I joined a Minnesota Golf Association senior tour, played some tournaments this summer. Still playing music, still playing hockey. And just letting the rest of it come to me. Just living the dream. Yeah. Well, I think on behalf of Minnesotans everywhere, I just want to say thank you for your long career, everything that you were able to teach us and share with us. It was great. Thank you. I really appreciate that. It means a lot to me. It's been an honor and a pleasure to talk to a Minnesota audience for you know the better part of my 40-year career. Yeah. Pretty great. Finally, we're hiking the boundary waters to one of Minnesota's extreme points, if you can call it that. I'm standing just shy of the summit of Eagle Mountain, the highest point in Minnesota, located just 13 miles south of the Canadian border in the Boundary Waters wilderness. For those of you listening to the audio version of the podcast, I'll do my best to describe what it's like at such extreme altitudes. And for those of you watching the video version, close your eyes for a few seconds and use your imagination. It's about 30 degrees below zero. The snow is whipping around me in the jet stream. My beard lined in frozen breath, the preserved bodies of unsuccessful climbers in their bright orange climbing gear strewn about the treeless expanse below me. The mosquito. Okay, so clearly the extreme high point of Minnesota isn't that extreme. After all, it's only 2300 feet above sea level, which puts our high point above Wisconsin and Michigan and Iowa, but below basically everything west of us, and even below Connecticut's high point somehow. The hike itself is a relatively short six and a half miles out and back with lots of rocks and roots and bugs, but only the last mile or so is actually steep. You need a permit because part of it is in the boundary waters, but it's free and you just fill out a tag in the parking lot. The last time I hiked to the summit was twenty years ago. And it was a fun afternoon activity just to say I had done it. But this year it actually means something, because this time the climb started in a hospital bed nine months ago. In December, I was recovering from a COVID infection. After reading my son a bedtime story, I got out of his bed and immediately collapsed, losing all sense of balance. In the emergency room, they said it was vestibular neuritis, saying I was just mildly dizzy from the COVID infection, and that I would recover with rest. They discharged me, and a few days later, my parents checked on me while my wife was working and discovered me barely responsive and somehow managed to get me back to the ER where they finally diagnosed me with a massive cerebellar stroke. I had suffered an arterial dissection in my neck which sent a clot into my brain. And because I had been misdiagnosed and discharged, the stroke had been allowed to continue for six days. This is all from what my family tells me because I have no memory of anything at all during about eight days of December. And if you've ever wondered if it would be weird to have a section of your recent memory clean the excised from your brain, yes, it's extremely weird. I'm not telling you all this for sympathy. I'm trying to explain where the lowest point of this climb was, and it was during those eight days. The type of stroke I had is rare and doesn't have a lot of telltale signs of a stroke, and is therefore often misdiagnosed. And when it's misdiagnosed, as mine was, cerebellar strokes have a 40% mortality rate. In other words, I'm only here because God flipped a coin and it came up Brian. I spent Christmas in the acute rehab facility at Regents in St. Paul, learning to regain my balance and walk with a cane and fight through a minor stutter and vision problems. Most of my after effects are now manageable, and I only need a cane for a day every couple weeks. My classmates in rehab were almost all older than I was, and it quickly became apparent that the luckiest part of my stroke was that it happened when I was 45. Because the younger you are, the more completely you can bounce back. Despite the fact that my stroke was large in size and long in duration, all of the therapists told me cautiously that I had a really good shot at a full recovery. And looking around at the afflictions my classmates would have to overcome, I vowed that I would never complain about my own difficulties. There was a man in his sixties who was now in diapers and didn't yet have the coordination back to transfer himself from his wheelchair to a bed. The woman who had lost the use of her right hand and sat alone looking bored and lonely in the common area because her daughter, the only relative who lived close by, had to work and couldn't visit her often. Meanwhile, my wife and kids and parents were in and out of my room constantly. My wife accumulated so many visitor stickers that she could have wrapped my Christmas presents with them. And there was a fellow rehab patient I'll call Robert. That's not his real name. Dangling from a contraption that can only be described as marionette strings while he tried in vain to get his right knee to respond to any kind of stimulus. We can talk about the determination required to summit the world's highest mountains or the bravery to jump out of an airplane and skydive. But is that any more impressive than the determination Robert had to get his knee to work again? We so often talk about extreme accomplishments as the destination. The summit is the reward, for example. But in a lot of situations, the most extreme thing you can do is just keep going. And while it seems somewhat unMinnesotan, it's okay to feel a little pride when you reach the top. It's a good thing to feel proud of yourself, even if the summit doesn't look at all extreme to the outside world. And today I'm proud of me. Okay, well that's the episode. Yeah. We have a few people to thank. I w I I need to thank my medical team, I'm still here. Yes. I thank thank you to them. We we all appreciate that. Yes. I wanna thank everyone at the Nine Mile Watershed District for letting us use their beautiful office space. and of course Paul Huttner for joining us. Yes. And Obadiah Gamble for singing us a song. And Mancini's Char House for letting us play there. Yeah. All right. Well