Minnesota’s changing climate contributed to record warming temperatures, prompting organizers to cancel the Twin Cities Marathon on Sunday, the first weather-related cancellation in the race’s 40-year history.
The temperature on Sunday officially reached a sweltering 92 degrees in the Twin Cities, with climate change likely adding “a few degrees of additional heat,” said Kenny Blumenfeld, senior climatologist with the state Department of Natural Resources. The fall surge is a clear fingerprint of climate change, he said. The previous record for the day was 87 degrees.
“This was an exceptional heat event for this time of year,” said Blumenfeld. “We don’t normally have 90-degree days in October.
“In the Twin Cities, this was the hottest October day on record, dating back to the 1870s.”
The heatwave followed the warmest September on record.
Climate change is driving the expansion of Minnesota’s hot weather season over time, meaning months that can see 90-degree temperatures, Blumenfeld said. The spikes will continue into the future, although the trend is limited because the location and strength of the sun in Minnesota in October is the same as in March, he noted.
The trend could potentially disrupt the Twin Cities Marathon again. The marathon, which attracts about 20,000 runners, typically takes place the first week of October — with the most desirable temperature range in the 40s, said Eli Asch, race director for the Twin Cities Marathon. However, since the marathon began in 1982, it has only been in the 40s about five times.
Asked whether the organization might move the marathon date to later in October, Asch said the 2024 race is confirmed for Oct. 6, the first Sunday of this month. But the organization takes many things into account when setting the date – and world-class implementation conditions are one of them, he said.
Marathons across the country are being held with cooler temperatures in mind, with Boston holding its race in April, New York in November and Louisiana in January. But Octobers in Minnesota are getting warmer. In each of the last three years, race day temperatures have reached at least the mid-70s. Since 2006, they have now risen above 80 degrees four times, having never been that high since the marathon began in 1982 until 2006.
When temperatures exceed 80 degrees, marathons can quickly become dangerous. More than 300 runners required emergency medical attention at the 2004 Boston Marathon, where temperatures reached 86 degrees. More than 300 people were picked up by ambulances at the 2007 Chicago Marathon as temperatures rose from over 70 degrees at the start of the race to 88 degrees by midday.
Climate change has hit Minnesota and the Upper Midwest hardest in the fall and winter, when temperatures rise fastest. It changes the way people recover. Minnesota lakes have lost ice cover for an average of two weeks since the 1960s. Weak ice earlier this year led to the cancellation of numerous fishing derbies and winter festivals. The DNR has had to change bag limits and catch-and-release regulations because more open water has led to more pressure from anglers. The country’s largest cross-country ski race, the American Birkebeiner, was canceled in February 2017 because there was no snow in northern Wisconsin.
As for the runners, they still have to make up for the missing marathon on Sunday.
“It feels like Christmas has been canceled,” said Ellen Szostak, a sales representative at Mill City Running, a running store and club in northeast Minneapolis. “All of our runners are in this strange situation, wondering, ‘What should I do, I’ve just been training for months!'”
Szostak said she was working on a master’s degree in public health and quickly linked the cancellation to the climate crisis. She is working with the Low Impact Alliance, a nonprofit founded in South Carolina, on a project about the environmental impact of the running shoe industry. Manufacturing the shoes releases large amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, she said. This needs to be turned around.
“Maybe a lot of these races need to be canceled so that brands realize that we as an industry have an impact on the climate – and if the races are canceled, customers won’t come to buy the shoe brands,” Szostak said.
“It’s a conversation we need to have.”