Duluth set a record high Wednesday on a day when the temperature at the lake at one point warmed 40 degrees in just 20 minutes.
For most of the day the temperature was in the 30s and 40s along the waterfront while it climbed into the 70s and 80s at Duluth International Airport. By 3 p.m. there was a 42-degree spread between Duluth International, at 87 degrees, and Sky Harbor Airport, at 45.
Lake Superior was keeping temperatures down near the water while gusty south winds were blowing record hot air up from southern Minnesota, according to the National Weather Service.
But then, at about 5 p.m., in an incredibly quick change, the temperature at Sky Harbor rose to 86 degrees in just 20 minutes.
The warm air finally won out near the lake, carried on a sudden southwest wind gusting to 40 mph.
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About the same time, the ultimate high at Duluth International reached 88, breaking the old city record of 87 set in 1925.
Sky Harbor Airport manager Dave Werner was just leaving the harbor about 5 p.m. after a day of seeing his breath. He noticed the abrupt warm-up as he climbed the hill downtown, but didn't realize it was warming up just as much behind him.
"Eighty-six? I definitely wasn't there for that," Werner said.
Neither was Alan Dartanyan, who publishes the Park Point Breeze newsletter.
"I had actually gone to rent a trailer in West Duluth," he said of a jaunt when the temperature rose. "It was easily 30-40 degrees warmer out there."
Dick Gould was at home on the Point, where after a trip to a steaming Pike Lake, he said his thermometer didn't reflect the reported momentary heat wave.
"My thermometer said 47 degrees," he said, adding he got in his truck and watched the outside temperature reading on a drive back toward the mainland.
"It was 46 all the way down to the bridge," he said, speculating the high temperatures at Sky Harbor "could have been a breeze that blew across from Superior."
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By 6 p.m. the wind swung back around to the north and the temperature at Sky Harbor sunk back into the 40s.
* On Tuesday, another sort of record may have been set when at 4 p.m. it hit 100 degrees in Granite Falls while it was just 34 along the waterfront in Grand Marais. Pete Boulay of the Minnesota Climatology Office said that may be unprecedented.
"A temperature range of 40 degrees at the same time in Minnesota happens on occasion, but a range of 60 degrees or more would be quite rare, and a range of 66 degrees may be unique," Boulay said.
