An absolutely historic weather event took place on Tuesday,
October 26, 2010. It occurred in the Midwest and especially in
the State of Minnesota. An incredibly intense low pressure
system tracked due north from southern into northern Minnesota.
As it was moving north it kept intensifying so that by Tuesday
afternoon it reached a pressure of 28.20 inches of mercury or
955 Millibars. This was the lowest pressure ever observed for
the interior U.S. The previous record was established over
Cleveland, Ohio back on January 16, 1978. That pressure reached
28.28 inches of mercury or 958 Millibars. To put Tuesday’s storm
into context, a lot of the hurricanes do not reach a pressure
this low. There have been instances when there has been a little
lower recorded pressure, but that has been in the Northeast U.S.
coastal areas with the help of energy from the Atlantic Ocean.
But again, for the interior U.S. we have never seen a pressure
as low as that observed over northern Minnesota on Tuesday.
There has been some talk