If You See this New Color on a Minnesota Weather Map, Don’t Go Outside

There's a new interactive weather map that could be a big benefit for us here in Minnesota. For us, it will be most useful in the summertime and one particular color on the map is basically a warning to not go outside.

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I love the heat of summer. Especially if you can spend the extra hot days on the beach, cooling off in the water when you need to. But for some people, heat isn't their friend. If you're one of those people, this new interactive map will definitely be helpful for you.

New Heat Risk Interactive Map

It's called a Heat Risk map. It was put together by the National Weather Service and the Center for Disease Control.

The website Scientific American writes that in a press conference, CDC Director Mandy Cohen said, “We know heat can impact our health, but heat-related illness and death are preventable." And so they created this interactive map.

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What this map does is it will show you the heat risk levels across the country. On the NWS website, they describe it as a "forecast risk of heat-related impacts to occur over a 24-hour period."

In order to determine a heat risk level, there are three factors considered:

• How unusual the heat is for the time of the year
• The duration of the heat including both daytime and nighttime temperatures
• If those temperatures pose an elevated risk of heat-related impacts based on data from the CDC

Based on these factors, the NWS will assign a correlating color to the map to illustrate the heat risk level. That brings us to the different colors and what they mean. And which one means 'stay inside'.

If You See This Color on Your Forecast Map, Stay Inside

The first color is a very light green. That means there's no heat risk for that area.

Then you've got yellow, which means there's a minor level of risk.

Orange means there's a moderate level of risk. Red means there's a major level of risk. And finally, there's what they're calling magenta (it looks more purple to me but whatever).

Magenta means there's an extreme level of risk because of the heat. The official description on the map says:

"This level of rare and/or long-duration extreme heat with little to no overnight relief affects anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration. Impacts likely in most health systems, heat-sensitive industries and infrastructure."

So if you're checking this map and the color is magenta, it's best to stay inside! And that's for everyone. As for people who are sensitive to heat, they say that yellow will affect some of you, but orange will affect most if not all who are heat sensitive.

Red is also a color on the map that everyone should pay attention to but it's not nearly as extreme as magenta. They say that if you're going out when the color is red, make sure you're able to cool yourself down and have enough water.