Sunday May 27th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials)😊. Here is today’s main climate change related topic:
Killing Heat
Summer has come way too early for the Plains and Midwest where people are having to be cognizant of high temperatures well above 90F. It remains to be seen whether or not the budding heat wave we currently have there will mature into a truly historic, stifling event. I don’t want to poo poo my meteorological profession, but one reason why the public doesn’t worry or pay too much attention to weather and changing climate is because the historic death toll in association with both through 2018 is just not that high, particularly in the United States. Traffic accidents, cancer, and war, for example, are far more lethal. This good fortune on the weather front is a result of a great warning system by the National Weather Service. As we have seen internationally, though, as in the case with Syria, heat can lead to drought leading to a very lethal war. I imagine that it would take maxes getting close to 120F throughout the Plains for several consecutive days to see widespread death despite air conditioning, but thankfully global warming isn’t at that level yet.
Nevertheless, heat in 2017 was second to the top dog of flooding as far as weather related deaths go for the United States. This is significant in light of Harvey, Irma, and Maria:
Oh my! Speaking of flooding it looks like there have been two thousand year floods in the space of only two years in portions of Maryland: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/05/27/second-1000-year-flood-two-years-slams-historic-maryland-city Quoting from this article:Ellicott City was still recovering from a flash flood two years ago that killed two and forced the historic city to rebuild much of its Main Street. Residents said Sunday’s flood seemed even worse than the storm in July 2016 — which was called an extremely rare “one-in-1,000 year event,” and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in damages.
An emergency warning was issued by the National Weather Service at 4:40 p.m.
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