Saturday May 2nd… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog 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).😉
Main Topic: Dipole Pattern To Produce Record Chill In Midwest And Northeast Late Next Week
Dear Diary. Despite the fact that the globe is warming due to carbon pollution, we do occasionally see weather regimes that produce anomalously cold conditions, some of which can be record breaking. One such weather regime appears likely for the Midwest and Northeast late next week.
A few days ago I noted that we would be seeing the return of the dipole in North America:
By Saturday of next week we see should see the dipole wave pattern at 500 millibars at its most extreme amplification for this month over North America. A typically centered on Hudson Bay cold vortex will get dislodged southward into the northeastern United States:
Note the purple to white colors of the vortex over the Northeast indicating a very cold anomaly by May standards. I contend that the combination of the warm ridge poking northward along the West Coast northward to Alaska and warm ridge nosing northward through Greenland are responsible for this dipole pattern, both of which have global warming signatures.
By next Sunday thickness values will be very low across the Great Lakes and Northeast. Today’s models are even indicating some lake effect snow in Upstate New York, which is almost unheard of in May:
A winter type “clipper” system may also be moving through the Midwest as noted by the small system over Iowa. Whether it will be cold enough to see snow from this system remains to be seen.
Ahead of the cold regime it will already be chilly in the Midwest and the Northeast on Friday while the Southwest will continue to bake under the warm ridge:
As of today, next Friday is as far out as we can get good national temperature charts from Pivotal Weather. I’ll be posting more of these temperature charts for next weekend by early next week as we get closer to the verification time for this chilly forecast.
From Tom Moore, one of my former coworkers from the Weather Channel who, like me, was a TWC Pioneer:
This upcoming cold weather may exacerbate already horrid COVID-19 problems in Michigan and the Northeast since viruses sometimes loosen their grip on populations during warmer weather. We still don’t know how warmer weather will interact with COVID-19, though, but…
Now here are some of today’s articles and notes on the horrid COVID-19 pandemic. (As usual, the most noteworthy items will be listed first.):
Here is more climate and weather news from Saturday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)
We continue to receive very hot “ET” reports from West Texas:
(If you like these posts and my work please contribute via the PayPal widget, which has recently been added to this site. Thanks in advance for any support.)
Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”