Friday August 21st… 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).😉
Some Good News…Western Heat Wave #Beelzebub Diminishes While Tropical Threats Linger
Dear Diary. With so much bad news coming from the United States weather sector in the last week I have a little good news to report today:
The area of extreme heat continues to shrink with most advisories confined to the deserts of the Southwest:
Also, it would appear that our double trouble tropical systems in the Atlantic will be running into obstacles for development. Despite being upgraded to tropical storm status this morning, the eastern most system, Laura, is now forecast to take a more southern track, which will move over the Greater Antilles Islands, discombobulating development until it gets into the Gulf of Mexico. Too, this could mean that the metropolitan Miami area will be off the hook, but that prospect is iffy as of Friday.
T.D. 14 remains a weak system and A) will be interacting with the Yucatan Peninsula, weakening the thing and B) could be a disorganized mess as it gets sheared from a deep trough digging down into the Gulf, or at least for the next couple of days.
One model that has consistently not developed these two systems has been the European, which has gained notoriety as having the best verification of any guidance the last couple of decades. We can’t entirely hang our forecasting hats on the European model, but certainly those hoping that these two tropical systems will be duds can look to this piece of guidance with hope.
Nevertheless, any circulation that survives transit, going into the Gulf, could experience explosive development due to well above average sea surface temperatures, so we must not let down our guard.
Today, as usual, I will be linking both heatwave and tropical threat articles and notes from experts to this post. The latest information, which will be updated, will appear at the top of this list:
And the western fires:
Here is another big “ET” from Thursday:
And from overseas:
Here is more climate and weather news from Friday:
(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.)
Now here are some of today’s articles and notes on the horrid COVID-19 pandemic:
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Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”