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 Returns, Continuing To Dry, Bake, And Freeze Most Of The Nation
Dear Diary. We’ve been concentrating on the Southeast the last week, which has been ravaged by Hurricane Delta in Louisiana, then soaked as the system lifts north and east through the bulk of the region. Well, what about the rest of the nation? What other effects of climate change are going on and will continue this new week?
The signs of climate change outside of Delta’s influence were plentiful last week. Drought expanded its tentacles throughout the West and Plains:
A strong heat dome anchored over the West shut down the monsoon over the summer. We saw two historic heat waves from September into early October due to a continuation of heat domes building over the West. Last week the October heat wave I nicknamed Desdemona finally relented, but the western ridge did not allow fall rains to commence in California and blocked any weather systems that would produce rain in most of the parched West. The ridge will start to build again later this week:
The drought, in combination with westerly downslope winds, has prompted the National Weather Service to issue fire watches in the western High Plains area for today:
An expanding heat dome in the southern U.S. has produced many heat records this weekend in the south-central states. This regime of summer heat will continue through today:
During my near 40 year career as a meteorologist I have noticed that the jet stream remains mostly phased over the continental United States during La Niña winters, such that southern branch systems rarely split off from the main jet. This splitting action produces many precipitation storms as they move across the United States. Phased systems often become tremendous winter storms if they dig into the West then lift out unto the Plains and East. If phased systems dig into the Midwest first and then the East, we are left with a dry, cold weather pattern for the eastern United States, and a warm to hot dry pattern in the West.
Such will be the pattern by next Sunday with the ridge gradually building over the West. I’m afraid that another stubborn to change dipole pattern will occur:
If it persisted for the rest of the fall into winter, the effects of such a dipole pattern would be devastating for the West and Plains that desperately need rain and snow. In the short term more record heat with very high fire danger will occur in California and much of the West through this week into the third week of October.
We are way overdue for a weather pattern that will produce some record chill in the United States. It looks like the coming pattern starting next weekend will be very cold by October standards for most of the Midwest. The South and East may also see record chill if we get the jet to dig further southward into the third week of October:
In any case, we will probably see a very amplified pattern producing quite a number of both heat and cold records through the next ten days:
As usual, I’ll be listing these records in the next few weeks.
BTW. Good luck to Edgar’s little tree planted in Southern California during the rest of this dry fall:
Here are some “ET’s” from Sunday from the south-central states:
Here are some big overseas “ETs:”
Here is more climate and weather news from Sunday:
(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”