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: Update On U.S. Cold Wave “Yeti”
Dear Diary. Yesterday I informed my Twitter followers that a new cold wave had commenced across the United States:
Indeed, meteorological models continue to forecast that Cold Wave Yeti will be prolonged and dangerous, lasting well after Valentines Day. Already we are seeing eye opening lake effect snow amounts and another system (called Quade by TWC) in association with the cold weather pattern is bringing significant snow amounts to the Appalachians and portions of the Northeast. Once February is over climatologists will probably find that it was the coldest month of winter 2019/2020.
Will Yeti be historic in nature? That remains to be seen. Currently Yeti is at major, dangerous CAT3 status. As a reminder, here is my criteria for cold wave categories from 1 to 5:
The keys to the longevity and strength of Yeti will be a lobe of the polar vortex, which will get trapped south of a vast positive anomaly at 500 millibars across Canada and much of the Arctic:
Models are still having difficulty with the placement of the vortex over the CONUS, though. Instead of the Midwest, the thing could verify over the northern Rockies a week from now.
Taken verbatim, at the surface 156 hours from now we will see the following frigid regime at the surface:
A near 1050 millibar high located over the Midwest probably will be driving shallow Arctic air as far south as extreme southern Texas and the Gulf Coast where it will be overrun by Gulf moisture being pumped northward due to disturbance moving eastward from the Southwest. Since we are within 168 hours out, a winter storm of some form looks likely for the South, which will eventually affect the East. Just how strong the system gets is up in the air due to lack of model details a week out. At this point it looks like widespread areas of dreaded freezing rain could be a big problem.
I’ll be adding more notes on Yeti as Sunday progresses:
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”