The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary 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).😉
Dear Diary. The Climate Guy made a promise yesterday, so I will be putting my meteorological glasses on, looking at a weather forecast for the United States well into August:
The above chart I used to tease with comes from the American GFS model, which has been way too hot so far this summer past the 240-hour timeframe. If this panel verified, we would see a historic heatwave of epic proportions in the Midwest, Plains and Northeast with many all-time records falling. I strongly suspect that we will not see a 603-decameter ridge get centered over the southern Midwest in early August, though.
I continue to not like the roasting hot meteorological tea leaves that I’ve been looking at the last few days. Currently the eastern third of the United States has cooled due to a cold frontal passage after experiencing their hottest weather of the summer so far from historic CAT3/4 Heatwave Chua. Chua has diminished from its strength and extent last week and is now confined to a typically hot area of the southern Plains, where temperatures did get as high as 115°F:
A new major heatwave, Draco (or the Latin word for dragon) is affecting the Pacific Northwest but will not get as severe as CAT5 Beta from last year:
Draco will make life miserable for folks in the Pacific Northwest and eventually spread into the northern Plains looking at the following model thickness values above 582 decameters:
Draco and what’s left of Chua should combine into one heatwave spreading northward through the Plains the first few days of August:
After August 4th I strongly suspect that we will see another historic CAT4 heatwave. Here is what we see from the latest overly hot GFS:
I doubt that we will see a 600+ decameter ridge in early August, but sometimes a broken clock is right twice a day. Here is the more reasonable and more reliable European model:
The 850 mb anomalies from this forecast thing are breathtaking:
So, why is my confidence high that August will be so unpleasant? Ensembles are pointing to a strong ridge over the nation’s mid-section starting in early August. When ensembles are in basic agreement, confidence in a general forecast going out past 240 hours can be fairly high:
Note the orange colors on the left chart, which indicate well above average 500 millibar heights in the Midwest and Northeast. The white lines on the right chart are those 500 millibar heights forecast from the operational model. All of the brown squiggles on the right chart indicate that numerous model runs are forecasting well above 500 millibar decameter heights for a large area of the country by August 5th.
Bottom line here is that a historic heatwave is likely for August, and a devastating one similar to what we had in the Pacific Northwest is not out of the question for the Midwest and/or Northeast.
Of course, I’ll be refining this forecast on this blog as we move through the last fee days of what has been a torrid July.
Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks:
Here is more climate and weather news from Tuesday:
(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.)
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Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”