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. Just about every week of this summer the U.S. has been experiencing a major heatwave over some of its territory. Lately, the heatwave that I’ve dubbed Koch has been plaguing the West, exacerbating fire conditions in the Pacific Northwest. It and prior western heatwaves helped to bring about very destructive wildfires around Spokane that have very much been in the news.
Now it appears that a new heatwave will mainly hit the Plains and Southeast where I live this week into the third week of August. At the moment heat advisories amounting already to a separate CAT2 heatwave using my criteria have been posted in the central Plains and Mid-Mississippi Valley:
So why would the Plains advisories not be part of western Heatwave Koch? Good question. As of this morning we have a discernable heat dome in the West, but what appears to be a separate heat dome building across the Southeast:
This week the western heat dome in association with Koch will break down while the Southeast heat dome builds producing another major CAT3 heatwave. The next one on my list will be named Heatwave Delphi for Delphi Energy:
I do see indications that Heatwave Delphi will become monstrous from next weekend into early next week looking at both ensembles and operational models:
There are indications that Heatwave Delphi will be a long duration event:
Just how many daily, monthly and even all-time records will be set by Delphi is uncertain. What is certain is that Delphi will be building over an airmass that is already very humid, so heat indices will be exceptionally miserable. As opposed to the situation in Europe, most people have powerful air conditioning units in their dwellings, so I don’t anticipate many fatalities from this event. We will see what transpires and perspires this week.
Here are some “ETs” recorded from around the U.S. the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate 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.)