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).😜
Main Topic: Derechos That Are the Other Side of Deadly Heat Dome Coins
Dear Diary. Six years back almost to the date we had a similar scenario in which we had a heat done camped out across the central states and a ‘ridge rider’ crossing the Midwest in the form of a deadly derecho:
Aloft to get a derecho we need a strong heat dome to the south and west of a subtle digging jet as can be picked up on weather charts. Here is the 500 millibar setup from 12Z Monday 8/10/2020:
Here is the synoptic situation that we had yesterday 8/11/2026:
Strong derechos can be just if not more deadly and more destructive than the heat domes lying to their south. The one affecting Chicagoland and points south yesterday killed two people with widespread damage in association with Heatwave Delphi.
My biggest point today is that the warmer the atmosphere gets due to climate change, the more frequent and more destructive derechos will become.
Here are more details on yesterday’s derecho via the Washington Post (for a plotted chart that I did not include, hit the following link.):
A derecho carved a 400-mile-path from eastern Iowa to Indiana on Tuesday, before continuing eastward into the central Appalachians as a dangerous thunderstorm cluster.
The powerful storm swept through Chicago late Tuesday morning, downing large trees, and produced a 99-mph wind gust in nearby Gary, Indiana. In Grafton, Ohio, 16 people were transported to a hospital for treatment following a lightning strike at a correctional facility.
At least two people died amid the severe weather, according to local reports.
That includes a 4-year-old child who died when a tree fell on a home in Indiana and another person in Ohio who died during a health emergency when first responders couldn’t reach them because of flooded roads.
A derecho is a long-lived thunderstorm complex that produces a swath of wind damage extending more than 240 miles.
Early Wednesday, more than 700,000 customers were without power across Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, as a new cluster of flooding downpours was hitting eastern Indiana and parts of Kentucky.
From the Plains to the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, more strong-to-severe storms are expected in the days ahead.
These storm clusters are forming and tracking along the northern edge of a heat dome that’s centered in the Deep South.
Extra fuel for these storms has been flowing into the United States from thousands of miles away — in the form of moisture from the marine heat wave-affected waters of the Pacific Ocean, where a record-breaking El Niño continues to strengthen.
This disruptive and sometimes dangerous weather pattern looks set to continue into late August.
By Ben Noll Ben Noll is a meteorologist passionate about explaining the why behind the weather, extreme events and climate trends. He has expertise in data analysis, supercomputer-driven graphics and forecasting weather worldwide. follow on X@BenNollWeather
Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
This weekend’s heat dome will challenge All-Time 500mb height records, and beat monthly records along the Gulf Coast. Will last through next week.
"July Was Hottest Month in History of Contiguous US, Breaking Dust Bowl Record" by @corbettjessica.bsky.social for @commondreams.org: www.commondreams.org/news/july-20…
"July was just the hottest month on record in the US. So what does that mean for August?" by @juliaelenamusto.bsky.social for @the-independent.com: www.the-independent.com/news/world/a…
Smoke kills 24k Americans/yr. “The cost of climate-worsened wildfire smoke alone is larger than what earlier studies said every other estimated cost of climate change would be, combined. We should also worry about other surprise catastrophes that are lurking we’ll only learn about after they occur.
By popular demand: I just scheduled another livestream for tomorrow (Wed, Aug 12, 2pm PT) to offer an update on what has now become the worst wildfire season on record in some parts of the U.S. West. Also: a weather update re: potential for dry lightning.
One more note: Snowpack on Apr 1, 2026 was near or below lowest on record across many, if not most, Western U.S. regions currently experiencing severe wildfires (and, locally, record-breaking wildfire seasons). While not the only factor at play, this is far from a coincidence.
The underlying paper, led by Adrienne Marshall, uses both real observations and climate model simulations to estimate that historical warming made the 2026 snow drought ~4x more likely to have occurred when/as it did (and ~14x in Upper Colorado Basin).www.pnas.org/doi/10….
This has several interesting implications. First, it implies that increased snow losses in the worst years are, as has been anecdotally supposed, larger than mean trend (a modest, though still meaningful ~25% decline in Apr 1 SWE) might suggest on its own.www.pnas.org/doi/10….
This large increase in variability comes almost entirely from a large increase in *extremely low* snow years despite little/no decrease in the *extremely high* snow years (in fact, highest WUS-wide snowpack since early 1980s occurred recently, in 2023!). www.pnas.org/doi/10….
Further, this increasing "snowpack whiplash" is relatively large: West-wide variability has increased by ~44%, and the typical magnitude of year-to-year swings by ~80%. Also, variability has increased at least slightly in ~70% of individual snow basins. www.pnas.org/doi/10….
My personal and professional advice to those in, near, and even (in some cases) outside of known flood zones is to seriously consider obtaining flood insurance this year, since standard policies usually exclude flooding from storms or oceanic inundation.
In case you missed it, my latest livestream update on the very strong developing #El Niño event was recorded & is now available. In it, I focus on current observations, just-released new forecasts for fall and winter, and California to global implications.
We have very unfortunate news to share today… 😢I've been an author for this report since 2020, and we just celebrated our 20th anniversary edition last year.
(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.)
More from the Weather Department:
‼️ Another 1000-YR Rain EventIn fact, in some cases it exceeded the criteria by almost 2X. Catastrophic #Flood underway, Flood Emergency for #Indiana in Cambridge City, near New Castle, South of Muncie, east of #Indianapolis. Stay safe folks, turn around don’t drown! 1/
24 hour criteria for 1000 year rain recurrence is below. Of course these events happen more often these days due to a warmer climate holding more moisture, causing higher rainfall rates.
As the sun shone near the Thames estuary in Kent, the UK’s largest solar farm was quietly at work. Cleve Hill’s 560,000 panels on 800 acres of land close to Faversham were helping the solar industry to generate 29% of the country’s electricity.www.ft.com/content/a061…
'It’s been a revelation': how heat pumps can cool your home as temperatures soar. It might seem an unlikely way to stop overheating, but many owners have found the tech a lifeline in hot weather. "If it is 35C outdoors, I can get the temperature down to 21C" www.theguardian.com/environment/…
'Britain has paid record sums to buy electricity from Europe this summer as low river levels force nuclear power stations to power down across the Continent.' www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202…
"US-Saudi nuclear deal is a prescription for much wider proliferation which no one, including Israel, is likely to survive."www.jpost.com/opinion/arti…
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