Extreme Temperature Diary- June 28, 2018/ Hot Topic: Historic U.S. Heat Wave Day One

guyonclimate_mi5tor

Thursday June 28th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post 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)😊. Here is today’s main climate change post related hot topic:

Historic Heatwave Day One

The old proverbial writing is on the meteorological wall now with what soon is to be a historic heatwave for the Midwest, Northeast, and portions of the western United States. Let’s arbitrarily write that today is the first day of a historic heat wave that will last for at least a week. I use the word “historic” to note that their will be widespread areas of record high maxes, well beyond more run of the mill “dangerous” heat that typically occurs around the country during summer.

The first major city to see historic heat from this heat wave is Denver:  

Technically for my met friends:

One of the factors that will create record highs today is the very warm temps in the lower part of the atmosphere. This morning’s sounding recorded a temp of 19.4°C at 700 mb (about 5,000ft above the ground). This was 0.6°C (or 1°F) away from setting the all-time record.
8:03 AM – 28 Jun 2018
At 97°, Denver is just 2° shy of today’s daily record at 11AM local time. Perhaps a shot at the all-time record 105°?
10:02 AM – 28 Jun 2018

The West is dealing with bad fire weather conditions today while the area of heat advisories and warnings has been expanding in the Nation’s mid-section:

Denver won’t be as hot on Friday, but the first 90s of this heat wave will be making their way up and down the Northeast Megalopolis area. It will be much hotter in the Midwest: 

The operational 12Z THU GFS has been trending a little lower on the maximum 500 millibar height level when the heat dome peaks out on July 7th as expected, but still forecasting a massive area above 591 decameters to last for several days across the nation: 

PSU model ensemble spaghetti plots don’t deviate much from the GFS operational solution (in white) forecasting a very large area above 594 decameters from 7/3 through 7/7: 

For Washington DC:

Here’s a calendar view of the average high temps predicted by our models (American, Canadian and European) over the next couple of weeks for DC. Forecast uncertainty increases with time, but nine straight days of 90s in there.  Read more:

9:15 AM – 28 Jun 2018

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This phenomenon has made big news the last 24 hours:

On Tuesday, the temperature in a city in Oman did not drop below 108.7 degrees (F) for an entire day. This is a global record, as far as anyone knows, part & parcel of our warming planet where new, unprecedented heat milestones keep occurring.
Over a period of 24 hours, the temperature in the coastal city of Quriyat, Oman, never dropped below 108.7 degrees (42.6 Celsius) Tuesday, most likely the highest minimum temperature ever observed on Earth.
6:51 AM – 28 Jun 2018

At 2:20pm Denver (KDEN) reached 105°. This ties Denver’s all time record high temperature set on 4 previous dates: 2012(2), 2005 & 1878.
1:40 PM – 28 Jun 2018
Here are some high heat index values from today:

Heat indicies across a good portion of the contiguous USA are in the dangerous range. No other way to describe this. Stay safe if you’re out in this & check on friends & loved ones who may have health issues.
HereHere are Thursday’s maxes:
Today I was very impressed with the number of stations joining the old century club.
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The Climate Guy

 

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