We have a strong, but not unprecedented, heat wave gripping the central USA. NOAA made this video animation to show the breadth of it, which I converted to YouTube so everyone could view it:
NOAA’s description of this video:
A shroud of high pressure has taken a foot-hold over the U.S. from the Plains to the Northeast, and with it has brought temperatures well into the 90’s and 100’s for half of the country. This animation shows the predicted daily high temperatures from NOAA’s high resolution North American Model (NAM) from July 13-21, 2011.
NOAA writes: Dangerous heat grips Central U.S. Forecast to also affect East
Unhealthy levels of heat and humidity are encompassing much of central U.S. from the Southern Plains through the upper Midwest and this sultry heat will move east this week into the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, according to NOAA’s National Weather Service.
Temperatures in the 90s to near 100 degrees will feel as hot as 115 degrees or higher when factoring in the high humidity. Record high temperatures are likely to be set in some locations — adding to the more than 1000 records that have been set or tied so far this month.
“This heat is dangerous on many levels,” said Jack Hayes, director of the National Weather Service. “Temperatures and humidity levels are high, the heat will be prolonged, and very warm temperatures overnight won’t provide any respite. All of these factors make this an unhealthy situation, especially those in the upper Midwest who are not accustom to such heat.”
No quibbles there, a large blocking high like we saw last year in Russia is stubbornly fixated over the central USA. The media however, is on another story.
Don Penim writes in tips and notes:
Hot topic. Here we go again.
The Media is loving this heat wave. According to this CNN report :
“The National Weather Service notes that typically extreme heat is the biggest weather-related killer in the United States, taking about 115 lives each year.”
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/18/heat.wave/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Not according to the data, see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/18/the-deadliest-us-natural-hazard-extreme-cold/
Also this:
In an article entitled, “The impact of global warming on health and mortality,” published in the Southern Medical Journal in 2004, W.R. Keatinge and G.C. Donaldson of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of London note:
“Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold.”
“From 1979 to 1997, extreme cold killed roughly twice as many Americans as heat waves, according to Indur Goklany of the U.S. Department of the Interior,” Singer and Avery write. “Cold spells, in other words, are twice as dangerous to our health as hot weather.”
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_Hot_weather_or_cold_weather_cause_more_deaths#ixzz1SWXgP7qR
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Here’s Goklany’s report Deaths and Death Rates from Extreme Weather Events: 1900-2008 (PDF). This table pretty well sums it up:
UPDATE: some historical perspective
Dallas-Fort Worth heat wave of 1980 still seared into memories
11:50 PM CDT on Friday, August 6, 2010
By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News
Friday marked the seventh day in a row that temperatures in the Dallas area reached at least 100 degrees, but it was not what some people would call hot.
Those people – that is, people who remember Dallas during the summer of 1980 – can tell you about hot.
It was 30 years ago this week that a 42-day string of 100 degree days – the longest heat wave by far in the region’s history – was broken. For one day. More triple digits followed, and when autumn mercifully arrived, temperatures had hit the century mark 69 times.
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Thanks for converting the video. I usually read your site from my iPhone, so it is vey restrictive on what videos it will play and YouTube is one of the few it allows. You may have a bigger smart phone following than you realize so it’s good to keep this site mobile friendly.
I sent a correction request to CNN…I will post whatever response I get back.
My wife mentioned this earlier to me. Of course she was elated. The humidity. This means good harvests down the road. In fact if you are growing summer crops at this time, the water content of the lower atmosphere is near perfect.
Really, I would say that the temperature related deaths are deaths that are comparable to warning folks about an oncoming hurricane and those people ignoring the warning. I exercise regularly. My weight training is done indoors (I’d arm wrestle Bastardi ;P), and in some weather instances, my cardio is done indoors also. I decided to run outside in my area of Ohio today. It was an impressively oppressive heat. I ran in a forested area, so I had shaded and lit areas to compare. The shaded areas were hot. Very hot. The sunlit areas were just brutal. I wouldn’t compare the heat factor to the Mojave (been there? It is H-O-T!!), but it was up there. The real killer was the humidity. I felt like a lobster in a pot in the sunlight. Just glad I was smart enough to bring frozen water.
A person in bad shape physically exerting themselves outside without the proper hydration would definitely perish in the conditions we are experiencing. However, ignoring the multiple, repeated, and ever prevalent warnings is a choice people make. I am blaming no one, just saying that if you choose to ignore the weather conditions and your own state of personal health, you take that risk. And the cold/hot related deaths make that readily apparent. Now, I am going to read this PDF. The attribution factors are crucial to things like this. What’s a ‘cold’ death? What’s a ‘hot’ death?
Thanks for the YouTube video, too. And what happened to your break? 🙂
Also, in my previous comment I would not solely attribute temperature related deaths to levels of exertion and levels of fitness, but I think those are under attributed factors. In an increasingly obese country, it’d be expected to see heat related AND cold related deaths rise because the temperature extremes put a less efficient metabolic structure under more pressure.
A heartfelt sorry, America — at 100F these days I slow real down and so feel for y’all.
My second sorry is that this “large blocking high like we saw last year in Russia is stubbornly fixated over the central USA” will be giving the alarmists unwarranted ammunition to progress their agenda.
Also, in my previous comment I would not solely attribute temperature related deaths to levels of exertion and levels of fitness, but I think those are under attributed factors. In an increasingly obese country, it’d be expected to see heat related AND cold related deaths rise because the temperature extremes put a less efficient metabolic structure under more pressure.
Now, I am sorry, I was hoping it would be explained in the body of the paper, but I see it is foot noted to other sources. I would like to do the checking up on this, but I have some sleep to get and some analysis to do, so I will not be doing that soon. Still, I wonder how the attributions were done. As a ‘drive-by’ questioner (I guess you can call me that) that is the area I would look at in the table. Otherwise, yes cold-related deaths do out pace hot-related deaths. But I would be much more worried about cardiovascular diseases in the attributions I saw. (29.34[??]%)
Whoops, not sure how I posted half my comment! Sorry!
These sort of temperatures occur every year in Perth, Western Australia. There are some important things to remember about temperatures like this including, never leave town without lots of water, even if its only a short trip and, if your carbreaks down don’t leave it unless you are absolutely certain you can find rescue nearby. Also, of course folks need to remain hydrated at all times and head to the mall if it gets too unbearable – they have aircons. If nothing else, at night if you cant sleep take a cool shower and go back to bed wet.
What about Europe? No prize for guessing it: “All regions showed more annual cold related mortality than heat related mortality“…
Cold or hot weather is just an exacerbating factor in deaths during either. People who die of cold-related deaths, usually have a health issue such as pneumonia or their immune system is wearing out (they do as you grow older) and the cold is the last straw in an already weakened system. Likewise, people who die because of heat are usually not taking sensible precautions. Sometimes, perhaps, they can’t. Millions of people live in the kind of heat this post is talking about ALL THE TIME! It’s not adapting that’s the problem.
OMG, a heat wave! We’ve never had one of those before!
But, but the weather is getting weirder, it’s crazy weather maaaan! Look, they keep telling us that cold related deaths is just the weather, yet heat related deaths are due to
climate changeglobal warming. ;O)AGW does time travel.
The Bulletin – Jul 25, 1936
“Heat Wave Toll Over 12,000 in 86 Cities in Week”
The Edinburgh Advertiser – Dec 24, 1824
1824 Flood Killed 30,000 In Russia
more disasters from the past
H/t Steven Goddard’s Bad Weather Page from the past
I forgot, always ask Warmists for peer reviewed evidence of worsening trends in extreme weather events.
These suggest things aren’t worse than we thought!
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2011.01.021
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.776/full
http://itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1128/
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2010/2010GL042487.shtml
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2005GL025393
@goldie
I second that. A few years back I helped out at the lunch break at the cricket (2006/7 Ashes). Got heatstroke after 10 minutes out on the WACA ground at 50C+. Was not a pretty site in the tunnel back to the change rooms.
Handling extreme heat is generally about using your head as there are many ways of mitigating it. Unfortunately even here people who should know better forget or get lazy and get caught out. Including me at the cricket despite drinking plenty of water all day, wearing a hat and sun screen.
I’m just glad I work in the air conditioning industry in an air conditioned office, doing our bit for the plants by running the system as low as it can go and racking up the kW.
—
First comment after lurking about for few weeks. Love your work Anthony, et al.
We have friends in Austin, Texas who are complaining about the high temperatures and that they can only water their lawn once every two weeks. We could do with some warm weather in the UK where July is wet and cool, 13-19C. The rest of N. Europe is also cooler than usual.
Texas is a desert region which the locals seem to forget and water shortages due more to the great expansion in population than shortage of rain.
Anthony, it serves no useful purpose to marginalize the risks of heat related deaths by comparing a particular heat phenomenon to a particular cold phenomenon. Both can be extremely dangerous, especially to those portions of the population who are vulnerable.
several years ago I read that the ration of deaths due to cold:heat extremes is 6:1 – that for every death due to extreme heat, there are 6 due to extreme cold. In other words, 6 times as many people die in a cold climate than a warm one, though I can’t recall the source
Oh for gosh sakes, the death rate hasn’t changed in centuries.
It is one to a person, just like it always was. Nothing’s changed.
Isn’t it summer over there? It is supposed to be here too, though I am sitting here with cold hands!
Hugh Pepper says:
Anthony, it serves no useful purpose to marginalize the risks of heat related deaths by comparing a
So many people who cannot read!
Go look what Anthony says, and in particular the “no quibbles” part.
Later Don Penim notes that CNN are telling lies when they compare the heat events to cold events, saying the heat is worse. CNN started the comparing. Don was only correcting them.
Ah well, on other side of the pond over here in the UK it hasn’t really stopped raining since the Met office declared a drought in May. Timing it would seem, is everything.
@Hugh Pepper
Anthony and co. are not marginalizing the risks of heat-related deaths. They’re pointing out the factual error in the CAGW-scare-mongering statement: “The National Weather Service notes that typically extreme heat is the biggest weather-related killer in the United States, taking about 115 lives each year.” and providing evidence to support their contention.
Really, since “climate change” is supposed to result in more extreme weather and mortality from extreme cold is over 85% higher than that from extreme heat, wouldn’t more people be saved by worrying about the consequences of a chillier climate?
Josh;
I wonder if cricket was the inspiration for the verse, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen / Go out in the noonday sun!”
Goldie said on 19 July. Well goldie we Ozzies are pretty tough really. We get great fluctuations in temperature each day all over the continent. The nearer the sea the more humidity one can expect everyone will agree. And humidity depletes more than dry air because you sweat a lot of salt and fluids out as you drink more. Just a example (forgive me for preaching to the converted), I’ve lived in four or five climate zones. Bermuda, UK (North, South and East) Cyprus (the Levant) Egypt and Australia, (in Sydney and on the higher altitudes on the Northern Slopes, Tamworth, and Northern tablelands Armidale (where it snowed yesterday) 3,500 ft absl. The hottest place by far and most unpleasant was Bermuda would you believe? Humid as hell like Malaya in the summer and cold in the winter – the coldest I had suffered since UK being 39 F. When I was 8 months pregnant in Sydney 1968. We had excess of 100 F for two weeks, then a Southerly buster came up with a storm and the temperature dropped to 65 F in one hour and we were donning cardigans again. Sydney winters were like English summers. So being cold will stress humans badly, although if you are stranded in the outback without water you’ll die in 48 hours if you start walking to find help. In hot Mediterranean countries in their summers including the middle east, they have a siesta between 2 – 4 pm. What’s the cliche ‘Only mad dogs and English men go out in the midday sun’. From the Raj days I suspect before air conditioning.
The Great Plains are an arid area, well I thought they were, so a bit of humidity probably heralds
rain too, that they will enjoy. Horses for courses I suspect, but we have become hot house flowers in UK and now electricity is so expensive especially if they incorporate carbon taxes then
we better start acclimatising to a colder climate if harsh winters are now expected in the Northern Hemisphere.