NOTE: There seems to be an abundance of anecdotal weather evidence that the northern latitudes in North America have had a cooler summer than usual. Of course there are places that have bucked that trend also. Still it is interesting to note, just as the Washington Post did in July when temperatures seemed a bit warm.
August is usually the busiest month of the year for Maine’s tourism industry. With August off to a soggy start, there are a lot of long faces in Vacationland. Fleece and sweatshirts have replaced bikinis at Old Orchard Beach and no one’s buying ice cream.
Instead, it’s rained 10 of the last 11 days and it’s unseasonably cool. Who’s counting? Families on vacation, that’s who. “A little depressing so far ha. It would have been nice to go to Aquaboggan today.” Instead Dad had to break the bad news to Melanie, Alex and Nathan–the waterpark was closed due to weather. Staying closed on a lucrative 10-dollar Monday means 20 to 30 thousand dollars down the tubes..And in Aquaboggan’s short nine week season, they can’t make that money back.
While bad weather tends to scare off last minute travelers, vacationers who’ve booked ahead usually forge ahead. They string up the blue tarp at the campground and try to make the best of it.
The rain in Maine,
Al Gore cannot explain.
I just got back from Clearwater Pond, just outside of Farmington, on Sunday…Yep its been cool and rainy!!!
Look at the average temps for the month so far:
http://www.accuweather.com/forecast-climo.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0&zipChg=1&zipcode=04938&metric=0
I would assume folks further south, along the shoreline from Mystic to P-town, have been having the same complaints. This persistent upper level low has made the past week even here, in the NYC area, at least five degrees below normal, ith bout after bout of flasing, crashing 0-vis t-storms.
So I submit this , the opening sentence of R.A. Scotti’s__The Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938__.
“At the tail end of the bleakest summer in memory, weeks as gray as weathered shingles and drenching downpours, Sept 21 arrived in southern New England like a gift from the gods.
Unfortunately, these gods were not indigenous; they came from Africa and the Cape Verdes, and their intentions were not benign
I should be flogged and flayed for not proof-reading!
Instead of the usual Bermuda high cycling warm humid air up the Atlantic coast, this summer has seen lots of low pressure cells swirling over New England. Normally July and August go dry with the only precipitation coming from cold front thunderstorms advancing eastward. Instead we’re seeing flood warnings where droughts were just a couple of years ago as the rain clouds come from the south. Distinctly different weather this summer for both temperature and precipitation.
The Scotti quotation closes with ‘ …gift from the gods.’ What an incompetent mess!
We’ve had some awesomely coolish sunny days so far this August, which is not the norm in Cincy. Hot and humid is the norm.
Maine is beautiful wet or dry.
Let the flogging and flaying begin!
I love anecdotal evidence…
As someone who flies all over Canada for work, I can say that this is DEFINITELY not a warm year anywhere up here. Calgary’s thunderstorm season was almost 2 weeks late, and it’s usually pretty consistent. But that’s anecdotal, I’m sure there were other years just like this one.
Oh hey, that’s my point, isn’t it? This is a cool year, but it’s not unusual. I’m not looking forward to a “typical” cold winter here either. I’m already starting to stake out my path so I’m walking uphill both ways to work to impress the kids. My parents have stories about some pretty incredible storms, and that’s from memory (they’re 71). I, for one, would HATE to see a repeat of our unusually cold 95-96 winter. Except it wasn’t unusual. Sure seemed like it, with more than 30 days in a row with a high below -30c.
Isn’t it ironic, that a state so reliant on tourism and has used global warming arguments to restrict new developments (due to fuel used to get there), is going to reduce its carbon footprint since, due to cold weather, no one wants to go there.
Yep – same here. We just got back from camping (Cornwall, Olde England) and it was utterly dreakit (Scottish for miserably wet – something that occurrs often enough for a word to be created to describe the phenomenon ) the entire week. I got drenched more often on the beach this year than I did in the water last year. It rained every day (since July 26th) before we left and has rained every day since we returned. Now thunderstorms.
It was forecast over two months ago by my father-in-law when we told him the schedule. He even gave the droplet sizes correctly. Does mainstream science want to know? Most places he ever offered to divulge said something along the lines of “…it’s too much like astrology. Please desist.” Too late now. He has just proved himself with one of the biggest commodity brokers/banks (a substantial number of traders use astrological markers). All (lol) he had to do was predict temperature for a given latitude and date range (the target commodity is severely damaged by frost) 2 months in advance. His theory can do this standing on its head.
Now he. like many before him, is going on to earn a nice crust while the people he offered to open up to will continue to stumble about in the dark.
The temps have been quite moderate in NYC so far this summer. I was surprised to see the uptick in the July anomaly. I wonder where the bump in the rug was.
That persistent large upper level low pressure system in Eastern Canada is impacting the Great Lakes as well as the Northeastern U.S. It pulls down cooler air from Canada as well as a series of slow moving storm systems. So far this summer we’ve not yet had an official temperature of 90°F in Buffalo.
Won’t be hearing any references to it on the evening news as it doesn’t fit into the politically correct paradigm of pending catastrophic climate change.
Drought, yes drought is a particular problem with various locations in the upper plains and midwest. Dry, cool continental air masses from the Yukon and Northwest Territories have created a wall along the northern 1/5 of the US. Along this boundary there has been considerable rainfall, but north of it has been dry and cool. This is 2 years in a row that Cp air has penetrated the US into August. Normally, this is the time of the hottest days of the year.
Not only for Maine – see 10 day outlook (scroll down)
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
The MRF is still showing a Fall Signal with a very strong cutoff low forming this week in the high plains.
So far our daytime August temps (in the 90’s) in Eastern Oregon have been warmer than last month and last year. However, our nighttime tempts are dipping into the 30’s, which is colder than last month and last year. That is a bit unusual. We will have frost on a regular basis before too long. Farmers are bailing their second cutting of alfalfa and grass hay. With these low night temps, we will get no third cutting, but we will get pasture. However, that means that for farmers who have little acreage of their own, they will be paying very high prices for scarce winter feed.
Hi Gary,
you seem to now your meteorology. Would the absence of this Bermuda system also explain the foul summer we are having in Ireland, depressions seem to come our way from the Atlantic and then stay around ,revolving around themselves.The Jet stream is a long way further south than it should be as well. All in all a bit of the old global warming would not be amiss here!
Here in N.H. we have been having flooding rains, particularly this month, and, as in this past winter, where we almost broke the all-time snowfall record, as of yesterday we were in 7th place for total rainfall during June, July and August, and with showers last night, and very likely again this afternoon we are certainly within striking distance of breaking the all-time record.
Also, on July 24th, a large, powerful F-2 tornado struck here (actually coming within just a few miles of our house), ripping a path of destruction 50 miles long over the course of 80 minutes through 9 communities.
There is even the possibility of a Nor’easter this Thursday, which is more typical of winter weather.
By the way, I just wanted to comment on record setting. Pro and Con AGW posts are always talking about record setters. Anything on the way up and then on the way down of a trended peak of any kind will have “6th hottest”, “7th hottest”, or “5th coldest” or “6th coldest” record statement to it. It does not mean that the trend is over when pro-AGW posts state that “[insert month] was the 7th hottest on record”. Yet I see this statement frequently. July will be up compared to other very recent months, but the trend to cooler overall is still present. Yet we will read that it was the “[insert number] hottest month on record” and therefore the 2008 Ice Age is over.
It ain’t over till the Sun eventually revs back up to a boiling bright sphere of flares. Then we will know if the Sun has anything at all to do with climate.
Same here in the UK, looks like being a wet August
Max
There have been 3 volcanoes in Alaska. How much of this cool weather is due to SO2 streaming across North America?
Sound the alarm!!! Global warming alert!
All of the hype, but none of the warmth here in New England this summer. On the contrary.
I live next door in New Hampshire. Let me tell you, the summer started very promising in early June, but quickly turned into quite a disappointment. After getting our butts kicked with record setting snows this past winter, we were looking forward to a good summer. It seems that temperatures have been below normal for the past month and a half. Too bad to, we just bought a boat AND pool to celebrate AGW 🙂
I wish it were 1998 again! Come on global warming.
I wonder if this unseasonable weather in the northeast (and may be all the way down the east coast?) is the reason why hurricanes have remained so far off shore.
I would guess that just about anyplace along the Canadian border can make the same claim.
Here in Michigan we have stayed about 2° to 4° below “normal” since February. August is tracking just slightly less than 3° lower than normal. Anyone watching the PGA Championship might have noticed the players wearing long sleeves in the 60° temperatures and 20 mph wind.
Just think of all of the CO2 we are not expending by not air conditioning. This is, no doubt, a positive feedback for global cooling.