Portland is one of the “greener” cities in the USA. So it would not be surprising to see some stories blaming the current heat wave on “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”.
It will be interesting to see how they react there in the Portland media to this string of 100 plus days.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Temperatures all over Oregon are expected to shoot past 104 degrees today, making it one of the hottest days in Oregon in years.
KATU Meteorologist Rhonda Shelby said at noon that there is a chance it could get hot enough to break Portland’s all-time heat record of 107 degrees.
full story here at TV station KATU-TV
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Less than 2 weeks ago Denver was 104 degrees breaking the record for the day by 2 degrees. Lots of headlines. Today the high was under 60 degrees breaking the all-time record minimum high for all days in the months of July and August by over 5 degrees and not a peep.
I live about 50 miles south of Portland. We are having a couple of days of high temperatures. We had a couple of days almost this hot about a month ago. Last year we had a couple of days with temps almost this high, the year before that ….
Monday the high is supposed to be less than 70 and we’ve had really mild temps all summer (subjective impression). My wife (from Texas) complained long and hard about having to wear a sweater on the 4th of July during the hottest part of the day. Proximity to the river had something to do with this, but not much.
File this under weather != climate.
I see their 3:00 PM ob is just 96… a long ways to go. At least someone is having a summer, cool summer in the upper midwest again this year.
Being from the NW, it should be noted that starting Monday, the temps are forcasted to be 30 F cooler for the foreseeable futer …….
“So it would not be surprising to see some stories blaming the current heat wave on “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”.”
If it happens it will kind balance out all the “Its a bit nippy today and there are no sunspots, must be a new Little Ice Age” which seems to be the most popular posts of late!
Just an observation. Ozone got pretty thin over Oregon in the last week. The gauze-like thin areas span the length of Washington, especially Oregon, and into California. The swath of thin ozone is moving East into the high plains of these states. Night time temps have been like the high desert; colddddd. Daytime temps have been HOT. I am wondering. Ozone protects us from the heat during the day and keeps heat in at night. Which would mean that when ozone is thin, summer days are HOT and nights are cold, at least in higher altitudes. The Willamette Valley can’t cool off at night like the coast and high desert can. More atmosphere and pollution. And no breeze. Then on the heels of the hot spell, it nearly always follows that some kind of cloud formation will happen just a couple days later. But the heat comes first.
I am wondering if there is a time lag between the initial hit of Sun onto already thin ozone, then more ozone eating UV and cosmic rays hit us, which results in a fast rise in temperature as we get a direct unprotected hit from the Sun, and then cosmic rays seed water vapor into clouds a bit later, cooling us down as the Sun’s rays are reflected back into space.
In Enterprise, Oregon, it is still cooler than last year.
PDX is not going to come anywhere close to their record today…may not even hit 100.
I wonder if global warming can be blamed for DIA (Denver International Airport) only making it up to 53 this afternoon? Normal high is 87.
I have lived in the Portland metro area for 37 years. We have had one of the coolest springs and summers I can remember. Thank goodness for a few hot days, it’s going to be cooler than normal next week!
Here in the Great Lakes basin, summer is a fantasy. Here in Buffalo we’ve not yet officially hit 90°F. The first half of June was the warmest part of the summer {and that was still Spring!}. We recently had a record low high temp. We keep getting promised a ‘pattern change’ but that hasn’t happened yet. And we’ve already passed peak summer heat; it’s all downhill from here.
I’d best get a new snow shovel for this winter — it’ll be a doozy!
Here in Tulsa it is unseasonably cool and has been for over a week. It is hardly breaking 90 moast days… we are ten degrees light from the average
I was just out there. Trust me 100 degrees in Oregon does not feel hot at all unless you bake in direct sunlight for hours. Now back in SC it has been 98 and 98% humidity. One thing that did strike me about the area is the lack of insects. I guess the air is too dry. Seems like when the humidity gets up it all falls out as rain. Here in SC it just gets hotter.
Pamela:” I am wondering if there is a time lag between the initial hit of Sun onto already thin ozone, then more ozone eating UV…”
This is twice in the last couple of days you have referred too “ozone eating” UV. Please correct me if I am wrong but isn’t ozone also constantly being created by solar radiation? You seem to leave out one side of the process.
I live in the PNW, though not that near to Portland. Yes it is hot, but it is not the greatest heatwave we have had, at least not here in Washington. Next week, by the way, the temps may go below normal, and we could see an unusually strong rainstorm for August. Which if Global Cooling were all the rage, the headlines would be all about how AGC caused the unusual cold weather in August.
Isn’t solar radiation/UV ozone PRODUCING?
Sorry, my mind is still on fishing. UV creates ozone, cosmic rays destroy it. When the Sun is UV active it is also protecting us from cosmic rays. So ozone stays nice and thick. But when UV is decreased, cosmic rays also are giving us a direct hit, thinning the ozone in different places. Ozone is not well mixed and is thick in some areas and thin in others. So when cosmic rays hit a thin area, bingo, we get gauze instead of a blanket in that area. Less UV and more cosmic rays act together in a way that leads to decreased ozone.
I assume you are talking about Potland Oregon, not Portland Maine. …been to them both.
Pamela gray, where are your Ozone maps?
Anthony:
Portland has only been keeping temperature records since 1940, six years after Oregon’s warmest year on record. An “all-time high” would not mean much. Of course, if I were a global cooling cultist and Portland were to set an “all-time low”, I would say: BREAKING NEWS: PORTLAND HAS COLDEST DAY IN HUMAN HISTORY; ICE AGE FEARS HEIGHTEN.
Hey, here in Ottawa, we have the same low summer temps, and cloud extra, and rain; but, hey … it’s all due to global warming – which all smart people agree upon.
Here’s a quick summation of the perversness of this whole argument over AGW or ACC (anthrpogenic climate change):
1. The pro-ACC crowd says (or is hoping) global warming is happening, and they call such a catastrophe (or at least one in the making). Yet slightly warmer temperatures globally would be great for agriculture as well as decreasing cold-related deaths among humans. This far surpasses heat-related deaths as has been noted.
2. The pro NCC (natural climate change) crowd says (or is hoping) that global warming is not happening, but global cooling would be bad for humans and many of our endeavors such as agriculture.
One might be given to wonder about the irony, except that for myself I see this twist as a derivation of politics, which twists many things. This isn’t merely a debate about science. It is a debate about the political direction of the entire human race, starting first with the most developed and most powerful nations.
Hmmm I just pulled out the records i started to keep last year and see that on this date in 2007 the morning low was 66.5 and the afternoon high was 100.9. That is here in N E Alabama. Today our low this morning was 59.2 and our high was 85.6. Not bad for the deep south but not unusual either last year or this year. it is just weather. But that being said makes me wonder how it can be blamed on global warming?
I know that most scientists insist that you have to have 30 years to set a trend in climate, I have no problem with that but I wonder how many years of a change from the past in the 30 have go go by before you start to reconsider the changes you see. In my opinion ( they are sort of like butts everyone has one) the past decade would indicate that while not long enough to be a trend it might be time to consider just what might happen if it turns in to a trend and what we need to do to prepare for the change. I think that if we have to wait for 30 years of cooling to pass before we can consider preparing for possible cooler times we would be remiss in our duties to man kind. If we have to have30 years of cooling before our scientists respond to our leaders. Who is going to be at fault for the unnecessary death caused by the unusual cold weather that occours before the 30 year time frame has passed. I am truly afraid that our scientific community is letting us down and our politicians are helping them. One day some one will have to be accountable for what is about to happen. I wonder if it will be passed off as natural variability? If it is a natural event no one can predict? If the cooling happens as it looks like is about to happen even if it is for a couple of decades there will be scapegoats and the politicians have themselves covered with the statement — The best estimate the scientific community could give us was that it was going to be catastrophic warming not cooling. And now you know who is going to be the scape goat. I would ask our scientific community that if they are skeptical about the AGW hypothesis to say so and get down to some real science.
You may snip Anthony or Charles I just get PO’d about some of the things being passed off as data collection and science.
Bill Derryberry
I also live in the Pacific Northwest. We are still talking about the June snow and heavy frost in July. The forecasters are predicting near record temps tomorrow. According to the records, 101F is the all time record for the hottest month of the year. I have survived higher temps, but I can’t remember the day it occured. The strange thing is, they seem to have shortened the years that they recognize. The records had included the late 1800’s, but now the weather records only include 1940 forward. Why is that?
You didn’t produce your data and explain the model which forecast those future headlines.
Denver suffers from severe UHI. Neither Boulder nor Fort Collins got over 100 this year (very unusual,) and we have a had a beautiful summer with warm days and cool to cold nights. Check out the data from CSU and NCAR.
http://ccc.atmos.colostate.edu/~autowx/fclwx_plotsearch_form.php
http://www.eol.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/weather.cgi?fields=tdry&fields=rh&fields=cpres0&fields=wspd&fields=wdir&fields=raina&site=fl&units=english&period=monthly
It has turned very cold with torrential rains and flooding. We have had over two inches of rain in the last 36 hours ,and are expected to double that before Sunday. The Fort Collins New West Festival is looking to be a complete disaster this year. I hope campers are not getting trapped by snow in the mountains.
http://www.downtownfortcollins.com/
I’m here in Portland. Reporting from deep behind enemy (alarmist) lines. It was definitely unseasonably hot here in PDX, Oregon for the last two days – but it’s been unseasonably cool here for much longer. Like, two years or so.
The alarmists here don’t miss a chance to connect ANY type of weather to AGW.
As I said it’s been so cool here for most of the past two years, and The Oregonian newspaper even found it necessary to publish an article to reassure their alarmist subscribers that despite the long stretch of cold weather the AGW apocalypse was indeed just around the corner. It was titled, “You call this global warming ? Uh, yeah”…
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_product=NewsBank&p_theme=aggregated5&p_action=doc&p_docid=11F8E32029D16DD8&p_docnum=2&p_queryname=1