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.
Anthony,
Aren’t you supposed to be having a break? Turn the computer off. Attend to your business. Cherish your family.
Yes, we all go a bit gaga when you don’t post but please, Anthony, understand that while no one is indispensable, every person is irreplaceable.
Antonia
Hugh Pepper says:
July 20, 2011 at 2:00 am
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.
It is useful in that it takes the wind out of the sails of warmistas who conveniently ignore the fact that cold is responsible for about twice as many deaths as heat.
Another interesting fact is that by forcing energy prices higher, the warmistas are responsible for an even higher death rate among those least able to afford those higher energy bills. But hey, it’s for the planet, right?
see blogs from Prof Guy Mcpherson for what is really happening.
http://guymcpherson.com/
Yes, but after you attribute all the floods, lightning, hurricanes and tornadoes to AGW, the total heat-caused deaths are neck and neck with cold! 😉
Seriously, though, summer heat is oppressive and sometimes deadly, especially in urban areas that can pile several degrees of UHI on top of the heat that’s already there. This is one more reason to use dollar-saving aluminumized roofing on apartment buildings: Not only does your own building run cooler, but the overall UHI is probably reduced a little, both because of reflection and because everyone isn’t burning as much AC.
If you divide the number of excess heat deaths by the years given for that table you get almost 400 deaths per year, not 115. Maybe they’re using a different metric than you?
Also, I would love to know how this heat wave compares to other historical US heat waves, if such data exists.
Roger Carr said: (July 19, 2011 at 11:40 pm)
“…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…”
And, just as that Russian heat wave was found to NOT be related to GW (according to that NOAA CSI team), so will this one.
But we’ll never hear about the “well, maybe it wasn’t GW after all” report in the MSM.
Of course, this past year the US has also experienced extremes of cold, extremes of wet, extreme storms and now extremes of heat.
All are present and correct in a warming world. Picking and choosing favourites between them seems to be missing the point somewhat.
And of course, in summer, I think you’ll find that excessive heat is far more likely to be a cause of negative health impacts than cold.
“A shroud of high pressure has taken a foot-hold over the U.S………”
OK, how’s BigWind doing there? Anyone got some Central US wind generation figures?
Apologies for double posting. But it does also occur that many cold countries such as those in Scandinavia have high life expectancy. Cold isn’t so much the problem in and of itself, so much as a society that isn’t well adapted to cold being hit by a harsh cold spell.
Perhaps the US should re-engineer its cities and communities to be well adapted for all weather events all the time…
Regarding Huth’s comment, it is only partially correct. Heat excacerbates. Most heat related deaths are in those who are infirm. There are visible dips in the death data after strong heat waves. Not so with cold. Yes, cold tends to kill the infirm, but it kills the otherwise healthy too. Death data tends to return to normal without appreciable dips after cold spells.
As I see it, cold kills. Warmer is better.
How can some get the impression that Anthony is marginalizing the risks of heat versus cold related deaths?
It is the careless squirrel that gets eaten by the fox.
This heat wave is not unprecedented by any means. Having lived in St. Louis for 24 years, some years ago, I can tell you that mid-July through August is dreaded by everyone and daily high temperatures are expected to range from 95 to 100.
Stationary High Pressure Zones are a disaster. There was one over St. Louis in the summer of 1980 that gave the city more than sixty consecutive days of highs above 90. There were many days with a high of 100 or so. The “comfort factor” was around 115 at times. My partner and I played tennis outdoors from 11 to 1 daily through all this. I have seen stationary highs wreak havoc for Dallas and that region, without affecting St. Louis.
The cause for these high temps is one or more stationary highs. If one is going to blame AGW then one has to establish that AGW causes or worsens stationary highs.
And, remember, according to Warmista, AGW cannot cause higher highs but can only extend the cooling period in the evening causing lower lows (or more slowly achieved lows). Once the forcings are known we can be clearer about all this.
Are those statistics for excess cold deaths right? According to the UK government we get 25,000 – 50,000 excess winter deaths a year here.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=574
Meanwhile, here in the central Willamette Valley of Oregon, my tomatoes have yet to set a single fruit.
Please, for the love of God, send some of that warming westward!
if you want to increase the heat/cold related death rates all you need to do is to decrease the availability of electricity like they did in england last winter.
31.Jay said (July 20, 2011 at 4:49 am)
“…Of course, this past year the US has also experienced extremes of cold, extremes of wet, extreme storms and now extremes of heat.
All are present and correct in a warming world. Picking and choosing favourites between them seems to be missing the point somewhat…”
But when we point out the “extremes of cold, extremes of wet, extreme storms and now extremes of heat” that happened in the past, those are all just examples of “weather variability”.
Here is a link thats tells the wind story for Ontario during this brutal heat. http://www.sygration.com/gendata/today.html
To Martin Brumby 4:56AM.
I drove east on I-90 from central South Dakota to south central Minnesota. Several hundred miles. From White Lake, SD east to near Fairmont, MN, there are hundreds of windmills. SD is rated #5 in wind power potential. I do not recall seeing ANY of those windmills turning. None. Lack of motion caught my attention.
Lonnie, point understood. Thanks
To everyone, I think what must be kept in mind is that the studies you have quoted, while finding that more people die when it is cold than hot (basically, that summer has less deaths than winter) but this is quite different from relating either actual cold or hot events to actual elevated mortality. The apparent seasonality of mortality is not due to cold weather per se, rather it is mainly attributable to the tendendcy of people to remain in doors more in the colder months, in closed spaces where they are more likely to spread infections like influenza to one another. And colder winters have not be found to be associated with worse flu outbreaks, so the connection of flu deaths to cold weather is weak at best.
A much more pertinent fact about heat waves and mortality is that, in fact, it has been declining throughout US cities since the 60s/70s, inspite of plenty of warming of US cities during that period.
Davis, R. E., P. C. Knappenberger, P. J. Michaels, and W. M. Novicoff, 2004. Seasonality of climate-human mortality relationships un US cities and impacts of climate change. Climate Research, 26, 61-76.
Davis, R. E., P. C. Knappenberger, P. J. Michaels, W. M. Novicoff, 2003. Changing heat-related mortality in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives, 111, 1712-1718.
LK Miller at 20/7 5 pm. Yeah, you know why, the night temps are too low. I had two tomatoes this year. Plenty of flowers though and the fruit didn’t set. Plenty of those tiny ones but even they were not ripening. Ah well – I am not trying next year I’ll buy from the supermarket.
Been SUPERHOT and SUPERCOLD. Prefer SUPERHOT. But it is a lot harder if you’re not aclimatized to the weather. Going from AC 70F to No AC 110F and high humidity is a real kick in the teeth, no doubt about it.
Jay says:
July 20, 2011 at 4:58 am
………………..
Perhaps the US should re-engineer its cities and communities to be well adapted for all weather events all the time…
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Jay, it isn’t a matter of engineering. Its a matter of personal expectations and sensibility. This heat wave, while awful, isn’t unprecedented. In my area, our average max temp so far this month is 98.3 F. If this remains it won’t even finish in the top 5 years of the last century. Here’s the history of a town nearby. http://weather-warehouse.com/WeatherHistory/PastWeatherData_ChanuteMartinJohnsonArpt_Chanute_KS_July.html
I remember 1980. It was the first full year after my dad retired from the Army. He bought the house my grandfather built. A beautiful 3 story 5 bedroom brick farmhouse. One window A/C unit downstairs for the entire house. Us kids, (4 of us) slept upstairs. Compared to then, this ain’t sh…t. But, some people have no sense about them and some can’t help themselves, such as the elderly.(They are often much chagrin to ask for help.) It is a matter of staying hydrated. Don’t exert yourself during the heat of the day, and avoid being directly in sunlight. (Even if it doesn’t feel particularly cooler, shade is a good thing.) If one does these things, they’ll be fine, even in much warmer environments.
Be sure to check in on the elderly and handicapped.
Here in NE Oregon we are having a no tomato summer let alone a green tomato summer.
Snow is still in the high country. finally. Melting some but I will say we will see it around for next winter..