Weather Post by Dr. Ryan N. Maue
As the ridge of high pressure slowly edges eastward over the eastern USA, dewpoints in the 80sF and temperatures over the century mark are creating heat index values typically seen in Iran, Yemen, or Saudi Arabia. Along the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, sufficient moisture combines with the oppressive desert heat to generate heat indices in excess of 130F. As of 1 PM Eastern on Friday, parts of the DelMarVa peninsula are feeling the effects of Northern Hemisphere summer Middle-Eastern style.
From coolwx.com/extreme “Extreme Weather Site“, which keeps track of crazy global METAR or station data, Baltimore MD has a HI of 129F. An unofficial “records” site co-authored by myself shows current temperatures compared to daily and monthly records going back between 30-60 years. While some stations have much longer historical records, this quick-look is indicative of record high/low temperatures, and inspires the reader to cross-check the local National Weather Service office daily climate page to verify the “all-time” high. For instance, Newark NJ (KEWR) is going to test it’s all-time high temperature, currently sitting at 104F…
At my Florida State weather maps site, I plot up a variety of useful quantities from the brand new NAM/WRF 4-kilometer mesoscale forecast model which runs four-times daily over the Continental USA. These include simulated radar reflectivity, 2-meter temperature, and heat-index. It is cool to watch the near-surface temperatures wax and wane with the daytime heating or plunge as a thunderstorm cools an area with its outflow pool.
Historical Heat Index and 2-meter Temperature from the RTMA 2.5 km mesoscale analysis: 2-meter temperature (last 48-hours), heat-index (last 48-hours)
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For those wondering what Heat-Index values are in different parts of the world, here are 14-day animations of previous HI for Africa/Middle East and America .
I live in Ocean City MD area (Part of the DelMarVa) and right now it is reading 103° F with the humidity at 48%.
NOAA’s latest scare tactic: a fiery red map.
Are there historical maps for comparison anywhere? Given the massive amount of heat waves studies have found in the early twentieth century, one has to wonder what historical heat index maps would look like.
Heat indexes are a wonderful thing I supposes, but are meaningless without actual temps and humidity that I can relate to. Without the classic data the HI is just a number without a context but a very alarming number when it isn’t understood what it represents. I feel the same way about chill factor. I didn’t grow up in a chill factor, I grew up with a thermometer, wind, and weather and understand very well how it feels.
The popular use of the HI seems mostly useful to confuse people in to thinking we’ve had a sudden shift in the climate and that we need to spend trillions to put the climate right.
In any event this appears to be the very same phenomenon that struck Russia last year.
I lived in the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia for five years, so temperatures like this were commonplace on a daily basis during the summer. Plus the water table was just a few inches below the surface on the salt pans (subkhas) so at certain times you could have high temperatures and high humidity giving a horrible heat index. But then working off the rigs in the Arabian Gulf would give similar horrible effects with 100% humidity.
Meanwhile it has been raining solid for ten days in Paris with temps never much above 20°c. Much the same across Europe it seems. Where are the headlines?
In Newport News, day-time breezes deliver shaded-area perceptions of much lower temperatures than the HI values.
Granted, I am an unreliable respondent to “How hot is it?” questions: several decades of employment in wastewater treatment have left me insensitive. We had work to do, when it was 110 and when it was -10 degrees. When basins were re-lined with thick plastic ‘film,’ in mid-summer, we watched teams sealing the edges of the film with propane{?} torches: awed by the fully-clothed crew walking about the floor of the basins with mid-day temp & humidity values above 90.
I question the actual utility of HI values.
I have to admit that occasionally the Pacific Northwest gloom gets to me. I went camping earlier in the week and it was a good thing I brought the flannel and jacket and raincoat- the week before the temps dipped into the 30s, and the week before that it froze (the fruit crops are three or more weeks late). The fire in the fire-place was most welcome, if unexpected for mid-July. Then I look at the national temp map, and think to myself, “self, this isn’t so bad….”
Feels like………
I’m sorry, but 98 still feels like 98…
I have to laugh when I see this from Antarctica:
– 104
feels like: – 104
As usual the late, great John Daly had something to say about this:
http://www.john-daly.com/USGCRP/index.htm
As Steve (Paris) says above, Europe is cool. Here in the UK we still haven’t seen Summer yet – and there’s only 5 more weeks of it left! Night-time temps are ok, but day-time temps are really poor. Sunday is expected to be only 22 deg c. – and that’s the best day for over two weeks! So we are envying your heatwave.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber is smacking with joy over tire sales. Especially as trucks cover the roads with gators running their cheapo exploding recaps.
Remember that deep earthquake?
Aleutian volcano shows signs of impending eruption | Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/22/us-volcano-alaska-idUSTRE76L0E420110722
Same activity as the dust bowl, volcanic & economic if it weren’t for Bernanke…
I still see a lot more blue but given that they give more weight to the red, rest assure that this will be the hottest summer ever.
I had to shut off NPR’s “On Point” this morning which featured so-called climatologists linking the heat wave to global warming. You’d have thought they’d have learned their lesson when they tried the same thing with the Russian heat wave of 2010…a weather event which has now been shown to have nothing to do with AGW. But this isn’t about facts or science or even common sense. Weather isn’t climate unless it suits their agenda, and even when it doesn’t as in the recent cold and snowy winters, they find a way to twist it to their advantage.
I’m 60 years old and thought I’d pretty much seen everything in the way of human behavior, but I was wrong. These guys are absolutely shameless.
It is not here in the Mid-Atlantic. But it is not unusual, unprecedented, or even out of the ordinary. We usually get a handful of 100+ degree days each summer – and they do not dissapate the humidity when they arrive.
I remember summer of 1983 working on the recreational docks down in southern Maryland renting boats and pumping gas it was 107 F on our thermometer at the pumps over the water. The humidity was about 80% as well. I really don’t see the big deal here, we get these blocking highs periodically and people deal with it. I know I worked the day with a wet towel over my head and sold out of cold drinks every day for about two weeks. It was definitely good for business as we had about a 200% markup on most of the drinks. Only problem was we needed a much bigger cooler to really rake it in.
Sorry to hear about the European summer…I was in England for three years and we had lovely weather all three years. It only rained once or twice a week and we mostly had nice highs about 28C in the summer and only in the -5C range for lows in the winter. Of course the natives were declaring drought and complaining of the heat on the few days we got to 35C. All us yanks thought it was a hoot.
Here in Buffalo we’ve had a brief time-out on the oppresive heat — now it’s just hot with a temp of 92° and a dew point of 62°. And with half my apartment below ground, who needs AC? Don’t know if those storms at the other end of Lake Erie will get here tonight or pass to the south, but it’ll probably mean a rising dew point to make tonight’s lows meeting up with a higher dew point and less comfortable than it is now.
Ok so where can I find a map that show what the actual temperature were or are? Not what the heat index is and not forecasts but actual temperature. I can’t find one on accuweather or weather underground.
We’re past the tipping point; before, there was Celsius and Fahrenheit; now, there is only Heat Index.
Yes – the heartland of USA is finally getting some real summer heat. It is long overdue, in many areas where ‘cool and very wet’ had predominated until recently. This heat is helping the crops (corn, soybeans, etc) accelerate their cold stunted growth and begin approaching a normal state of development for this point in the summer. Normal crop yields may yet be achieved…..
For the folks around Minot North Dakota, that had homes flooded just 3 weeks ago, this heat is a godsend. They’re working hard to get their damaged homes cleared of fouled carpets, flooring and wallbaord, pump out flooded basements as the water table drops, and get the core structure of the houses dried out before mold growths make them unrecoverable. The dry conditions and 90F temps are a great help with all of that! Arresting and preventing any further mold and mildew growths with dilute bleach solutions is much more effective if the moisture content of the wood structures is already low. The bleach solution soaks in deeply and achieves a ‘complete kill’, preventing the problem from recurring after the repairs have been completed. . It takes real warmth to make all of that happen quickly!
With American temperature data only going back 120-200 years (depending on the site), out of the tens of thousands of years of climate since humans have been in NA, and with thousands of sites, it is almost inevitable that records will be broken every year, as we continue to record what the range really is.
If the history was only ten years old, what is the likelihood that a real “record high” will have been seen? Not much. If the history was 25 years old, it still doesn’t mean much to say “a record high.” For 50 years not much, but getting slightly better – but only slightly. After 100 years, it still is a only a few drops of water in a glass.
Yes, after 120 years or 200, we think we have seen what range climate has in store, but it is still only 1/100th of the time since man has been here. 99% of which time we didn’t have thermometers and couldn’t add the temps to the data. with 1% of the local data, our pronouncements of “all-time record” or “record for this date,” they can’t mean much.
YES, we do want to note them. But we don’t need to get our nickers in a twist over them. SOME place in the US has records every year. The warmists know that, and jump on it, to push their agenda by spinning something that happens every years into the idea that we are on a collision course with disaster. It is intentionally mendacious of them when do so.
And when they include the HI – what is THAT all about? If it can’t be compared to 100, 200, 1,000 years go, what is the alarm all about? IT IS JULY, PEOPLE. July gets hot. Deal with it.
(Anecdotal: I live in Chicago, where people don’t even know what “the dog days of August” are. Everyone wants to move to a warmer climate, but when it climbs over 90F, they all start crying about it. Here, in two weeks or so the heat will break, right around the 2nd of August. And if it doesn’t come right on schedule, it is natural variability. No big deal.)
I love that Chicago is off the bottom of the chart legend.
For years I’ve been calling it “The Climate Capitol of the USA.” Everybody here thinks I am crazy to say that, but we miss hurricanes and tornadoes, and most of the summer heat, and outside some sporadic heavy snowfalls in the last 3-4 years, we’ve missed the brunt of winter. We didn’t have any of that snowfall the East had the last two years.
Come to Chicago folks! (If you can sell your houses and move…) The place where almost all the bad weather avoids!
It wasn’t always like this, though. The 1970s SUCKED! And into the mid-1980s, but since then, ahh, what gloriously unspectacular weather!…LOL
I just checked the USA Today web page for record highs by state, and MD, PA and WV all had their all-time highs set in 1936 — the heart of the Dust Bowl. Delaware’s was set in 1930 and Virgina in 1954.
None of those highs are going be threatened by this heat wave (109F – 111F).
But OMG the models say things are going to be worse, so the alarmists are out in full force at the Huffington Post:
IT’S HOTTER THAN IT USED TO BE!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/its-hotter-than-it-used-t_b_906242.html
The center point of the heat looks to be Washington DC. Thus the heat could be anthropogenic, caused by all the politicians mouthing how they have to pay for the discretionary spending transferred to their political patrons by taking money out of Social Security. That’s some steam!