LibertyBell

why are we getting a polar vortex this late in April anyway? Isn't the -NAO gone?

as long as it's sunny it won't really matter if it's cold for a few hours during the early morning hours... I am SO happy it's going to be sunny next week either way.

as long as it's sunny it won't really matter if it's cold for a few hours during the early morning hours.

It's going to be sunny all next week, which is perfect. It doesn't need to rain again until May.

Lee Goldberg still has lows of 37 for Thursday morning and is talking about frost advisories. I guess on the bright side, regardless of whether it's cold or not, it'll be sunny.

What was the year we had that big severe weather outbreak on my birthday (September 15th)?

In the 1990s they were sandwiched between some super hot summers so that made a difference 1991-- extremely hot, record number of 90 degree days 1992-- extremely cool and rainy Pinatubo summer (?) 1993-- back to record heat and record number of 90 and 100 degree days 1995-- very dry and very hot, lots of fires 1996-- very humid but not a hot summer, we had a 2 day streak of heat in May and then didn't hit 90 again until for just one day on the last day of August. 1999-- back to record heat, record hot July (record broken in 2010) 2002-- very hot and dry 3 day heatwave in April matched 1977 but in complete opposition to that year we went to a very hot and dry summer, JFK's hottest since 1983 and hottest until 2010.

I remember this, we had an amazing couple of years of severe weather in 2009 and 2010 and we had a lot of blocking in the winter which gave us our snowiest winter couplet in recorded history. Is there a connection between the two?

It's this kind of weather that makes me wish we spent a trillion dollars on engineering the climate. But since the sun has been out this morning here it's okay

No, thats not it. It's the endless days of cool rainy cloudy weather that sucks. I love it when it's sunny for 7 days in a row and then it can be cool and rainy for a couple of days. It's nice to see when it doesn't happen too often.

I don't know how you can enjoy that without any records weather gets boring lol

even here the sea breeze held off until after 2 PM so we hit 80

I thought it also hit 80 on April 9th?

I enjoyed our 80 here, we were able to hold off the sea breeze until after 2 PM

excellent-- LGA is very similar to JFK-- the top heatwaves are from 1953 and 2002.

Yes, indeed it's about New York City. Here on Long Island we've seen the same thing with the rapid increase in rainfall and wet summers, which blunt the high temperatures but make the lows warmer. JFK is what I use for that data, where it goes back to the 40s and 50s when we had some of our longest heatwaves on record.

New York City mostly-- it's the one which lists the longest heatwaves and when they occurred (I'm chiefly concerned with heatwaves of 7 days and longer.) Of course climate change is making the climate warmer, but the change is nonlinear. It means higher lows but the highest temperatures are not as hot because we are also seeing an increase in water vapor, which makes the air more difficult to heat. The energy of the sun then goes into drying the ground first before it can heat the air.

I'm curious what causes them and why they are only visible just before and just after totality. I heard them compared to sun shining on a swimming pool.

People will likely be moving away from Miami because of sea level rise. They already get sunny day flooding. Projections are that a lot of that coastal population will be moving to Orlando and other points inland.

I find it weird how it didn't affect Miami more than it did. It must have been really small (maybe 5 miles wide?) because Miami is very close to the southern tip of Florida.

it's why our summers don't have the length of heatwaves they used to. Look at the length of heatwaves from the 50s to the 90s vs what passes for heatwave now-- the differences are eyeopening.

The best way I've seen this explained is that air is a fluid like water so a good analogy is a swimming pool full of water. When the sun shines on this pool you can see little shadows shimmering in the water even when there's no wind. These are what shadow bands are like. My question is why do we need a total eclipse to see this effect? Why don't we see it all the time, just like we do in a swimming pool?

This means a hotter summer too, and probably strong westerly flow at our latitude

Because "hot days" are defined by the number of times it hits 90 degrees. How hot a summer is, is tangibly defined that way. I'm done with the humidity driven overnight lows. Higher lows come from humidity, while actual heat determines how many times we hit 90 degrees.

For a short time I think, but 2002 was one of our hottest summers on record, especially here on the south shore. The three hottest summers here were 1983, 2002 and 2010.