LibertyBell

I figured it was either that or 1983, two of my favorite summers from back then

Is that why they are called Dry? Sounds like they'd be great for astronomy.

the good old days-- have you noticed we dont get that anymore? 80s and especially 90s were our hottest decade now its all about high mins which isn't really "hot" it's stuffy and humid I'm not sure this stat is kept anywhere but I feel like the number of extreme heat waves (heat waves with 5 or more days in a row of 90+ has actually gotten less). We already know the 90s had the highest number of 90 degree days.

wow how warm was the cape?

How does this compare to May 2020 when we had snow around the 9th-10th?

there is no such thing as non stop heat at our latitude-- we just want a lot of sun

temps dont matter so much I just want a lot of sunshine

Any early forecasts for the total lunar eclipse? May 15th night into May 16th ..... from 11:29 PM to 12:57 AM Just general conditions in terms of how much cloud cover there is expected to be?

I hope the weather is as great as this for the total lunar eclipse in 2 weeks

Yes I remember this happened last year too and that's when my allergies stopped then too

I love this lowering of water vapor the last couple of springs, my allergies are gone and I can breathe normally again We need water vapor reduction as well as carbon dioxide reduction both are greenhouse gases and both are pollutants. I hope we can develop devices to get rid of both excess water vapor and excess carbon dioxide, the air feels so much cleaner without these pollutants.

I love this lowering of water vapor the last couple of springs, my allergies are gone and I can breathe normally again We need water vapor reduction as well as carbon dioxide reduction both are greenhouse gases and both are pollutants. I hope we can develop devices to get rid of both excess water vapor and excess carbon dioxide, the air feels so much cleaner without these pollutants.

I love this lowering of water vapor the last couple of springs, my allergies are gone and I can breathe normally again we need water vapor reduction as well as carbon dioxide reduction both are greenhouse gases and both are pollutants.

thats why I'm so glad we've seen a reduction in humidity in the past couple of springs. this dry air is such a blessing, I'm actually able to breathe great with all the dirty water vapor gone and NO ALLERGIES also need to remember that water vapor is a greenhouse gas just like carbon dioxide is, we need to get rid of excess amounts of both

Has it ever hit 100 in May? 99 is so close

and it snowed in the Poconos and we had a heavy frost here on Long Island-- Monday, May 14th I think it was?

snow in the interior too

you dont miss the sun huh sunny days are the best-- regardless of temp

None of these were more impressive than our April heatwaves in 1976 and 2002

I agree with some of that, but the problem of buses should be fixed with renewable fuel powered buses. The same should happen with trucks. Clustering into small zones has always been a health issue.

How tall would a wall have to be to block out that cold? I've always wondered what it would take to block out local seabreezes.

Looking a little closer at our communities, however, researchers found the air quality in some of the state's major cities worsened. That includes the cities of Albany and Buffalo which fell off the cleanest cities list for daily soot pollution this year. Albany also joined Syracuse and Elmira on the list for areas with worsening year-round soot pollution. That's something officials with the American Lung Association say may concern citizens living with health conditions. "When we're looking at upstate communities, in particular, were looking at people that might be suffering from or living with asthma, cardiovascular disease, elderly, children, pregnant people," said Trevor Summerfield, director of advocacy in New York for the American Lung Association. "So it's a wide gamete. Our lung health is important and if you can't breathe, nothing really matters." https://gothamist.com/news/new-york-citys-air-quality-is-improving-but-it-still-isnt-healthy-enough New York City and some other metropolitan areas have significantly lowered their emissions through more stringent air quality regulations, but it isn’t low enough, experts said, to prevent severe health consequences such as asthma, especially for city kids. “Just to reiterate, these are preventable cases of asthma,” said Susan Anenberg, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University who co-authored both air pollution studies. “So these are cases of asthma among children that will affect them through the course of their lives and their parents, and they are preventable by reducing transportation-related air pollution.” The first study focused on the most dangerous of these pollutants, according to Anenberg: particulate matter that’s smaller than 2.5 millionths of a meter, known as PM2.5. The designation is a catch-all for solid or liquid particles of this size that are released in the air, which happens anytime fuel is burned. They are so small, they can only be seen with a microscope. It’s mostly made up of sulfate, nitrates, ammonia and black carbon, all of which negatively affect human health – from causing burning eyes to exacerbating blindness and cancer. The biggest urban source for this pollutant is traffic, especially big diesel trucks and buses. People who live near New York City airports are often exposed to high levels of PM2.5 due to cars moving around travelers as well as emissions from planes. This particulate matter causes the greatest disease burden – cancer, stroke and heart disease. These particles can penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream. PM2.5 exposure was found to decrease life expectancy by one year in the European Union and by nearly two years in Asia and Africa, where air pollution is worse. If countries met the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines, life expectancy could increase by up to one year. “We even have increasing evidence for associations with early birth, preterm birth and low birth weight, as well as cognitive decline,” Anenberg said. “It’s a pollutant that affects every organ, and I think we're probably only scratching the surface with the health outcomes that we considered.” The New York City metropolitan-area has cut its PM2.5 pollution by 40% over the last 20 years with stringent regulations and enforcement from the state’s aggressive air pollution control program, which regulates permitting and imposes emissions limits. Federal law requires states to submit plans and prove that they are lowering emissions to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standard. The metropolitan area is now well below the national average, but its levels are still nearly double the World Health Organization’s limits for a safe environment. Children are most at risk, according to Illias Kavouras, an environmental health sciences professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health, who wasn’t involved with the studies. “There is no safe threshold,” Kavouras said. “Government policies and regulations have brought down the levels of PM2.5 pollution, but they are still at levels where they can cause significant damage, particularly in children because they are still developing their respiratory systems.” Found alongside PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide is a dangerous pollutant ubiquitous in city life, and the focus of the second study. Anenberg said that it not only exacerbates pediatric asthma but has been found to cause it. Kavouras said early and prolonged exposure physically alters the structure of a child’s lungs as they develop. This highly reactive gas is emitted from power plants and burning fuel in cars. When it interacts with water and oxygen, acid rain can form, which can harm the ecosystems of waterways and forests. New York City cut its nitrogen dioxide emissions by more than half, still slightly above WHO’s acceptable levels. But the unsettling dangers of nitrogen dioxide for Kouvaras is that it stimulates ozone production, the smog that often surrounds cities and makes it difficult to see. Hot sunny days in the city, such as one of the 17 days last summer when temperatures hit 90 degrees or higher, coupled with traffic and power plant emissions make ripe conditions for ozone. From June to August 2021, one-third of the recorded outdoor concentrations of ozone published by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for Manhattan were above the EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 0.07 parts per million. Inhaling ozone can damage lungs, and even low levels can cause chest pains, coughing and shortness of breath that affect healthy people, too. Those who exercise while exposed to ozone can increase the amount inhaled. The American Lung Association, an advocacy group that promotes lung health through research and education, gave New York City an F grade for ozone pollution, based on the number of days of elevated levels. With a failing grade, New York City fares better than most cities. Worldwide, nine out of 10 people live in places where the air is polluted beyond WHO standards. Lowering these air pollutants is the only way to combat their associated health and environmental impacts, said Anenberg. She hopes the studies can provide information relevant to policymakers to make more informed decisions about stronger air pollution controls and designing cities better to move people around within them. “The more fuel we burn, the more air pollution we have, the more greenhouse gases we have, the more heat we have,” Anenberg said. She added that by increasing public transportation and recreational trails for walking and cycling instead of roadways for our vehicles, not only would we reduce air pollution we would make our cities a more pleasant place to live.

Report on air pollution has come out saying it is much worse now than it was in the past. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/opinion/air-pollution-fossil-fuels.html In the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, doctors noticed a surprising silver lining: Americans were having fewer heart attacks. One likely reason, according to an analysis published last month by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, is that people were inhaling less air pollution. Millions of workers were staying home instead of driving to work. Americans were suddenly burning a lot less gas. And across the country, the researchers found that regions with larger drops in pollution also had larger drops in heart attacks. The menace of air pollution doesn’t command public attention as it did in the 1960s, when thick smog yellowed urban skies. But evidence has piled up in recent years that the real progress the United States has made in reducing air pollution isn’t nearly good enough. Air pollution is a lot deadlier than we previously understood — and, in particular, studies like the analysis of heart attacks during the pandemic show that the concentrations of air pollution currently permitted by federal policy are still far too high. In an assessment of recent research, the World Health Organization concluded last year that air pollution is “the single largest environmental threat to human health and well-being.” The low quality of the air that we breathe should be regarded as a crisis. It also presents an opportunity. The existential threat of climate change has come to dominate debates about environmental regulation. Proposals to curb emissions, once presented as public health measures, are now billed as efforts to limit global warming. The solution to both threats is the same: We need to stop burning fossil fuels, preferably yesterday. But there is cause to wonder whether a greater focus on the immediate dangers posed by air pollution, rather than the more distant specter of global warming, might help to muster the necessary support for changes that are going to be expensive and disruptive. There are many reasons the world is failing to respond adequately to climate change. But surely one factor, one difference between this crisis and, for example, the global effort to close the hole in the ozone layer in the 1980s, is the motivating value of clear and present danger. Some effects of climate change already are palpable, of course. But the worst is still in the future. Warnings about climate change are predictions, and even if they are taken seriously, people may be indifferent to the quality of life in 2100, or at least unwilling to do anything about it. They might be more motivated to save their own lives. There are practical reasons, too, why it may be easier to curb emissions in the name of public health than in the name of climate change. The laws authorizing environmental regulation, including the Clean Air Act of 1963, were written as public health measures. Conservative federal judges are seeking to use that history to limit the government’s ability to address climate change. When the Supreme Court in February heard arguments in a case challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, several members of the court’s conservative majority were openly skeptical that the agency has the legal authority to require the kinds of sweeping changes necessary to slow global warming.

but this seems to happen every winter....why cant the SPV be strong in the Spring and the nao blocking be strong in the Winter?

that said, even the pros make mistakes and then the measurements are adjusted accordingly (see the 2009-10 snowfall record at Baltimore or the measurement errors from the Jan 2016 blizzard.)