TheClimateChanger

If the NWS forecast for August verifies, I think we’d be looking at a top 10-15 summer nationally. It’s like if we don’t set a new record every year, it’s no big deal.

Actually, looking a little closer at the map, it indicates this year has been 0.45F above the 1991-2020 mean. Using that anomaly, this would be the 20th warmest (of 129 years). I believe this is the better way to compare this data to the official numbers, since they might calculate somewhat different means.

A bit of a straw man. No one has said it’s been the hottest summer on record in the US. With that said, the map is a bit misleading. It looks like it’s pretty typical but in reality it has been more than 1 degree above the 20th century mean. Obviously, these are unofficial, preliminary numbers, and the mean will likely tack on another tenth or so as the last two days of July are incorporated into the mix. Even so, this would be 29th warmest (of 129 years). Limiting to years prior to 2000, it would be 14th warmest (of 106 years). So it’s still a very warm start to summer nationally either way. I suspect the official ranking for that period to be somewhat higher.

Agreed - that was a bunch of nonsense peddled by CWG, as per usual. No mention of the HO-83 hygrothermometer in use at all of the airports from the mid 80s until mid/late 90s, which had a warm bias in excess of that amount - particularly, for daytime maxima in light wind and sunshine. A lot of heat records set during that era, particularly in the summertime. But we have blasted past those years. To analogize to baseball and the steroid era, it would be akin to a bunch of players, not using steroids, suddenly hitting 80-90 home runs every year. And Barry Bonds' record was being eclipsed regularly. The difference between IAD and DCA this year is 2.7F, which if it holds would be the ninth smallest difference between the two sites on record. The difference this month has been just 1.5F. No calls for an investigation. No national scandal. Wonder why?

The big difference was those winters were ridiculously cold out west. Several recent winters have just been coast-to-coast blowtorches. 1950 also finished out as a pretty chilly year overall, capped by The Great Appalachian Snowstorm with unprecedented November cold and snow.

Also, Elkins (~2000 feet) had its second least snowy winter on record in 2022-2023. Elkins was poised to obliterate the 1931-32 record, but some late season snowfall pushed last winter into a close 2nd place. Below is the top 20 least snowy winters in Elkins. A lot of them are quite old, and I think some of that is attributable to changing measurement techniques. In the past, it was common just to measure depth changes or attribute a 10:1 ratio to the melted snow. They certainly weren't using snowboards. Regardless, 4 of the top 20 have occurred in fairly recent years. If it simply doesn't snow, it doesn't matter how the measuring techniques have changed, because there's no snowfall to inflate.

The "extreme run" has continued into 2023. Here are some rankings for smaller communities in the greater Mid-Atlantic region. One thing that's interesting is when you look at shorter time frames, you tend to get more years in the past. However, in that era, there would be cooler periods that would often drop them in the rankings. In the current "extreme run" era, the heat is just relentless. Clarksburg, WV - 2nd warmest to date Elkins, WV - 6th warmest to date Morgantown, WV - 7th warmest to date Hagerstown, MD - 4th warmest to date Charlottesville, VA - 3rd warmest to date [NOTE: A lot of missing data for 1930 & 1932. Since this is calculated by averaging days, those years may be inflated if the missing data is from early in the year when mean temps are cooler.]

Careful. If there's one thing I've learned in my 25-odd years in these weather communities, it's that you need to use euphemisms like "extreme run" or "runaway urban heat island effect" or the "never-ending runaway Lezak recurring warm cycle."

Here are the Top Ten warmest years at several other sites in the greater Mid-Atlantic region. This runaway urban heat island effect is serious sh*t. Charlottesville, VA - 7 of top 10 since 2012 Clarksburg, WV - 8 of top 10 since 2012, 9 of top 10 since 2005 Hagerstown, MD - 8 of top 10 since 2010 Morgantown, WV - 6 of top 10 since 2012 Elkins, WV - 6 of top 10 since 2012, 7 since 2005 Martinsburg, WV - not sure what was going on with the sensor in the late 90s, but still 4 of top 10 since 2011

High of 94F today at Morgantown. With today's extreme heat, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at the climatology of extreme heat in the region. Here are the most recent dates of 100+ at the regional climo sites: Morgantown, New Philadelphia, and Zanesville: 7/7/2012 DuBois: 7/22/2011 [only date on record with 100+] Pittsburgh: 7/15/1995 [back in the good ol' days when PIT used to be the warmest spot in the region] Wheeling: 7/18/1942 [large gap in the threaded record from 1953 until 1998]

Should the criteria be 100 though? The criteria is only 95 at Syracuse even though they have averaged 3 more 90+ days and 1 more 95+ day per year than Pittsburgh over the last 25 years. It doesn’t make much sense for our criteria to be higher than locations more prone to extreme heat.

Looks like all of the construction at the airport is helping to increase the temperatures there. Up to 91 now.

There have been incredible afternoon oddities across New England. They've just become normalized. Apparently, unless it's 100 degrees, it's not that hot. Look at BTV - top five highest mean maximum all since 2012, with 2012 being nearly 1.5 degrees higher than the prior record. Burlington, VT Similar pattern in Boston, despite being located right on the Harbor - which you would think would be cooler. You know the ol' "cooler by the water" meme? Boston, MA This is incredible, extraordinary stuff. There's no other way to characterize this. In any other era, a stretch like this would be headline news every single day. Only our advanced technology is preventing mass crop failures, famine and starvation. In the old days, they would be counting the bodies after heat like today. They called them "prostrations." No doubt our cooling technology has saved countless lives.

Looking at a chart like that, you have to expect some profit taking here at the top. If not, it could be off to the moon.

Are they sure there's no missing data in that Sarasota reading? That seems absurdly dry for Florida.

Yes, you are correct. I took a look at the period of overlap between ORH and the city station (1948-1962). The city station did average about a degree more in the annual means; however, there was a distinct seasonality to the temperature differences. It was about 1.5-2 degrees warmer in January, but the differences were very small in July (with the city being generally less than 0.5 of a degree warmer). I believe the difference is because radiational cooling has an oversized impact in the warm season. Winter is cloudy and windy, so radiational cooling effects are minimized. The lower elevation city site in the valley radiates better than the surrounding hills, even despite the development around the site. This difference largely offset the elevational cooling in the summertime, but not in winter.

Impressive heat this month. Even ORH is in 6th place, with the opportunity to move up even more over the next couple of days. Due to the airport site being about 500' above the city of Worcester (a cooling effect of 1.5-2.5F), it is very difficult to set new warm monthly temperature records there particularly in the summertime when there is less internal variability.

The use of data from Cedar Rapids also makes the trend look more pronounced. Cedar Rapids is often one of the cooler spots in the state of Iowa. The early records have an unbelievable number of days of 95+. It's not believable that Cedar Rapids would have experienced more days of 95+ than Des Moines in those years. That makes no sense climatologically. The data for Des Moines also show a trend towards less, but not nearly that pronounced.

Most of the region was prairie, not forest. You can't convert it back to something it never was.

No, because what these reports never tell you is the concomitant increase in dewpoints from the anthropogenically enhanced transpiration. Peoria, Illinois, for instance, had a heat index of 104F at 1 am. Some of these areas will likely see wet bulb temperatures approach the theoretical limits of human survivability later this century. Not to mention the devestation wrought on native plants and animals, which have evolved to live in a drier climate with periodic heat extremes.

Impressive heat this month. Hagerstown is up to 8th place all-time. I like to use Hagerstown, since it's outside of the Baltimore-Washington urban heat island. Incredibly, 7 of the top 10 hottest Julys have occurred since 2010. Excluding years on or after 2010, this month would place in third place, just behind the hot Julys of 1955 and 1999, and tying 1988. By comparison, the "so-called" hottest July on record in 1936 saw a mean temperature of 73.8F. Excluding a 7-day heat wave that month [July 9-15], the mean for the other 24 days was an incredibly comfortable, summer of yesteryear-esque 71.4F.

Heat wave uncancelled with a high of 91 in Spartmanland. A few clouds were no match for Old Man Summer.

For nearby Wheeling - Ohio County Airport, there have only been 17 hours of 100+ heat indices dating since 2013. What's weird is this hasn't even been a stretch of unusually cool summers, but rather a stretch that has included some of the hottest summers in Wheeling weather history, including the hottest (2016), 5th hottest (2020), 8th hottest (2021), and 11th hottest (2018) on record.

It looks like coastal regions in general are warming faster than continental interiors, with extreme marine heatwaves present near multiple coastlines driving intense surface air warming. Perhaps the models are simply incorrect, and coastal regions experience more warming from an enhanced greenhouse than do continental interiors? You can even see that same effect in the Alaskan inset, with a relative minimum of warming in the Alaskan interior and enhanced warming along all of the coastlines.