WNash

Here's yet another instance of how the bone dry conditions in the Buffalo metro are the result of bad luck compounding a bad, stagnant pattern and summer lake climatology. This summer is wearing me out. No rain but too humid and warm most days to enjoy spending time outside. Can't wait to get done with this crappy season.

No improvement at all on the Niagara Frontier, although drought conditions improved since last week east of Rochester.

Yeah, that was really bad, a dry winter and spring and then about half the summer precip in 2018. We've been using a sprinkler most days but with a baby and both of us working we can't run it as often or for as long as our lawn and garden really need. Our yard has an irregular shape so we would have to move it several times. We're mainly concentrating on the part of the garden with the tomatoes and peppers, and the fruit trees that went in last year. The flowers in our garden are pretty much a lost cause, and the grass is crunchy and yellow. I'm just gonna have to suck it up and aerate and seed the lawn again in the fall.

The lake shadow is real and is most of the reason why July and August precip averages are significantly below May/June and September averages. But we’re way below those monthly averages, which shows that we are unlucky and also in an unfavorable pattern. Last week’s misses were poor luck, as much as rain shadow. That day where everything trained over the lake from south to north wasn’t a lake shadow issue, and neither were the misses at night. It’s frustrating because we put a lot of work into our garden this year, and I aerated and seeded the lawn last fall. Even daily watering isn’t saving my yard, and our garden is really puny.

Shower moving south to north died as it approached the city, and a new storm popped up in the far northtowns, heading into Niagara County. Despite a pattern for six or seven days that looked like a droughtbuster, we received about 0.25 inch for the entire period, and this week is starting where last week left off. My yard is just a brown, baked prairie at this point. Our garden is barely hanging on despite diligent watering.

Houses sinking into the earth, mangroves along the south shore, gators in every backyard, babies born with webbed feet and hands

The videos of the chop are incredible. How sad.

That should be a pretty good droughtbuster for most of the areas that are currently in moderate drought. It looks like the Niagara Frontier will be squeezed by both lows without being in on the precip, but I'm hoping we have enough medium odds chances during the week that we'll get 1-1.5 inches of rain.

Drought update.

Much of WNY is in a moderate drought now, so it's not just an issue of lake influence. The stacked low over the upper Midwest has drought-buster written all over it, but it won't make any progress against this persistent ridge. Part of it is bad luck, and part of it is just a stubborn pattern, but we are consistently getting summers that are more dry than normal over the past few years.

I mean, just look at this

If I remember, we have had BN precip in the Buffalo metro for a good part of the last few summers. I think we got out of the dry stretch last year with a NW flow event in late July, and there was a stalled warm front that broke an actual moderate drought two or three years ago. I love Buffalo summers, but the precip deficit is making the vegetation look brown and baked.

Unbelievable. I wonder if the persistence of the lake shadow, despite warm lake temps, is the result of the significantly above average summer temps? Hot upper 80s F on land and a 75F lake supports lake breezes more than a 75F lake and a climatologically average 80F on land, and it's months too early to have delta Ts that promote convection off the lake.

Definitely pretty ugly from Buffalo metro to the north.

Buffalo ended up with a trace yesterday, and probably today will go down with a T as well. We’ll probably be in the lowest drought category in Thursday’s update. No good bets for significant rain through Sunday.

It barely has rained in the Metro. The lake is still killing convection. Outside the lake shadow, storms are popping, but not in the lee of the lake. It has been just unbelievably dry in most of the Metro. Less than an inch of rain at my house since late May, and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. Today was the best chance all month and we have just had a quick sprinkle. At least I haven’t needed to mow.

A warmer is better than a cooler lake, but the lake cools down so quickly in the fall that it would take a very rare early cold snap or a very warm late fall for it to make any difference in LES.

Above normal temps are fine but far above normal temps + humidity makes being outdoors unbearable. The payoff for long, cold winters here are those beautiful summers, when you can spend half your day outside. This week has been ok (though today’s elevated ozone kept us indoors because my daughter has respiratory issues). But I’d just as soon not ever repeat last week. And this drought is murder on our lawn and our vegetable garden. I’m perfectly content with WNY weather without significant temp or precipitation extremes.

That’s awesome! My friends are camping in eastern Iceland now. They say it’s actually sunny and nice there, instead of wet and chilly like in Reykjavik.

Some friends have been there the last couple weeks (they left at the beginning of the heat wave and were bragging about it. Apparently it has been cooler than normal but not exactly cold. The real notable feature has been persistent rain - apparently it has been raining every day since early May. Even the locals, who don’t get too worked up about bad weather, are totally sick of it. https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2018/june2018/201806_map.png

The line of storms associated with the front is collapsing as it approaches Buffalo. Looks good in Niagara County to the north and along the lake shore to the south, but the lake is killing convection in and around the city. Very frustrating, as this was the only good chance of rain for the foreseeable future. Our garden is parched and our lawn is going yellow.

We got under a developing pop up shower that went from Kenmore and Amherst towards downtown. Torrents of rain for about a half hour, now sunny with jungle humidity.

That’s a bonkers HI. I lived in Nashville when they set their all time record for temp, 109F. But even with the 57F dewpoint, the heat index only got to 110F, and it was unbearable even though there was a bit of perceived cooling from evaporation. At the dews we have seen this weekend, you get soaked with sweat within minutes.

KBUF got up to 91 on the hourly obs. IAG and ROC at 94 seem to be the max for the region. Dews made it up to the low 70s. It was sultry and felt awful to be outside for more than five minutes, but a bit short of the extremes that were suggested in the last few days.

I lived in Nashville, where the average high for months during the summer is close to what’s forecast for Buffalo next week. If a 10-20 year extreme here is only slightly worse then an average summer day in the southeast, I’ll take this every time.