Record Cold in the Midwest While the Northwest is Warm and Dry

 It is often useful to get the big picture when understanding the meteorological situation, particularly when thinking about the potential of climate change.

The Northwest has experienced a very warm/dry period of late.  There is no doubt about that.

But just the opposite is occurring east of the Rockies, where record cold and snow are occurring.

 It is often useful to get the big picture when understanding the meteorological situation Record Cold in the Midwest While the Northwest is Warm and Dry

A number of locations had daily record lows and some locations MONTHLY record lows (see below).


So how can the eastern portion of the country have a historic coldwave while the Northwest is much warmer than normal?  

The answer is that the upper-level wave pattern became amplified, with a ridge of high pressure over the west and a trough  of low pressure over the east (see upper-level map for this morning at 5AM)

There is no evidence that such amplification has anything to do with global warming.  

Is the globe 1-2F warmer due to increasing greenhouse gases?  Quite possibly.  

But does global warming explain the extreme cold and warm events that the U.S. has experienced recently?

The answer is clearly no, with a deep scientific literature to support this statement.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why so little lightning in the Pacific Northwest? And a very nice weekend ahead.

Image
During the past 24-hours, there have been a few lightning strokes over the region (see below) but nothing to write home about (see below). It turns out that the Pacific Northwest and the remainder of the West Coast have some of the lowest frequencies of thunderstorms in the entire country (see below). But why?    My podcast provides the answer. And I also give the weekend forecast....and I think most will like what I have to say. To listen to my podcast, use the link below or access it through your favorite podcast service. Some major podcast servers:     Like the podcast? Support on Patreon 
Read more

The Time of Year You Can See the Air Move

Image
  Most of the time, you can not see the air move.   You can feel it, but the complex, turbulent motions are invisible to you, except when it interacts with leaves and branches on trees and plants. But for a few weeks of the year, the sky is full of small, cotton-like tuffs that like a natural MRI machine reveals the complex three-dimensional motions of the atmosphere.   Cottonwood season.  And we right in the middle of it.   Being cottonwood aware is of particular value this year.  It reveals the active dispersion and movement of air that makes the outdoors essentially COVID safe, and thus should be of some comfort for those nervous about transmission outside. Cottonwood seeds are embedded in small cotton-like fibers.   A million seeds weigh about 3 pounds.  Yes, each seed and tuff weights about .000003 pounds.   And that fact, plus the cottonwood tuff, means that these seeds fall VERY, VERY, VERY slowly.   So slowly that they are excellent markers for the three-dimensional flow of the
Read more

A Much Colder Than Normal April: But How Unusual?

Image
  April was a chilly month over the Northwest, but how chilly?     It turns out the answer depends on where you are located. The difference between this April's temperatures from normal across Washington State (below) shows that the entire state was well below normal.  The eastern side of the state was particularly frigid:  some areas were more than 6 degrees below normal.   Considering the west side of the state, the April mean temperatures at SeaTac Airport are plotted below.   This April was the coolest since 2011. April 2020 was in 15th place for the coolest April since the mid-1940s and was a bit more than 4F below normal.  So if you felt that you were cheated out of normal spring warmth...you are right. But if you really wanted to experience extraordinary April cold you had to be east of the Cascade crest. Consider Yakima.  Wow.  It had the third coldest April temperature since the mid-1940s.   And the all-time record in 1955 was only slightly colder. If you want a longer-te
Read more