Hot As The Fourth Of July, For Sure! Worldwide Heat Rages On

It's hot all over, as this map from the Washington Post shows. Greenland
looks nice and nippy, though. 

I hope you brought along a lot of water and sunscreen for the rest of your Fourth of July fun in Vermont today.  

It will be the fifth day in a row for many of us with 90 degree heat.

We did get a small break last night. Slightly lower humidity allowed early morning temperatures to drop to more comfortable levels -- in the upper 50s to mid 60s for most of us. Here in St. Albans, we left all the windows open and the fans going. The house cooled off nicely.

But as of mid-morning, it was getting stuffy again as temperatures rapidly rose. By 11 a.m., it was already 88 degrees in Burlington, Vermont.

For us, it will just be today and tomorrow, and then the heat will vanish for awhile. We'll have more warm days coming up, but I don't see any return to long stretches of terrible heat in the foreseeable future after this one is done.

The good news is that the cold front that will end this heat seems destined to speed up and race through here by Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, it looks like it will be back to typical, comfortable Vermont summer weather.

As I've noted, we keep breaking temperature records, locally and around the world this summer. I've already mentioned Monday's low temperature in Burlington, Vermont, which was 80 degrees. That's the warmest daily minimum temperature on record for any date.

The period Saturday through Monday in Burlington was the hottest three consecutive days on record. Individual days have been hotter, but this was the hottest continuous three day stretch, with an average temperature of 84.7 degrees.

The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang has catalogued some recent all time record heat around the globe. The following have happened in just the past week or two. Some normally chilly areas roasted, while some normally torrid areas got off the charts hot.

-  Montreal, Canada, sharing in Vermont's heat wave, reached its all-time highest temperature for any date with a reading of 97.9 degrees. The heat wave has so far killed 11 people in and around Montreal, so this is turning into a real disaster. So far, three people have been confirmed dead from the heat in the northeastern United States, but that figure could easily rise.

Remember, heat waves are the most deadly of weather extremes. Down in the United States, more people die from heat waves than any other kind of weather in most years. This includes hurricanes, floods and tornadoes.

Some heat waves can turn especially deadly, like this one has in Montreal.  A 1995 Chicago heat wave killed about 600 people. 

Other recent hot weather records from the Capital Weather Gang:

--- Ottawa, Canada recorded its highest heat index on record. The combination of temperatures in the 90s and incredible humidity by Canadian standards gave Ottawa a heat index of just under 117 degrees (!)

It wasn't hot everyhere this week. Snow fell on this Montana ski
resort yesterday.

--- As I mentioned the other day, Glasgow, Scotland and Belfast, Northern Ireland hit their all time record high temperatures of 89 and 85, respectively.

The entire nation of Scotland appears to have also had its all-time record high with a reading of 92 degrees

--- Yerevan, Armenia tied its all time record high temperture of 107.6 degrees.

Today through Friday, most forecasts call for a region in northern Siberia, along the shore of the Arctic Ocean to see temperatures in the low 90s. That is unprecedented in that region of the world. Normal temperatures there in July are usually at least 40 degrees cooler than that -- around 50 degrees at best.

It's not hot everywhere, of course. A couple inches of snow fell yesterday at the Showdown Mountain Ski Resort in high-elevation Montana. But that's about to end. A heat wave is set to settle into Montana by the end of the week, and heat advisories are already up for northeastern Montana. 

The heat ridge that caused our heat wave here in New England is about to head west, setting up a heat wave in much of the western United States, not just Montana. Excessive heat warnings are already up in the Southwest.

Yes, it's always hot in the summer in places like Arizona, but it will be even hotter than normal in that part of the nation.

The westward march of the heat wave is opening the door for that Friday cold front we've been talking about.

Since the air flow will be out of the northwest while the heat ridge is out west, every time the heat tries to squirt into the Northeast from that heat ridge, a Canadian cold front will cut the heat off at the pass. That's why we're not looking at any extreme heat through the middle of this month.