Want Hot Weather? Go To Miami. It's Extreme Down There

I definitely complained about this April snow shower in St. Albans,
Vermont on Friday. Maybe I should have been counting my blessings,
given the trouble and potential trouble record warm air
and water is creating in and near Florida, Cuba and
the Gulf of Mexico 

As I've been mentioning the past few days, Ma Nature has hit the pause button on spring in many areas over the past few days.

A snowstorms swept across the nation, originating in Colorado and going all the way to southern and central New England this morning. Freeze warnings were up yet again in much of the nations middle.

Here in Vermont, temperatures are expected to stay mostly below normal for the next week or so.  It snowed at my St. Albans, Vermont home yesterday for the third day in a row.

Want an antidote to the chill? Head to southern Florida. Well, virtually, anyway, I don't recommend unnecessary travel in this coronavirus pandemic.

Those cold fronts that have been sweeping through the eastern two thirds of the nation keep getting hung up in northern Florida, and never creeping any more south than that.  The result is hot times, really hot times, in places like Miami.

Miami isn't exactly an ice box to start with. The  normal high temperature in Miami this time of year is in the low 80s, with a normal ovenight temperature in the upper 60s.  That's what we would consider a stuffy, rather uncomfortably humid July day here in Vermont.

But to Miamians, normal weather this time of year really isn't that bad. What's been going on so far this month is bad, by their standards.

Six days so far this month have topped 90 degrees. Nights have been brutal. Only one night so far this month got below 70 degrees, and nine days had "low" temperatures of 75 degrees or more. April as a whole is running about seven degrees warmer than normal this  month. This after a March that was 4.6 degrees on the hot side and featured three days up in the 90s.

Climate researcher Brian McNoldy said the first of April was the warmest on record by a full two degrees, and the area is experiencing weather this month more typical of early June. McNoldy said via Twitter that the four consecutive nights recently that stayed at 78 above in Miami broke the record for earliest occurence of that happening by two weeks. "The climate system is broken," he opined.

Well, there's lots of evidence around the globe for that idea, despite the recent relatively brief spell of cool weather well north of Florida.

Miami has gotten no relief from the heat in recent years. In records dating back to 1896, there is a three-way tie for hottest year on record: 2015, 2017 and 2019.  Six of the top 10 hottest years there have been in the past decade.

People in Miami traditionally look forward to winter cold fronts that sweep through the state and off the coast toward Cuba. That's happening with less and less frequency.  For instance this past winter, there was only one brief spell of chilly weather in Miami - back in mid-January when temperatures fell to near 40 degrees. That's cold for South Florida, but certainly not record breaking.

Speaking of Cuba, that nation has been sharing in the extreme heat  On April 13, Cuba reported its hottest temperature on record for the whole nation. It was 102.74 degrees in Veguitas.  That broke the national record set just last year, reports Radio Havana Cuba.

Surrounding water has warmed up a lot, which has possible implications for the weeks and months ahead. The whole Gulf Coast of the United States, and presumably much of the Gulf of Mexico itself, are just coming off the warmest winter on record, or at least one of the warmest on record.

Gulf of Mexico water temperatures are well above normal as a result.  I can't help but wonder if those warm waters are contributing to the terrible start to the tornado season in the South.

The main reasons for these severe storms has been a series of storms coming across the nation from California to the East Coast.  Each of those storms pulls toasty, humid air northward from the Gulf, which is one critical ingredient for tornado formation.

I can't help but wonder if the air is even warmer, even more humid than it would otherwise be if Gulf of Mexico temperatures were closer to normal.  The warmer and more humid the air, the more juice for severe storms and flooding rains.

Oh, and by the way, more severe storms, flooding and possible tornadoes are expected this Sunday in the Gulf Coast States.

If the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast of the United States remains warmer than normal, as it is now, that could also add more fuel to the fire for hurricanes later this summer and autumn.

It's even possible a tropical or subtropical system or two could form in this unusually warm Gulf of Mexico before the "official" start of hurricane season on June 1.  Tropical systems need nice hot water to form, and the Gulf has plenty of that. It all depends on whether other overall weather patterns can help trigger early tropical systems, and it's too early now to figure that one out.

With all this warm air and water trouble in the South, maybe I shouldn't be complaining about our April Vermont snow showers so much.