Hot Times For Us Vermonters, And The Rest Of The World

Huge areas of the country, red and orange, are under
heat warnings and advisories today.

Right on schedule, the heat wave is rolling into Vermont and the rest of New England today.  If it didn't feel too bad early this morning, you're lucky. By afternoon, Ugh!

According to NOAA, 194 million Americans, or 59 percent of the nation's population, is under some sort of heat warning, advisory or watch. This figure includes everybody who lives here in Vermont.

With high temperatures in the lower 90s and dewpoints in the lower 70s both today and tomorrow, it will feel like it's about 100 degrees outside. If you can, stay in the air conditioning. If you know somebody who is elderly or ill and lives in a place with no air conditioning drag them kicking and screaming if you have to into a cool place somewhere.

And let's just say that 3 p.m. this afternoon or Saturday afternoon is NOT the time to take your daily jog.

This heat looks like it will last a bit longer than originally thought. Forecasts earlier this week had a very welcome cold front coming through Saturday night. Now, it looks like it won't arrive until sometime on Sunday.

That means there is little chance for relief from cooling thunderstorms today or Saturday, though isolated ones might develop in the hot, muggy air. (In fact, as the hot air was arriving this morning, there were some thunderstorms in Quebec and a couple isolated ones zipping close to the International Border.)

There's also a chance a cluster of thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective complex could come across southern Ontario and Quebec and affect northern Vermont overnight. That's iffy, but something to watch.

The computer models are arguing over when the cold front comes through on Sunday.  Some models suggest it will breeze through in the late morning and early afternoon Sunday.  That would mean some refreshing air late in the day, and help minimize the chance of strong thunderstorms.

Thunderstorms peak in the heat of the day in the late afternoon and evening, so an early cold front arrival would mean not as many storms.

Other computer models don't bring the cold front through until Sunday evening or night, which would mean another hot, terrible humid day with an increased chance of strong thunderstorms. I think it will take until Saturday morning for the computer models to make up their minds.

It still looks seasonably comfortable next week with highs in the 70s to around 80 and lows in the nice 50s to low 60s.

Of course, there's always the good chance of another nasty heat wave in August. They do come more frequently in this climate change world. Yesterday, as if we needed it, we got more evidence of the ongoing worsening climate change.

JUNE WORLD'S HOTTEST

According to NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information, June, 2019 was the world's hottest on record, with data going back to 1880.

NOAA says:

Hard to find any blue (cool) spots in the world in
June, 2019, the hottest on record for the world.

"The June temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.71 degrees above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees and was the highest for June in the 1880-2019 record. June 2019 bested the previous record set in 2016 by 0.04 degrees."

The global heat has been consistent in the past four years, even more consistent than the hot years in the first decade of the 21st century. Remember, this data set goes back more than 130 years.

Since January, 2015, the "coolest" month in the rankings was April, 2015, which at the time was "only" the seventh warmest on record out of the 130+ years of data.

The ice caps were less icy than usual in June, too.  The Arctic ice extent was the second lowest for June on record, with data going back 41 years. Antarctica had the least ice for June on record, again in data going back those 41 years.

Another interesting tidbit is the hottest months on record tend to be during strong El Ninos, which give an added boost to world temperatures. June, 2019 featured a weak and fading El Nino.

One thing I'd like to address is what climate skeptics and deniers accuse people, sometimes including me,  of doing. They call it "climate ambulance chasing," as when climate activists point to heat waves like the record one in Europe in June and the relatively intense one we are now experiencing in the eastern and central United States.

These skeptics point to areas of chillier weather that don't get media attention while the hot spells do get the spotlight. 

Some showers and isolated thunderstorms zipped across
northern Vermont early Friday morning, as a warm front
marked the start of an oppressive spell of weather.

Even with climate change, you're going to get cool pockets. You'll remember that central North America was on the cold side in late winter and early spring. (And by the way, that did get media attention.)

July so far has been kind of chilly in northeastern Europe and western Russia, we've been told on Twitter. And that's absolutely true. Twitter is accurate for once.

But the warmer than normal conditions in most of the world totally overwhelm these cold pockets. I'm sure July will turn out to easily be among the world's Top 10 warmest.

The current heat wave in the United States is not the worst ever, we're again told by the skeptics. Again, that's totally true. But it's still a pretty intense, dangerous heat wave and is being pointed at as an example of what will continue to become more frequent in a warming world.

Here's another argument against the skeptics. The cold waves are indeed cold, but the heat waves are often record setting.

According to the Category 6 blog, here's an interesting factoid: Sixty-nine nations and territories have  broken or tied their all time hottest temperatures so far in 2019. The number of nations and territories that have broken or tied their all time lowest temperature? A big fat zero.

See a trend?