Burning up in the Midwest

[REF]

From the wife out in Palm Springs for the week…..hot here in Boulder, but not this hot!

[wanderers]

Memorial Day weekend was rainy and chilly, highs in the fifties. The next week was uncomfortably warm, highs in the mid-nineties and extremely humid. This week has been pleasant, highs in the mid-eighties with low humidity. I guess the is nowhere, or at least very few places, that have consistently good weather.

[86Scotty]

Originally Posted by REF

From the wife out in Palm Springs for the week…..hot here in Boulder, but not this hot!

Attachment 40274

Attachment 40275

We have some family in Palm Springs. I've only been once. It was the hottest I remember being anywhere in my life. Of course, it was high summer.

[rionapo]

In addition to record setting heat, the West is also in a serious drought letting Lake Mead to historic levels. Here’s an animation based on the US Drought Monitor webpage showing drought conditions in the last 20 years. Being West-centric, I was surprised to see how much of the country was affected.

[86Scotty]

That's really interesting Don. North Dakota? Whodathunkit.

A couple of places on that link point to Arizona/Nevada basically being in a drought for all of history. Weird.

[daveb]

Can't speak for any other areas but we hit 108 here the other day. While somewhat warmer than normal, we often get this kind of heat in the central valley between June and August, just on different days of the month each year. We also often get excessive heat in May and September. Basically California's central valley is a desert. This years rain levels have been very low and much lower than normal but each decade we get this and reservoirs have been built to hold back water for irrigation and help prevent flooding. The real problem is when we get back to back dry years. I haven't seen a single day event of extreme heat like we had on one particular day back in the 90's yet. Maybe we'll see another record heat setting day this year, who knows. Same with above average precipitation. In 1997 we had an unusual year that produced the most flooding since the 70's as shown in this video

this video

The 97 flood was unique in that a warm weather event happened in January and we had a heavy snow pack. Averages are deceiving because we seldom have an average year. 1976-1977 produced a lengthy drought and worse than anything to date, but 1983 was very wet. We normally get about 9.5-14 inches of rain however in 1862 this area was hit by 8.5 feet...yep feet! Now how they made those measurements might be less than accurate, but it flooded the valley floor. If we have another event like that we will be in trouble. Then there was a heavy drought that lasted until 1864 followed by another wet year but nothing like 1862. Talk about climate change. Looking at our irrigation company weather records, from 1898 to 1980 we had 11 very dry years and 10 very wet years...the rest were more or less average. I'm not worried about this year but if we don't get rain during the next rainy season we might be in trouble and similar to what happened in 1977. In the 80's and to date, Ive seen some very dry and very wet years. A few years ago I drove my SMB up Sonora pass in July and found people snowmobiling up there. This years snow pack (in the Tuolumne River watershed) was so minimal that most of the snow runoff (what little there was) never ended up making it down to our reservoir. I've seen this a few times over my life but this years snow pack was another way below-normal event. We need more reservoirs but most people don't care until we have these low precipitations years coupled with a hot dry summer season. I just kinda get a kick out of many weather reporters over exaggerating the hot or extreme weather. When I was a kid we never thought twice about days reaching 105 or more because it was common. We didn't have cooling centers and heck, a lot of us didn't even have air conditioning in our cars and homes. Is the weather that different than 40 years ago. Not too much. My parents made sure we went up into the Sierras to escape the hottest days of summer as I do these days.

[N147JK]

Between 105 and 110 forecast for Monday in the Seattle area. That's 35 to 40 degrees above normal. This will likely break every high temperature record in the book for the region.

[maptester]

Just returned from a long road trip, Astoria OR to Atlanta GA. We left the Black Hills of SD on Wednesday (June 23) and in mid-South Dakota is was 104°F for awhile. Southern Idaho was hot last week, upper 90s to low 100s. It only got humid after we crossed the Ohio River near Paducah. It was 50°F at the Mount St Helens Johnston Ridge Observatory. :-)

[bshillam]

Portland, Oregon suppose to hit over 115-118 depending on which weather forecast you look at on Sunday. For use in June that's unheard of. What concerns me is the lack of rain we have had in the PNW this spring. I suspect we are going to have a really bad fire season and lots of water conservations put into place. Last year was really bad from California to Washington with historical number of fires burning. We lost lives, homes, natural habitat, etc smoke so bad people were asked not to go outside due to the falling ash. I know have several additional air scrubbers, back up filters for the main forced air system.

[Steve Hunt]

Originally Posted by daveb

... I just kinda get a kick out of many weather reporters over exaggerating the hot or extreme weather. When I was a kid we never thought twice about days reaching 105 or more because it was common. We didn't have cooling centers and heck, a lot of us didn't even have air conditioning in our cars and homes. Is the weather that different than 40 years ago. Not too much. My parents made sure we went up into the Sierras to escape the hottest days of summer as I do these days.

I have the same kinda take over here on the other side of the country. 60 years living in North Florida and it's basically the same now as then...6 months of nice and 6 months of too dam hot/humid "sprinkled" with everything from 100's of wildfires mid-state to like now rain everyday, standing water, mold/mildew on everything. Several nights per year in the teens to heat index of 105 ish.
To your point on weather reporters exaggerating I couldn't agree more. The biggie here being hurricanes, the hype and exaggeration the last 4-5 years is at a all time peak...they seem to think nothing of just making it up.