U.S Daily Record Weather Reports 2012 (climate, snow, warmest, recorded)

[NorthStarDelight]

Originally Posted by nei

How hot is it supposed to be in the southeast? My forecast only has about average highs, maybe a couple degrees above at most; upper 60s.

After a slight "cool down" tomorrow - high in the low 80's, it's supposed to hit 90 over the weekend. Hot, hot and hotter - that's going to be the story of the summer down here I'm afraid.

Even Houghton, Michigan hit 70 today, but that'll be it for a while, with highs dropping into the more typical 50's for the remainder of the forecast period - pretty sweet for May, if you ask me.

[Cambium]

May 2, 2012.

[Patricius Maximus]

Originally Posted by nei

How hot is it supposed to be in the southeast? My forecast only has about average highs, maybe a couple degrees above at most; upper 60s.

As Cambium said, 90's will reach all the way into Tennessee (Nashville has quite a few from TWC, not just the GFS). 80's and 90's will be the rule across the Southeast for a good while, with a few near-100F temperatures showing up in Texas. The same crowd that was roasted all last year is the first ones to show up with the big heat this year as well, which I'm sure is a cruel repeat performance for many. These places are the areas that are still in exceptional drought, so that's no surprise.

Aside from the Gulf Coast states, these temperatures are not normal this time of year - in most cases they're well above average and are close to record highs. Below are TWC's forecast highs for selected locations for May 4:

Lubbock, 98
San Antonio, 95
Brownsville, 93
Houston, 89
Dallas, 93
Oklahoma City, 94
Kansas City, 91
Saint Louis, 89
Memphis, 92
New Orleans, 89
Tampa, 89
Jacksonville, 92
Atlanta, 85
Charlotte, 87
Norfolk, 91
Washington, 87
Cincinatti, 83
New York City, 78

Departures from average are more than +5F for a swath of the States today stretching from Wyoming/Nevada/Arizona/North Dakota over to New York on the eastern boundary, Florida on the southern boundary, and with Alabama excepted. Most of New England today will be near or below average . Departures greater than +10 are commonplace in this expanse, maxing out in a few areas of +20's. Given how the variation in the South starts to flatten out this time of year, it's a notable event.

Originally Posted by Cambium

With these record maps they use all stations and some that only have kept records for past 20-50 years so its probably why we're seeing records a lot.

I guessed the same thing. If all those stations are used it isn't anything unusual to see a few records pop up. Of course when we get the real record-breaking events we'll know about it .

Originally Posted by NorthStarDelight

After a slight "cool down" tomorrow - high in the low 80's, it's supposed to hit 90 over the weekend. Hot, hot and hotter - that's going to be the story of the summer down here I'm afraid.

For someone like you an episode of "The Twilight Zone" entitled "The Midnight Sun" will have a lot of currency; it certainly does for me. Its portrayal of the effects of the scenario of runaway global warming (in the episode caused by the Earth's orbit contracting) and the horrors of extreme heat are quite realistic, and would still be today, minus the 1960's trappings of course .

A quote from that episode, from the radio reporter, should capture the feel of many summers that people in the Sun Belt experience:

"Forecast for tomorrow...Forecast for tomorrow: Hot. More of the same only hotter"

In the episode, shortly afterwards the radio reporter is escorted out due to him departing from the script (they feared a panic (maybe they should've panicked )), the radio circuits are fried, and the power goes out, never to come back on again. The utility outages, including water which will only be turned on for an hour a day, madness, useless air conditioning, "cool thoughts", and suffering is pretty much what would happen in reality. If you don't believe that look at how the American grid breaks down in a heat wave we have today - with a heat wave that reaches 110F at midnight and probably at least 130F during the day it would collapse entirely. Rod Serling's introduction to this episode has a particularly prescient sentence for any thermophobe living in the Deep South today: "And all of man's little devices to stir up the air are no longer luxuries; they happen to be pitiful and panicky keys to survival"

I'm afraid that hot, hot, and hotter will be the story of the summer where you are unless something drastically changes soon. Even a pattern change in summer really fails to bring any true heat relief to where you are, since you're still in the 80's even in a cool summer pattern I believe; of course in a cool, wet pattern you can get some thunderstorms that can spice up life a bit, as you have said. Every year every region of the South seems to have one spike of heat that marks the point of no return, the death ridge of heat from that point on being locked in for the duration, and it appears that that point has been reached. I wish that I could say the same to you as others say for those places where cold is locked in for the winter, along the lines of get ready and batten down the hatches, but there is nothing that one can do to mitigate the menace that you face.

[NorthStarDelight]

Originally Posted by Patricius Maximus

For someone like you an episode of "The Twilight Zone" entitled "The Midnight Sun" will have a lot of currency; it certainly does for me. Its portrayal of the effects of the scenario of runaway global warming (in the episode caused by the Earth's orbit contracting) and the horrors of extreme heat are quite realistic, and would still be today, minus the 1960's trappings of course .

A quote from that episode, from the radio reporter, should capture the feel of many summers that people in the Sun Belt experience:

"Forecast for tomorrow...Forecast for tomorrow: Hot. More of the same only hotter"

In the episode, shortly afterwards the radio reporter is escorted out due to him departing from the script (they feared a panic (maybe they should've panicked )), the radio circuits are fried, and the power goes out, never to come back on again. The utility outages, including water which will only be turned on for an hour a day, madness, useless air conditioning, "cool thoughts", and suffering is pretty much what would happen in reality. If you don't believe that look at how the American grid breaks down in a heat wave we have today - with a heat wave that reaches 110F at midnight and probably at least 130F during the day it would collapse entirely. Rod Serling's introduction to this episode has a particularly prescient sentence for any thermophobe living in the Deep South today: "And all of man's little devices to stir up the air are no longer luxuries; they happen to be pitiful and panicky keys to survival"

I'm afraid that hot, hot, and hotter will be the story of the summer where you are unless something drastically changes soon. Even a pattern change in summer really fails to bring any true heat relief to where you are, since you're still in the 80's even in a cool summer pattern I believe; of course in a cool, wet pattern you can get some thunderstorms that can spice up life a bit, as you have said. Every year every region of the South seems to have one spike of heat that marks the point of no return, the death ridge of heat from that point on being locked in for the duration, and it appears that that point has been reached. I wish that I could say the same to you as others say for those places where cold is locked in for the winter, along the lines of get ready and batten down the hatches, but there is nothing that one can do to mitigate the menace that you face.

My gosh, I love the Twilight Zone, can't believe I've missed that one. I'll have to check to see if Netflix has it on dvd...lol.

Yeah, you're absolutely right about our summers - once the heat locks in, it ain't going away until autumn comes and the jetstream finally drops deeper into North America. And it does scare me, the prospect of each summer getting hotter than the last, although we've yet to breach the all-time record high of 105 F (40.5 C), reached in July of 1980. The closest I've seen so far was 104 F, in August of 2007, and that heatwave was so intense for so long that my AC melted down into slag. I'll never forget waking up at 3:30 am, drenched in sweat, and walking outside and checking the thermometer - it was 86 degrees!! And a hot, gusty wind was howling out of the southwest, it was like standing in front of a blast furnace - mind you, this was at 3:30 in the morning. I honestly thought the end of the world was at hand, very much like that Twilight Zone episode.

The next day, I went out and bought a window unit (for $80, if you can believe it), and stuck that thing in the downstairs window, the part of the house that's kinda like a basement and keeps way cooler than the rest of the house. We shut off the upstairs and camped out downstairs for 3 weeks until the heat wave broke, as I knew there was no way we'd be able to get a new AC installed when it was breaking a 100 degrees...lol. When we finally did get the new AC installed that September, the techs told me about how they were working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week in the extreme heat, as heat-withered families begged for relief. Desperate times indeed.

So yeah, I've been there before, and it ain't fun.

However, there is *one* thing I can do, and that's to load up my van and drive north until I reach the paradise of Houghton, Michigan. When will I do it? When it's too 'effing hot for me to stand...lol. And if it's hot up there too, I'll just immerse myself in Lake Superior until I start to feel cool again...lol.

[Cambium]

May 3, 2012. You can see the warmth shifting.

[jtur88]

At Vernon, in north Texas, today, the high was 106. That didn't just break the record for this date, but it exceeded the old record (91) by 15 degrees.

[NorthStarDelight]

Originally Posted by jtur88

At Vernon, in north Texas, today, the high was 106. That didn't just break the record for this date, but it exceeded the old record (91) by 15 degrees.

Nasty.

I've said that if someone offered me a million dollars cash, tax-free, with the requirement that I spend the rest of my life in Texas - I'd flat out turn them down. No amount of money could ever induce me to move to Texas - I just couldn't do it.

Now, if only someone would give me a million dollars to move to say, Upper Michigan - I'd be all over that...lol.

[Cambium]

May 4th & 5th, 2012

[flatlander52]

rain, rain go away
Hello Cambium, I really enjoy reading your posts. Keep up the good work

[Cambium]

May 6, 2012


May 7, 2012