From the same man that created
Gooding Rock and
Tucker's Landing now comes an even more extreme
climate that makes
Turpan seem tame by comparison: Arus. Located in a deep interior, Arus features an extreme continental
climate. Winters are
snowy and bitterly cold, often featuring blizzard conditions and even colder periods that, in an average winter, bring temperatures as low as -70F. Ice fog is commonplace, but often lifts during milder spells. Temperatures during the three coldest months have never risen above freezing, and temperatures have dropped to as low as -91F.
Summer is very hot and humid, and is also the wettest part of the year. Just as Arus is taken over by pure arctic air during winter, the tropical rain belt dominates the weather pattern during summer. Daily thunderstorms occur when the rain belt is over Arus. Temperatures remain above 80F in the morning, and routinely reach 100F in the afternoon, combined with dew points around 80F (yielding heat indices around 120F). When the rain belt moves north of Arus an upper-level ridge takes over, bringing extreme heat. It's a dry heat during these periods, but in a typical summer temperatures reach 120F during these periods. Lows are typically 80-90F. Even hotter conditions are possible - temperatures as high as 141F have been recorded. On the other extreme, when strong arctic fronts come in, the tropical rain belt is pushed south, and much colder conditions prevail. In a typical summer, there is at least one cool night in the 40's Fahrenheit, and even temperatures below 40F aren't terribly unusual in the earlier part of the summer. These extremely cool periods are typically dry, but sometimes chilly rain can occur when precipitation lags behind the initial arctic front.
Spring and Autumn are best thought of as transition seasons between Winter and Summer - the same weather features are present, but during these seasons they clash, producing big and sometimes extreme temperature swings.
Because the Spring warm-up and Autumn cool-downs occur so rapidly, the vegetation doesn't stay in a transitional state for very long. Spring is short and intense, typically featuring an explosion of Spring growth that occurs for a few days around May 1 before transitioning to summer mode. Likewise, around the end of September there is typically a sudden peak of fall color that lasts for a few days, before transitioning to full-on dormancy within a week.
So, there you have it: a
climate that oscillates between brutally cold winters and summers that can reach temperatures that wouldn't be unusual in your oven.
The Koeppen classification for this
climate is
Dfa, the hot-summer variety of the Humid Continental
climate. The Trewartha classification is DCa, which corresponds to the same
climate type. The
Holdridge Life Zone for this
climate is a cool temperate moist forest.
As for myself, I give this
climate a
C+. The winters are too cold, but they're pretty interesting, and I can't argue with 100+ inches of snow. The summers, on the other hand, are very brutal, and I wouldn't ever care to experience that kind of heat.