The oppressive heat wave in the Frogmore Metroplex and the surrounding environs has abated somewhat. But how miserable aren’t you? We have the numbers ready so you can impress your friends if you are attending any shindigs this weekend.
This morning in downtown Savannah the temperature is below 70F for the first time since June 7th. I’m pretty sure that’s a record, NWS confirmed that in Charleston the record was set for longest period above 70 F (they went below 70 F yesterday, we bottomed out just above 70). For another perspective, our highest heat index yesterday was lower than the air temperatures on Tuesday! Here are a couple of graphs, left is temperatures, right humidity … as usual, clicking on any image results in embiggening.
If you’re curious, it’s not actually “cool,” our temperatures are back to about average. The problem this summer has been twofold: first, it just hasn’t cooled off at night. Daytime temperatures were about average or slightly above, but we set record or near record high minimum temperatures at night at least a dozen times, with stretches of over a week at a time where night time temperatures were in the upper 90th percentile of history. The second problem was humidity. We just broke over a month where the humidity was rarely below 70%. That drives the heat index values through the roof.
Why the change? Well, fall starts next week, so not really a surprise but I’m sure somebody wrote a tabloid style headline about it somewhere 😛
Was the abnormal summer a result of climate change? Well, these kinds of events were what the models I first worked with in the 1990s were showing as a likely scenario. While the activists were harping on low probability super high heat and sea level rise, actual scientists were warning of just these kinds of complex trends that, taken together, may be less dramatic but just as impactful on society and the environment in many ways.
Speaking of drama, the blob in the Atlantic is ZOMG Orange! and NHC has it at 40% this morning …
It is now an invest area, but the models aren’t really very enthusiastic about it at the moment. No magic words in the TWO, so nothing to get excited about.
Nothing active in the East Pacific, but one of the two blobs is at 70% and may be worth watching eventually as it might threaten Mexico, but at the moment nothing exciting there either ….
There is a new tropical depression off of Japan this morning (evening out there). JTWC spins it up, the initial model run has it as a suspicously small storm tracking offshore from the main islands. More on it as it spins up.
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