I was thinking about this topic since long before Hurricane Erin was even a slightly lower pressure area, so it has nothing to do with that. It's an impressive storm, but the predictions would have to all be blown to bits before it would be a concern here, or pretty much anywhere in the continental US (CONUS).
Long ago, 2014, I ran into a graphic showing a multi-color map of the US where the colors represented the warmest day of the year, according to the 1981-2010 NOAA Climate Data. A look at the color scale at the bottom will show that the intervals aren't uniform. Those colors aren't really by the week; the left end sorta pink color is June 1 - 15, while the either deep blue or black right end, is the entire month of September. The time span varies from a month down to four days at a time for August 1 - 5, 6 - 10, and 11-15.
The old map.
Since we're far from the 1981-2010 NOAA data, it had been on my mind to look for something like that but based on more recent data. Somehow, somewhere and "somewhen" (I completely forget) I came across this map. Same concept, except that the baseline data is shifted 10 years forward, and they use a VASTLY different approach in that they never go to an interval smaller than two weeks. Call this lower precision.
Obviously the entire map is different and comparing them falls into that never-never land between meaningless and useless. On the old map my location, just south of the bump of Cape Canaveral on Florida's east coast, had its few hottest days of the year predicted to be in the July 26-31 interval. On the new map, the prediction is hard to pick out because the dividing line between the first and last two weeks is hard to resolve on the map. Maybe the common sense way of resolving that is to say the hottest day of the year is in the middle two weeks of August, because it's hard to resolve whether it's the first two or last two.
Which seems like all it's saying is the hottest day of the year is in August. That's as close as they get. On the other hand, we're in the third week according to that scale at the bottom. Just going by the date, we're around the hottest day of the year. It has been in the lower 90s for our daily high, with the feels like temperature usually around 10 to 15 degrees higher. The UV Index says 11 on a scale of 10 and uses the description, "Potentially Fatal within 15 minutes." We know that's aimed at visitors to the area and new residents who aren't used to the weather and don't pay much attention.
As someone else said, when they see forecasts along the lines of that summary, they could have saved a lot of time by just saying "it's August."
SiG - I was just looking at this sort of climate information for our still relatively new location of New Home 2.0. According to the temperature trends, the heat reaches a peak the first week of August or so and then starts drifting down. Knowing that and trying to be observational, that does indeed seem to be the trend.
ReplyDeleteInteresting input.
DeleteWe've lived in this house since 1984, and have gone through many different things done outside from walking around the neighborhood to long bike rides. We've always thought August was the hottest (worst) month of the year. The exact date isn't usually noticeable in terms of being very different from any other. I'm fairly sure there have been years when it was the last few days of July like the old map said, but I just kind of block out my calendar from mid-July until mid- September as "don't go outside".
Here at DM79, I've always thought that August was the worst for heat. This year, we had hotter days in July, but we're now in a sustained 90+ sequence. I'm ready for cooler weather.
ReplyDelete- jed