The primary reason for all these "blessings" is an enormous high pressure dome centered over the interior South. It is blocked, meaning it won't be moving anywhere any time soon. There it will sit over the landscape compressing the air under it while drawing moisture from the Gulf and Atlantic off Florida. Heat and humidity will build to dangerous levels - already has. The "high" will eventually push off to annoy the Middle Atlantic states or New England but the blocking pattern generating the ridge and influencing its placement will remain and another high pressure cell will take its place. Then another; and another and still another for the indefinite future.
For those of you who live in the mid-south, the western Great Plains, Ohio Valley; this is your summer. You may not (almost certainly will not) see any real relief until mid-September. The Weather Underground has a page called "Climate Extremes" or something similar. You can access it here:
http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extremes.asp
According to this site, from June 27 through the 30th, 134 all-time EVER high temperature records were set. All time for any month and we haven't yet even seen the hottest time of the year. People, this is only the begining. Every medium/long range climate outlook I have looked at tells me the eastern half of the U.S. plus the central Great Plains all the way to the Front Range will experience average temperatures up to 10 to 15 degrees above seasonal norms. This isn't going to be a week or ten-day event but will go on for two solid months or more without interruption. Better break out the sunblock and those wet towels 'cause this one's going to be a corker.
Can't happen you say? it already has; at least twice. The summers of 1934 and 1936 were outliers that were significantly hotter than ANYthing ever seen in the U.S. before and nothing since has come close. I'm guessing summer of 2012 will be the one that tops them both.
Good luck, watch out for the very young and very old, the shut-ins and stay cool.
Now I guess you see why people build homes underground and have basements which remain 'cool' year round even though the outside temperature is ABOVE 95. Well what temperature did you expect in July? Wait till August we are just getting started.. Bet you we better start putting power lines underground so blown trees can't affect them... Which is what they do downtown in the cities most of the time.. Columbia Maryland ad Reston, Virginia have few power lines with Transformers above ground. When the grid gets scratched by a natural calamity you rarely hear those cities mentioned... hmmm... it doesn't take a genius to know why..
I'm in Chicago and earlier today we had monstrous storms going thru with trees down, power lines down, 200,000 without power and temperatures around 90. Tonight the forecast is for more of the same, and tomorrow as well. And, sorry to say, this is all going to the East coast, wow, I am scared.
We're having up to 107 F here today and cannot do much even with the air conditioners + fans running, refrigerators and freezers full, and computers working. I am extremely sorry for the people who got their power off. That's a tremendous misery. We were out of power for more than a week spring 2011 due to tornadoes, those were the strange times but at least it wasn't that hot, so we could get some air and cooked outside. It makes me think, why in the world is everybody so vulnerable? What is so great about our civilization whereas some poor bedouins and Afghani peasants have been surviving for milennia? Anytime it blows of pours in the U.S., millions of people are out of function.
Astoundingly, we STILL, in 2012 use 1880s telegraph technology to transmit electrical current!! two or more wires strung out over wooden telegraph poles that come crashing down every time there's an ice storm or a little tree falls on the wires. Do we develope a better system? nah, we just keep putting the wires back UP on little wooden telegraph poles again and again like retarded idiots.
The power lines could be placed underground as they are in most new developments. Of course that would take money and create jobs, two things the republicans are opposed to. Ask your friendly republican why they want to take America back to the 19th century.
There were a lot more green spaces, a lot fewer people and industries back then. Whether we like it or not carbon dioxide gas generated from burning fossil fuel, methane gas generated from feed lots and land fills do indeed trap heat. It is politically incorrect to say all that but if we stay our course we'd be all losers. We'd have to pay higher insurance for homes, higher home cooling bills but lower home heating bills.
Congress takes no interest with funds for disaster victims. Wild fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes wreak havoc on Americans. On November 6, the U.S. Electorate should vote out these vile, corrupt criminals who only love their Swiss hedge funds and the Arab oil cartel.
The republicans still fight for the oil and coal industry to dominate energy policy here and around the globe. Does anyone of these fools think they can go to another planet to live b/c this one is slowly dying.
The U.S. still imports more than half its oil. But thanks to declining demand for products made from crude, the country is now supplying the rest of the world with gasoline.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The United States is awash in gasoline. So much so, in fact, that the country is exporting a record amount of it.
The country exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it imported in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
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For those of you who live in the mid-south, the western Great Plains, Ohio Valley; this is your summer. You may not (almost certainly will not) see any real relief until mid-September. The Weather Underground has a page called "Climate Extremes" or something similar. You can access it here:
http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extremes.asp
According to this site, from June 27 through the 30th, 134 all-time EVER high temperature records were set. All time for any month and we haven't yet even seen the hottest time of the year. People, this is only the begining. Every medium/long range climate outlook I have looked at tells me the eastern half of the U.S. plus the central Great Plains all the way to the Front Range will experience average temperatures up to 10 to 15 degrees above seasonal norms. This isn't going to be a week or ten-day event but will go on for two solid months or more without interruption. Better break out the sunblock and those wet towels 'cause this one's going to be a corker.
Can't happen you say? it already has; at least twice. The summers of 1934 and 1936 were outliers that were significantly hotter than ANYthing ever seen in the U.S. before and nothing since has come close. I'm guessing summer of 2012 will be the one that tops them both.
Good luck, watch out for the very young and very old, the shut-ins and stay cool.
hmmm... it doesn't take a genius to know why..
It makes me think, why in the world is everybody so vulnerable? What is so great about our civilization whereas some poor bedouins and Afghani peasants have been surviving for milennia? Anytime it blows of pours in the U.S., millions of people are out of function.
Do we develope a better system? nah, we just keep putting the wires back UP on little wooden telegraph poles again and again like retarded idiots.
Oh well, back before 1910 or so there WAS no air conditioning and people did just fine.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/05/news/economy/gasoline_export/index.htm
So much for any talk of 'energy independence', if we really have it to begin with...
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The United States is awash in gasoline. So much so, in fact, that the country is exporting a record amount of it.
The country exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it imported in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.