Friday, June 10, 2011

WEATHER - In 2 Words, Record Breaking

"Ariz. Wildfire Spreads as Record-Breaking Heat Wave Grips Eastern U.S." PBS Newshour Transcript 6/9/2011 (includes video)

Excerpt

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Still, forecasters said there was some relief on the way. A cold front was expected to move into the Midwest tonight and then head east.

We take a closer look now at the heat wave and what relief is in store for the country and the fire-ravaged Southwest with Evan Myers of AccuWeather.

Evan, welcome.

What's going on overhead to create such high temperatures in such a big chunk of the country?

EVAN MYERS, AccuWeather: Well, Ray, there's a couple different reasons, what's going on.

Number one, we can just tell, in the short term, there's just a massive area of high pressure, a big ridge in the upper atmosphere that extends from the East Coast all the way back into the Southwestern states. And it's just been pumping hot and dry air out of Mexico. So, we know that that's the reason why this is occurring.

Something else is going on. We certainly know that something greater is happening. There is a greater percentage of warm years that have occurred recently than would be the normal distribution. So, whether that is human-induced or whether it's part of a natural cycle, I don't think it really matters.

I think we need to be prudent in how we move forward in the future and really think about the things we do that might affect the climate. But, certainly, this hot weather across the Southern part of the country is going to stick around for a while.

RAY SUAREZ: Is it early in the year, unusually early in the year, for places, even places that expect very hot days and very hot summers, to see temperatures like this?

EVAN MYERS: Well, it is -- certainly, we have been breaking records. Temperatures in the mid 90s and the upper 90s from Boston to New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore and Washington is not extraordinary this time of year. We have gotten close to the records, and we have broken records in some cities, like Philadelphia and Baltimore -- in Baltimore, two days in a row of 99 degree heat, in Washington, D.C., 102 degrees today. That tied the all-time record for this date. That was set back when Ulysses S. Grant was president back in 1874.

So, you have to go back 137 years to see anything like what we have seen the last couple of days in the Eastern part of the country and back into the Midwest.

AccuWeather Summer Outlook 2011 video (opens in new page)

Screenshot From Video
(click for better view)

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