Wicked witch weather

Calling our recent weather hot would be a bit like describing Stalin as cranky. It's an accurate statement, but a woefully incomplete description of the problem. With the number of breast implants, nose jobs and other plastic modifications done in these parts, some people in the area might literally be melting (has anyone seen Michael Jackson lately?)

It does appear that we broke a minor record yesterday:

Southern California's already scorching July heat wave will get worse over the next few days, forecasters said Friday, straining the power supply and sopping shirts across the region.

July is shaping up to be the third straight month of unusually hot conditions: The latest record fell Friday, when the weather station at Pierce College in Woodland Hills measured triple-digit temperatures for the 16th day in a row.

That record is toast because they hit triple-digit territory without a sweat, pushing past 116 in my erratic monitoring of the valley today. That's bad enough, but the whole west coast is broiling and today was just another day of bad news.

Portland was over one hundred again and Seattle was nearly there. Once or twice a year seems reasonable but they've been having a run of high temperatures this year. It's not quite 'Blizzards in Miami', but unusual. Once again, the jet stream comes up.

The heat wave baking most of the country is largely caused by a high-pressure system centered in the drought-ridden Southwest. The system has acted as a spinning buffer against a cool jet stream that wiggles across the border between Canada and the United States.

"We should have about one more week of this ahead of us, and then that jet stream hugging the Canadian border in the West looks like it will make an excursion south," Patzert said. "By the end of next week, we should get some cool air from Canada."

Jeff Masters of Weather Underground has a lot more:

Record heat has gripped much of the U.S. this week. The heat is currently most intense in the Desert Southwest, where yesterday Phoenix recorded its fourth highest temperature of all time, 118 F. Needles, California hit a record 120 yesterday, and the temperature topped out at 123 F in Death Valley--only 13 degrees cooler than the world record 136 F measured in El Azizia, Libya, in 1922. The heat should continue for another week in the Southwest, before a shift in the jet stream pattern brings more normal temperatures to the region late next week.

...

The National Climatic Data Center reports that the June 2006 was the 2nd warmest June on record, and the first half of 2006 was the warmest in the United States since record keeping began in 1895. The average temperature for the 48 contiguous United States from January through June was 51.8°F, or 3.4°F above average for the 20th century. Globally, June was also the 2nd warmest June on record, and the period January through June was the 6th warmest such period on record.

It could be a worse. We could have storms like these. That's real wicked witch weather.

Update: The high was 119, ouch:

The San Fernando Valley turned into a suburban Death Valley on Saturday as the mercury hit a record 119 in Woodland Hills, causing sweaty refugees to hug iced lattes, plop down on tile floors and, in at least one case, plead with a salesman to part with his last remaining portable air conditioner, a floor model.

...

It was hotter in Woodland Hills than previously recorded in Los Angeles County for a July 22 and 5 degrees hotter than ever recorded in the desert city of Lancaster.

Elsewhere in the region, it wasn't exactly a day for a picnic. El Cajon and Escondido smashed through their previous mutual records of 109, the former hitting 113 and the latter 112. The San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park hit 114, 2 degrees higher than its previous all time-record.

In other scattered locations, records were broken for the date: Burbank hit 112, 12 degrees above the previous record set July 22, 1980, and only 1 degree below the all-time high of 113, the National Weather Service said. Laguna Beach hit 94, and in downtown Los Angeles, the mercury climbed to 101.

Posted by Dave at July 22, 2006 10:57 PM